Robert Pence

Maybe Amtrak should start rounding up the Pullman Standard and Budd-built Heritage Fleet cars that ended up with tourist railroads, and re-shop them at Beech Grove ( :wink: ) to help alleviate rolling-stock shortages. Give the tourist roads a cash infusion, and put some wonderful cars back where they belong - cruising the Class I mainlines at 90-110 mph. Seriously, those beautiful, solid, stainless-steel beauties, in good condition, provided a smoother, quieter ride than anything Amtrak owns now. At 90mph on NE Corridor track, I felt virtually no sensation of motion unless I looked out the window. Straying OT. I shut up now.

Unless you're really concerned about the appearance of the rust, just spray a little WD-40 on it. That will keep it from spreading, and any that's on a surface that meets the chain will soon wear off. I'm guessing that you're referring to the rear sprockets (cluster). If you want to get completely rid of the rust, there are products like Naval Jelly (or a plain ten-percent solution of muriatic acid - dangerous) that will remove it, but you should take the rusty parts off the bike and clean off any oil and grease before starting on them. Once the rust is gone, let them dry completely and then spray them with a little WD-40 again. That should be the last you'll see of the rust. Just keep everything sufficiently lubricated but not over-oiled and you'll be fine. If the rust isn't interfering with function, I'd just WD-40 it and ignore it.

^Facebook quality or not, those are great compositions. I've posted this one before in another thread on UO, but some of the newer folks may not have seen it. From the 'Way-Back Machine; I didn't take this one. My aunt, Jeraldine C. Baumgartner, M.D., took it in the early 1950s when she traveled frequently on the Broadway Limited between Fort Wayne and Chicago. I have the Rolleiflex 3.5 twin-lens reflex that she used, and it still works nicely. This scan is from a print about 14x17 that she made then in her own darkroom. This original concourse, opened in 1925, was demolished in 1969 in anticipation that the entire station would soon be closed and demolished. Continued demand for commuter services prevented this, and a new, low-ceilinged concourse was built with an office tower above it. That's the concourse that was in place when Amtrak began operating in 1971. In 1992 the concourse was again remodeled into the awkward, congested mess that exists today. The old Chicago Northwestern Station (1911) (Frost and Granger) was a slightly earlier design than Union Station (1925). The design of Union Station was initiated by DH Burnham Company, but Burnham died in 1912 before the project was executed. The project was completed by successor firm Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, which firm also designed Cleveland's 1930 Terminal Tower incorporating Cleveland Union Terminal. Chicago Union Station Concourse, 1972: Also from a thread I already posted, the 1992-designed Union Station cattle-loading facility, photographed in December 2008:

^^Nice shot. Remembering your gorgeous winter shots from Madison, I'm looking forward to what you do when serious snow hits Boston.

Still some quality living there! I was in the area last year, and walked around a little bit on the street that runs toward Stambaugh Auditorium, but I was running out of good light and stamina by then. I was intrigued by this place; I thought it had lots of potential.

Here are more shots of the 1979-1980 time period at Chicago Northwestern Station. Right after I shot this photo, I got thrown out with the admonition that photos were not allowed except by permit and when accompanied by a railroad official. I should have known better than to fire off a Vivitar 283 at maximum power in a dark train shed., but I didn't realize photography was a touchy issue there. The 283 really lights things up in an otherwise dark place, and it might have startled or frightened some people. That was the first, but not the last time that I attracted unwanted attention for taking photos in a station.

I'm still waiting for the summer we didn't really have. :?

C-Dawg, that's a gorgeous shot and incredibly clear water; the only places I've seen water like that are some spots in the Northeast, like New York's Finger Lakes (specifically Skaneateles) and Massachusetts' Quabbin Reservoir. Jeff, maybe the driver was out celebrating and showing off his new car. It maybe was new a few minutes before I took the photo, but by that time it looked pretty well used up.

Beautiful views! Those bring back some fond memories and remind me that it's been too long since I've visited.

South Shore temporarily busing passengers between South Bend and Michigan City: http://www.nictd.com/TempPDF/TemporaryBusingSBendtoMichiganCity.pdf The South Shore plans to temporarily bus ALL passengers between South Bend and Michigan City (including Hudson Lake) from October 19 through October 30, and on Monday, November 2. Cardinal Bus will meet scheduled trains operating between South Bend, Hudson Lake and Michigan City (not busing Trains 422, 424 and 716). There is no additional fare for this substitute bus service. In South Bend, passengers will board the bus north of the train platform. All passengers riding westbound trains originating in South Bend may experience delays of 10-15 minutes reaching their final destination. The South Shore is replacing bridges over County Roads 200E and 300E, and Galena River in eastern LaPorte County; filling and removing a bridge over the former Pere Marquette railroad near State Road 39. These projects require the temporary closure of the railroad between South Bend and Michigan City. NICTD regrets any inconvenience caused by busing. Service suspended between Gary Metro Center and South Bend October 31 - November 2 Trains will not run between Gary Metro Center and South Bend October 31 - November 2, to allow contractors uninterrupted access to the line for catenary replacement. Most of that portion of the line is single-tracked, and must be shut down completely to provide that access. Substitute bus service will not be provided. October 31 = November 2 is the last of five planned weekend outages for catenary replacement in 2009. Plans call for six weekend outages between Gary and South Bend in 2010, and between South Bend and Dune Park there will be ten weekend outages in 2011. The old variable-tension catenary system is being replaced with state-of-the-art constant-tension catenary that uses counterweights and movable supports to allow for expansion and contraction of the overhead wire structures due to temperature changes. Personal observation re: ride quality I hope that track work doesn't wait until all the catenary work is done. I rode round trip between Michigan City and Chicago earlier this week, and the ride was as rough as I remember ever experiencing it on the South Shore.

Enough already with pretty fall pictures. Let's see some of autumn's ugliness - the consequences of OWI, as seen through a rain-spattered filter. Some kind of pestilence took hold of me Monday night, and although I'm back home from Chicago/Northwest Indiana, I'm still trying to shake it. Last night wasn't good for sleeping. About 4 a.m. I awakened to a hellish racket outside. A city crew was jetting a sewer line. I've never heard two bull elephants fight, but I imagine it would sound something like that. They had the lane closed off with pylons and barricaded with another big truck. Just as I was starting to doze off again I was reawakened by myriad sirens, and they stopped right in front of my house. At that hour, there's virtually no traffic - except for drunks, one of whom found his way past the lane closure and managed to straighten the curve and bulldoze the guardrail. He might have made it all the way to the river, had it not been for a tree. I thought I might as well get some photographic mileage out of the inconvenience, so I bundled up, took my camera, and headed across the street. The photos are the best I could do; the cops wouldn't let me get any closer. I overheard that the driver wasn't seriously injured. It took a winch truck to get the car out to where a flatbed could get to it. I watched that from the dry, warm environs of my window. The front end of the car looked pretty well crunched, dead center.

Lovely day, beautiful shots.

Great shots! Now we get not one, but two excellent photographers contributing to the MayDay threads!

Those last two - Really? Or are the "Before" and "After" switched? Looks like the lovely EIFS even made the clouds go away and the street lights turn on! :-)

I like 'em, especially in warm weather. That, and 10K runs, etc. Quite often the route goes right past my house, and I can sit on my back porch or patio and watch the lean, fit, and sometimes shirtless men go by.

An amazing historic treasure, and excellent photos.

Compared with the Eisentraut, the PX-10 is pretty limber. The Eisentraut is a fairly stiff frame, at least with my 135-140 pounds on it, and that makes it responsive. On the PX-10 climbing a hill, I could look down and actually see the bottom bracket squirm. That springiness had an undesirable effect on descents, too. I first noticed it on a club ride on the Top of Ohio Bikeway, out of Bellefontaine. There are some pretty nice hills on that loop, and on one long downhill straightaway I got up a fair amount of speed and the whole bike started to shimmy. I may have had a wheel just a tiny bit out of true that started it, but the frame picked up a resonance and amplified it. It was touch-and-go for a little bit whether I would get it slowed down and under control before I got splattered all over the pavement.

Excellent city tour! It's been too many years since I've been there. It's good to hear that the transit system has shaped up; on a visit in the late eighties, I observed that it had gotten very shabby; dirty, overcrowded Muni trains on underserved routes, and buses that seemed to run "whenever" without much regard for the published schedules. The coastal air is positively invigorating!

Looks like an interesting place to explore. Thanks for the photos.

Did that too, and then returned via ferry - must have been about 30 years ago. Gorgeous place then, and it still is.

The reason I inquired about Franklin Frames is that I have a Peugeot PX-10 frame that I fantasize about having repaired. That bike came with Stronglight crank, Normandy high-flange hubs, Mafac brakes, and Brooks Pro saddle. It came with sew-ups, but a very small amount of city riding motivated me to restring the wheels with clincher rims. With the sew-ups, flats were frequent and inconvenient to fix. Oh. And I have a Stronglight crank extractor. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I think I know where it is.

Very sweet, beautiful color scheme! Stronglight crank? And what's the front hub? It looks like it has high flanges. The saddle looks reminiscent of a Brooks Pro that I rode for years and still have stashed somewhere. People kept saying that if I was patient, it would break in. Ten years it never did; my skinny butt broke in, I guess, or got used to the abuse. If I'm not mistaken, the Bluemels fenders must have come from a stash of vintage goodies; the last I knew, they haven't been made in quite a few years. I have a set of those from about 1969 that haven't been on a bike in 30 years, but I have a use in mind. Oh, and I just noticed the bar-tip shifters. You do have all the goodies on that one. It's a work of art! :clap:

Looks like it's been dying a slow and painful death for a long time.

Quality stuff!

Casinos and indoor water parks are the successors to enclosed malls in lame, destined-to-fail fantasies for urban revitalization. The people who are floating ( :-D) the water-park delusions have no clue to how much the construction and operation costs would be, and how soon the novelty would wear off. Casinos already have become so overbuilt that they're diluting each other's markets, and Chicago already is surrounded by so many casinos in outlying smaller cities, with acres of free parking, that a casino downtown would be completely dependent upon the existing tourist trade in a market that already offers so many other distinctive options that few visitors would want to spend a night in a same-old, same-old casino environment. How about senior housing? :wink: