Robert Pence

Central Pacific Railroad No. 1 "Governor Stanford" built 1862 by Richard Norris in Philadelphia, on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento.

I just read that the Senate voted to repeal DADT. Now the bill goes to President Obama for his signature. :clap:

In my earlier reply I meant to say thanks for including the tractor pic in the museum. It looks like a pretty close knockoff of an International Harvester Farmall from the late 1920s, but it may be the geniune item. Some of the major American farm machinery makers had a strong presence there in the era between the World Wars. I've seen JI Case brochures in Russian from that time, and I suppose IH was in that market too, as well as some of the then-dominant European makers like Fowler and Lanz.

Groovy! Actually, much nicer & more interesting than PIB.

Enjoyable video. I like the sound of vintage Alco 4-stroke engines. When an Alco is under load it puts out a plume of black smoke that's equal to that of a steam locomotive.

Mine is a crop of this shot.

This is the most amazing streetcar-line interchange I've ever seen!

Interesting city views. Those places probably look a lot better in summer, just like Cleveland and Akron do. Lana is quite attractive.

Because of funding cuts, the Allen County (Fort Wayne, Indiana) health department has dropped its long-standing AIDS testing and counseling service, and laid off the two people who ran it. The service was provided through the in-house clinic facilities and through outreach to various community centers and social service agencies, providing free testing to their clients on a periodic basis.

I think that if just a segment were to be built, it should be one that provides a connection between a population center that has no long-distance trains and one that does. In my opinion (and I don't live in Ohio and never have, so take it for what it's worth) it would make sense to connect Columbus and Cleveland first, because Columbus residents would then have connection to either the Northeast or Chicago without going way far out of the way.

Maybe you're a nocturnal creature, or living/working on the wrong side of the globe? I've worked various jobs on all three shifts. On day jobs, I was nearly overwhelmed mid-afternoons with drowsiness, and had to pump myself up with coffee and leave the office sometimes to go out and walk around in the factory for a while to stay awake. On weekends if I stayed up until around midnight, I didn't feel like going to bed until daylight, and then I was messed up the following week. On second-shift jobs (~3pm-midnight) I had to get up to go to work just when I was fighting hardest to be alert and awake, and then when I got off work there weren't many places to get anything to eat and I wasn't sleepy. Often I'd stay up too long after work and run into sleep deficit problems. I hit my stride on third shift (~11pm/12am to 8/9am). I could go to bed when the mid-afternoon slump hit, get up and go to work when I felt best, and feel energized throughout my whole shift. When I got off work in the morning, businesses were open and I could run errands and take care of personal business and then go to bed when I got sleepy. Most of the industrial jobs that ran three shifts are gone, now, and even in 24/6 data centers like the one where I worked for a year, there aren't that many jobs any more. I'm glad I'm retired. All I need to know about time now is when I'm tired it's time to sleep, when I'm not it's time to get up, and when I'm hungry it's time to eat.

I'm trying to sleep until the snow goes away. The snowplows keep waking me up, though. :x

I don't intend to take this thread off topic, but I want to mention an example of how rail that operates at moderate speeds with frequent service and reliable schedule-keeping has a ready market. The South Shore trains between South Bend and Chicago run at near capacity, sometimes with standing room only, over much of their 90-mile route. Only small segments of the route are FRA-qualified for 79mph; counting station stops, between South Bend and Millennium Station trains average approximately 35mph. Between Michigan City and Millennium Station, the part of the route with the greatest station and ridership density, they average about 30mph. That proves two points; frequency and reliability are more important than speed, and people will commute considerable distances when the times are convenient and trains are reliable, even if the accomodations are comparatively Spartan; vinyl seats, rubber runner down the aisle, bright flourescent overhead lighting, and a somewhat hard and noisy ride. Offer comfortable, reclining seats, softer lighting, and a quiet, smooth ride, and the demand probably would be even higher. In the recent snowstorm where at least 100 drivers were trapped in their cars, some for twelve hours or more, and had to be rescued by crews with front-end loaders, the NICTD web site has posted no significant delays for the trains. I checked area newspapers (Michigan City and Chesterton) and saw no mention of any problems with South Shore trains.

Neat night shots, especially the ball park.

Snowplows, snowplows, snowplows, rumbling past my house in twos and threes every few minutes around the clock, grinding their blades noisily against the pavement and with every pass spewing enough salt beyond the pavement and onto the park strip, making sure that after the snow is gone I'll have only the hardiest of weeds and not a sprig of grass. I suppose if I have to choose between too many and none at all, I'll take too many.

I can see them.

Neat tour. There's a lot more to downtown East Liverpool than I expected.

I just finished clearing my sidewalks, although by the time I finished, I could have started over again. After my ancient, worn-out two-stage gas snow blower was stolen, I tried toughing it out for a couple of winters with a snow shovel. I have quite a lot of sidewalk plus a two-car driveway, so it's a major job after a heavy snow. Last winter I finally caved and went searching for an electric snow thrower. By then they were all sold out, and the manufacturers' sites said there would be no more until the next season. I did my research; I really was set on trying an electric so that I wouldn't have to mess with storing gasoline or slopping around in it in freezing weather or checking and changing oil, and so I wouldn't have to fuss with an engine to get it started on bitter-cold days. After looking at specs and user reviews, I chose the Toro 1800 Power Curve and ordered it through Amazon.com. I've had it out three times, now, and have finally gotten the hang of using it and managing the cord, and I give it a two thumbs up. At first I thought it might not be much faster than an energetic fifteen-year-old with a shovel, but it required a minimum of effort. Now that I'm more familiar with it, I'd say it would give two fifteen-year-olds a run for it. It would be no match for a Minnesota roof-buster blizzard (what would?), but for the three- and four-inch accumulations of powdery snow that we usually get, it works just fine. The only caveat I learned is that those blue cold-weather cords have a plastic coating instead of rubber, and if you step on one on a cement sidewalk with a thin skim of ice or snow, it's slicker'n snot on a doorknob. :-o

In the 1960s when I worked at GE in Fort Wayne, a railroad town with passenger trains on the Pennsylvania, Wabash, and Nickel Plate, most of my older co-workers had done a lot of business travel. Those guys could tell you exactly what railroads to take to get anywhere in the US or Canada, and exactly where and how you'd change trains and if necessary, stations. They knew their railroad connections right down to the train names like many business travelers know their interstates now.

Good stuff! The demolition photos are dramatic, especially in contrast against the new construction and rehab scenes that follow. Some of those abandoned small businesses represent dreams lost, and the factories where people no longer work stand for vanished memories.

I love it when the snow is flying in Chicago, especially at night! The tall buildings and the snow swirling in the eddy currents make for dramatic winter scenes.

The strongest contender for the NYC - Chicago HSR route at this point is Cleveland - Toledo - Fort Wayne. I believe Indiana is to get about $350K of the reallocated funds that were to go to Ohio and Wisconsin, and I hope that it will go toward whatever engineering and environmental work is needed to advance that project. The proposed route east of Fort Wayne exists mainy as ROW and the roadbed would have to be built from scratch, and westward from Fort Wayne the former PRR mainline is now owned by CSX, leased by Rail America, and operated by their wholly-owned subsidiary, Chicago Fort Wayne & Eastern. It has been low-speed single track without signals for quite a few years. Now, back on topic! 3-C is important as an alternative to short-distance business air travel that clogs air terminals and air traffic control systems. It's also an important element in building passenger-train awareness in a population that either has never experienced it or whose memories consist of the desultory and grudging service levels provided by most eastern railroads in the years leading up to Amtrak. Awareness is a building block toward popular support for building an expanded network, including routes like Columbus - Lima - Fort Wayne - Chicago or Pittsburgh - Columbus - Dayton - Indianapolis - St. Louis. Ohio and Indiana both have local passenger rail service that exists only as incidental to long-distance trains between Chicago and east-coast cities, and uninformed, unaware taxpayers/voters can effectively obstruct efforts to build a larger network in the eastern US.

I did occasional near-48 hour stretches without sleep when I was in my 20s. The effect it had on me, especially when working outdoors was a sense of remarkable clarity to the sights and sounds around me, accompanied by exhilaration, followed after an hour or so by getting giddy-silly and slap-happy just before I crashed.

Maybe it could run at a different time every day. Some Amtrak trains seem to do that anyway. :wink: :-D

Who wants to join my train cult? We'll meet at various former sites of abandoned railroad stations in Ohio on full-moon nights, build a smoky fire with cotton waste soaked with a mixture of diesel fuel and journal oil, and sit around it and recite incantations to the train gods and sing train songs, and then we'll offer up a Republican as a sacrifice by tying him to the tracks just before the Lakeshore comes through, although there's often not much chance of figuring out what time that might be.