Robert Pence

They still call it "infrastructure investment" whey they're talking about highways and airports. It's only "subsidy" when they're talking about mass transit and passenger rail.

Damn, man! Those photos were worth a run-in with the cops! Great stuff! :clap:

^Not exactly BRT but close -- I think I read several years ago that Seattlle's downtown bus subway, created for dual-mode buses (trolley / diesel-electric) was designed for possible future conversion to rail. I think they may have even installed the rails when they built the roadway, in some places.

Ride quality on LRT is probably better than BRT, although there's not sufficient experience with BRT to get a good picture of that. Energy costs are less, but it takes tremendous volume before the savings justify the startup capital costs for rail and rolling stock. With proper execution and experience, I don't see any reason why BRT shouldn't be just as fast as LRT when running in public right-of-way. Startup costs are much less, right-of-way can be designed for easy future conversion, and for that matter, buses, BRT and LRT can share the same right-of-way if it's built with that in mind. Sorry. It's been said that when asked what time it is, I tell people how to make a watch. :oops:

Lafayette, Indiana – Trains in the Street I made three trips to Lafayette, Indiana to photograph Amtrak street running before the railroad relocation project was completed. Before the relocation, Lafayette's Fifth Street was one of two places in the U.S. where this practice remained. The other was Thurmond, West Virginia. The first set of photographs was taken in March, 1988. Two daily trains operated each way down Fifth Street; the Chicago – Washington, D.C. Cardinal, and the Chicago – Indianapolis Hoosier State. A primary reason for the Hoosier State's existence was ferrying equipment between Amtrak's Chicago hub and the heavy repair facility at Beech Grove, near Indianapolis. The Hoosier State's consist varied on an almost-daily basis. The 1902 Big Four depot was moved in 1994 from this location on Second Street to a place nearer the river and relocated railroad lines. Now it's part of a park and pedestrian walkway and serves Amtrak and city buses. Tippecanoe County's courthouse, built 1881 – 1884, was designed by local architect Elias Max and incorporates features from several architectural styles. It cost $500,000, and when Samuel Clemens saw it in 1885 he commented that it "must have struck the taxpayers a very hard blow." The 1988 pre-renovation photos show obstructed windows and window air-conditioning units. It was starting to look pretty dowdy, and the restoration brought back its magnificence. The passenger depot was the Lahr Hotel. The hotel was no longer in business, and I think the Amtrak ticket office was the only part of the building that was open. The limestone building ahead on the left is the former Monon passenger depot. It was a community theatre when this photo was taken. On a Saturday morning in May, 1988 I arrived downtown early and picked a parking spot with a good view of the railroad crossing. I had a 1982 Chevy pickup with a cap on the bed, and I set up my camera on a tripod atop the truck and waited. I ducked into a nearby restaurant for breakfast while waiting for the second train. I heard a diesel horn, so I dashed outside to grab a couple of shots of a CSX freight rumbling through. The Kankakee Beaverville & Southern RR (former Wabash RR) bridge had its remaining track realigned over the existing piers to accommodate the new highway bridge. The train in these July, 1992 photos is probably the Hoosier State. The two superliner cars behind the locomotive were vacant, and superliners didn't normally run on the Cardinal. A Blast from the Past In 1984 Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society operated a steam-powered passenger excursion train from Fort Wayne to Lafayette and return. These are photos of coaling and servicing Lima-built Nickel Plate Berkshire locomotive 765 at Lafayette for the return to Fort Wayne.<br><br> That's all.

I wish them luck. Often, tourist railroads are started by people with lots of enthusiasm and the ability to get startup donations of money and equipment, but with little understanding of the cost and complexity of railroading. Track maintenance alone can be staggeringly expensive to hire and exhausting to volunteer labor. Many of these operations are running on such a thin shoestring that one minor accident or equipment breakdown can finish them off. Even the best operations in popular tourism centers have to have savvy management and usually some amount of private and public largesse to keep the wheels turning, and still have to collect fairly hefty fares. Buckeye Central's turf isn't exactly Strasburg, Pennsylvania and their nondescript collection of rolling stock crawling over weedy, rickety track in the flatlands isn't going to attract throngs from far away. The nearest population centers are closer to the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic RR, a well-established and well-funded operation that provides a quality experience. Actually, a recreational trail with historic markers and artifacts related to the railroad might be a better use for the real estate. And I like trains.

Re: KJP's comments on San Diego, I think I remember reading that San Deigo's system was completed ahead of schedule, under budget and without federal funds, and almost immediately far exceeded all ridership projections. It has been offered as the greatest success story in US transit development.

Galion maintainer (age unknown) and 1935 Case C tractor in regular use on a private road on the family farm south of Bluffton, Indiana. A maintainer differs from a grader; a grader can exert heavy down pressure on the blade to cut through packed surfaces and change the contour of a road. A maintainer's blade is carried on runners and can't exert much down pressure. It is used to redistribute surface gravel to fill in holes and ruts and keep the road smooth.

Gorgeous town!

Great way to spend a summer day!

That won't fool anyone who knows anything about Nebraska. The Nebraskans I've met tend to be polite and congenial.

Amazing thread, Jeff! It's evident you put a lot of work into this!

I grew up near Bluffton and not terribly far from Decatur and Berne. That day I had been visiting Mom at the nursing home in Bluffton and wanted a little "unwind" time, so I detoured through Decatur on the way back to Fort Wayne. My dad worked at GE in Decatur during WWII, and I started school at Lincoln School there. We lived in a 1937 subdivision called Homestead, with little houses all alike, arranged around the periphery of a circular park area. There was a playground on one side of the park, and a farmer grew hay in the rest of it. I remember watching them make hay in the summer when I was about six years old. We moved to a farm south of Bluffton at the end of 1947.

Decatur, Indiana - June 19, 2005 – Page 3 of 3 The General Electric factory that manufactured general purpose motors closed around 1990 and the work went to Mexico. My dad worked here during World War II, and I spent some time here in the 1980s helping implement a real-time inventory and production tracking system. The Bunge Ltd. Central Soya plant started in 1934 as an adjunct to an existing sugar beet processing plant and grew rapidly. The plant processes soybeans into meal and oil, and ships its output via the CF&E Railroad. The Grand Rapids & Illinois Railroad, along with the Michigan Central Railroad, built and operated the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. The Pennsylvania Railroad operated the full-service Northern Arrow over the GR&I between Cincinnati and Mackinaw City on weekends as late as 1961. Travelers could buy sleeping car accommodations, ferry passage to the island, transfer to the hotel, and hotel reservations through railroad ticket agents. The line became part of Penn Central and then Conrail, and was operated by CSX after Conrail was partitioned between NS and CSX. Currently it is leased to Chicago Fort Wayne & Eastern, a division of RailAmerica. CF&E operates the entire former PRR route between Gary, Indiana and Crestline, Ohio. CF&E's power roster is made up entirely of GP38-2 units previously owned by C&NW. The color scheme is a spiffy departure from RailAmerica's red-white-and-blue, and I didn't see any RailAmerica markings on the loco. End of train, end of thread. 'Bye for now.

Decatur, Indiana is the county seat of Adams County. The town was founded in 1836 and has a population of about 9,000. It is located about twenty miles south of Fort Wayne on US 27. Before you ask, "Where are the people?" this was a Sunday afternoon. St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church has an appealing Art Deco style with richly colored stained glass windows. The interior follows the same theme, but was too dark for photography. I hope to return and see if I can photograph it with the lights on. Downtown has many brick buildings dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but very little commercial activity. Most retail has moved to strip centers along US 27, and Wal Mart is replacing an older store with a new supercenter. The Adams County Courthouse was designed by J.C. Johnson and built by Christian Boseker; the cornerstone was laid in 1875. The courthouse appears to be very well maintained. I've seen many cornerstones that were laid by Masons, but I don't think I've seen one before that was laid by both Masons and Odd Fellows. This was nice before someone added the funeral-home foyer. It still could be fixed. Go To Part 2

That's just the point, sort of. They expedite traffic flow, leading to faster, more aggressive driving, more pollution and less pedestrian-friendly environments. One way to calm traffic and make downtowns more attractive to alternatives to driving, without destroying necessary access by motorized traffic, is to revert the one-way streets to two-way.

Or visit www.bhphotovideo.com Photo, video, audio, everything from consumer to pro gear. Good prices and ready availablity on a huge selection

:clap: Wow! Great photos! So that's what Milwaukee looks like without leftover snow, drizzling rain and gray skies? I like.

Mostly now I use a Nikon D70 w/ 18-70mm Nikkor zoom. The oldest stuff I've posted was shot with a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex 35mm SLR, vintage 1962. A lot of my archive threads were shot with a Nikon FM 35mm SLR, and some were done with a Rolleiflex f/2.8 TLR. I still use the Rollei and a Mamiya 7 (120 roll film) for critical print work.

This thread makes me feel so deprived! I grew up on an Indiana dairy farm, in an era when midwesterners thought homosexuals were something that lived in restrooms on the east and west coasts and seldom, if ever, ventured this far inland. When I figured it out, though, I wasted no time catching up! Great Thread!

wait, does that mean you're older than ex-ithacan? 'Fraid so! Bet you didn't think that was possible! Getting older doesn't seem like such a bad deal, after you've contemplated the only alternative. It has its benefits, too. When I was in my teens & twenties, people thought I was an upstart, obnoxious, wise-ass, somewhat screwed-up kid. Now, I behave the same way and they think I'm somewhat eccentric and crochety, and that's quasi-respectable.

I'm variously known as Rob, Robert, Bob, and "Hey, you wit' da camera!" -- the latter mostly by Amtrak, Metra and CTA security. I'm probably the geezer of the board, at 65. Grew up on a dairy farm, trained and worked as a machinist-toolmaker, accountant, programmer, and computer tech, retired from IBM in 2000 and since then I've made it my mission to annoy at least one authority figure each day. I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, not far from Ohio. I've been an Ohio wanna-be ever since I dated a guy who lived in Cleveland in 1979. That affair deteriorated into a relationship and collapsed not long afterward, but I still have friends in Cleveland in visit there from time to time. My home on the web is http://robertpence.com

I think it's a great idea. I don't live in Ohio; I live in Indiana; maybe I should start a movement here: "Indiana - not much worse than Ohio" or "Indiana - not as bad as Mississippi" I can put up signs at airport arrival gates and where highways enter the state: "You are entering the Indiana time zone. Please turn your calendars back twenty years."

It's been years since I was in Wheeling, and I never knew there was so much to it. Wonderful photos!

Wow!