Robert Pence

If a city has a vibrant street life and good alternatives to driving everywhere, those trump cutting-edge architecture for me. That said, I don't think Toronto is any slouch for buildings, either.

Yay! Congrats on the successful C-section and healthy baby, and I wish you speedy healing and relief from the pain.

Great thread rob! Shay seems to be a popular name around Saginaw for families and businesses and such. Perhaps somehow related? Could be; I'm not sure just what part of Michigan was home turf to Ephraim Shay. His first design looked nothing like the later ones built by Lima, but he created the concept. The first Shays looked like they were built from flatcars, which they probably were. They had a vertical boiler and a steam engine on the flatcar, and the gear train that ran down the side was similar to the later design but not as refined. I have a picture postcard of one, sent home from Oregon by my great-grandfather in 1913 when he traveled to the west coast to visit one of his sons. The Shay patents went through generations of infringements. Shay sued Lima over infringement, and later a foundry on the west coast built exact knockoffs of the Lima design; I think one of those is at Cass.

I never "got" Seinfeld; that bunch of aimless losers reminded me of too many people I knew when I was younger, who had no clue of what they were doing or where they were going, and always expected someone else to rescue them from the messes they made. I guess that's the difference between Seinfeld and real life; in real life, stupidity has consequences.

I think the photo with the bridge and waterfall is peaceful and idyllic. Here's someone's $400 AWSHIT! moment:

The whole thing looks like high quality, overall. Very nice.

It would be a delight to live in a place where one could go train-riding just for a pastime, without being limited to one all-day train per day between any two cities. :-)

I neglected to include rollerbladers among the menaces I encounter on paths/trails. Regardless of gender, some seem to think it was built exclusively for their enjoyment and they get that side-to-side thing going with arms swinging and eat up the entire width of the trail. I prefer trails surfaced with hard-packed finely-crushed limestone over those surfaced with asphalt, for the very reason that skates don't work at all on them but my bike seems to roll just as easily as on pavement.

I'd agree that shared roads and streets probably are better/safer than paths for cycling, especially where demarcation and other methods for raising motorist awareness are used. Demarcation may be a transitional phase that lasts for several years, until motorist awareness of shared use becomes almost universal. Among the hazards I encounter on city paths and not on streets are people walking dogs on long retractable leashes and not keeping them close, people walking or riding and not keeping to the right or being aware of what's behind as well as in front, families with small children on bikes, spreading out across the entire path, or riders who stop to take a break and park their bikes on kickstands, blocking the path. Even more dangerous are the cyclists who consider themselves advanced or athletic, who ride at a vehicular pace on paths, riding 20mph or thereabouts around blind curves or in other areas where congestion or interference is to be expected. That said, Oswald strikes me as a person who would be angry at anyone who doesn't accept his viewpoint as divinely inspired, no matter what his passion or area of interest - I believe the technical term is "Arrogant Prick."

I guess I removed it prematurely; I got too deeply immersed in role-playing a petulant child. Restored by popular demand: On Sunday afternoon in Northern Indiana, a passenger train was delayed by a giant reptile that had crawled onto the tracks from a nearby marsh. The media covered up the incident, but I was there with my camera to capture it: After the engineer bravely lured it off the tracks, it maintained a menacing stance as the train passed.

Nice-looking town. I like how Pennsylvania towns use multi-story parking decks to help preserve downtown density, instead of turning everything into blocks of surface parking. Williamsport is just the right size city to benefit from a movement toward working, shopping, and buying locally.

You'd be awed at the power of some of those 1/8 scale steamers. As you could see in the photos, some of those passengers weren't exactly small, and they'll take a trainload like that and accelerate uphill fast enough you'd have to move at a pretty good trot to keep up. If you want to play with stuff like that without the expense of owning it, volunteer at an operating museum or tourist railroad; there are plenty in Pennsylvania. You can get sooty and greasy from day one. It's a snapping turtle. They're primitive and they live a long time; one that size may be a hundred years old. When they get that big, there are few predators that can threaten them. When I was a kid, my dad and his cousin caught one and killed it and butchered it, and my grandmother breaded and fried it. Better than fried chicken. They're good eating, if they don't eat you first. They're dangerous; they can't run, but they rear up on their front legs and extend their neck and bite, and they can reach about a foot and a half farther than you'd expect from seeing them on the ground. They can do that in a flash, and their bite can sever fingers or take out a chunk of flesh. Check out their web site for their schedule. They operate weekends through the summer and Sundays into the fall. Most weekends only the trains run, but on opening weekend, Independence Day, and Labor Day weekend they run the stationary engines, power plant, sawmill, etc. If the UO camping trip to the Dunes happens, Hesston would be a good side trip; it's only 20-30 minutes away.

Can't pass up the opportunity for a good sulk/pout. :wink: If anyone wants to see the giant swamp reptile that stopped the train, they can check out the set here.

He was referring to a digression from topic that resulted from my effort to inject some levity into a passenger-rail thread. I removed my post and the resulting followups. I acknowledge that it was uncalled-for irreverence, and I apologize and promise to refrain from humor when referring to passenger trains in the future. :oops: :cry:

Hesston Steam Museum - Opening Weekend, 2009 May 24, 2009 Get your popcorn here, and enjoy the show. The grandfather of the fellow running this outfit recreated a Cretors popcorn wagon using an antique Cretors engine and popper. The steam engine drives the paddle that stirs the popcorn in the kettle. The first sight that greeted me as I walked through the gate was a Minneapolis steam traction engine working on a Baker Fan. Some folks call these "steam tractors," but that's not exactly correct; there were steam tractors for a short time, more compact machines using steam automobile technology in an effort to compete with emerging internal-combustion tractors. Steam power first appeared on some farms in the 1870s, as threshing machines grew larger and more complex and required more power than could be supplied by horses on treadmills or sweeps. At first, they were portable machines, engine and boiler mounted on wheels and pulled from field to field with horses, along with the threshing machine. In the 1880s, builders began to add traction wheels and propulsion gear so that the steam engine could pull the threshing machine from work site to work site. Further improvements led to machines sufficiently durable and powerful to pull plows in heavy prairie sod. The Baker Manufacturing Company first designed the four-bladed paddlewheel fan to test and break in new steam engine. Supposedly under normal atmospheric conditions, it took 100 horsepower to spin a Baker Fan 600rpm. Although my shutter speed was too high and nearly stopped the motion, this fan was kicking up a pretty good breeze, and the engine didn't sound like it was working very hard to do it. The tank on the front of the engine stores water for the boiler. An engine of this size doing a full day's work threshing wheat or sawing lumber might use 2,000 - 3,000 gallons of water. That provided steady work for a couple of boys with a horse-drawn water wagon, shuttling back and forth between the nearest well or pond and filling the wagon with a hand-operated transfer pump, transferring the water to holding tanks on the engine, and then going back to the well or pond for more. A pretty Russell engine sitting with a Ford Model A pickup on one side and a Model AA flatbed truck on the other. Builders often used colorful paint schemes on their engines to enhance marketability. The trucks are from the late 1920s - early 1930s. A handsome Aultman-Taylor engine gets a good spin on the Baker Fan. Steam traction engines, like coal-burning steam locomotives, only emit big clouds of smoke when fresh fuel is added to the firebox, as the oils and asphalt-like compounds quickly burn off. Good coal in the hands of a skilled fireman emits little smoke over the long run. The cloud of steam around the rear wheel comes from the starting of an injector, the ingenious primary device for adding water to the boiler on most steam traction engines. Using steam from the boiler and no moving parts, it siphons cold water from the storage tank and injects it into the boiler. An injector can move lots of water very rapidly. Beautiful antique cars and trucks Light Plant Stationary Steam The two large mill engines came from a lumber mill, and turn at idle speed using steam from the same boiler that supplies the generating station. To run either one at full load and speed would require a much larger boiler that would keep a fireman very busy. The smaller of the two stationary steam engines is a slide-valve engine. Its speed is regulated by a centrifugal governor that controls the flow of steam into the steam chest. The larger engine, built by Allis-Chalmers, is a Corliss-valve engine. The valve system is named for George Corliss, its inventor. It is used on most very large industrial engines in power generation and water pumping, where maximum efficiency and precise speed regulation are important. Instead of a single slide valve that opens and closes steam and exhaust ports at each end of the cylinder, a Corliss-valve engine has four rotary valves, an inlet and an exhaust port at each end of the cylinder. Two eccentrics on the crankshaft, one for inlet and one for exhaust, control the motion of the valves. The exhaust valves, at bottom, open and close at fixed positions in the cranshaft rotation The opening of the inlet valves at top takes place at a fixed crankshaft position, but the closing, or cutoff, is controlled by the centrifugal governer in the blue housing at the right edge of the photo. If the engine speed begins to drop, indicating a need for more power, the duration of opening of the inlet valves is increased. The two rods leading downward from the inlet valves lead to dashpots, blind-ended cylinders with pistons in them. Opening the valve pulls up on the rod and creates a vacuum in the dashpot, and as soon as the governor-controlled detent release the valve, the dashpot piston quickly pulls the valve closed. The sawmill, usually run by a large Skinner Unaflow steam engine, is using tractor power while the boiler has new flues installed and a new smokestack built. The Browning Steam Crane handles logs going into the sawmill. Eighth-scale Trains Standard-gauge railroad tracks are placed 56 1/2 inches apart. Hesston operates trains in four different gauges; one-eighth scale, one-quarter scale, two-foot, and three-foot. There are both steam and internal combustion locomotives in one-eighth scale, and the realism and power of these smaller locomotives are impressive. The steam locomotives can accelerate a heavy train up the hill leading from the station into the woods at a very rapid pace. Service is brought to a halt by a giant swamp monster from the nearby marshy area. Snapping turtles that reach this size are nasty beasts with few predators; they can't run away so they stand and fight, and they can move quickly. They rise up on front legs and extend the neck, and can reach about a foot and a half farther than you'd expect, and they do it in a flash. Their bite is powerful enough to sever fingers; if you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with one. You could be seriously injured. The engineer got this one to bite onto a stick and hang on long enough that he could roll it over and drag it away from the tracks. Quarter-scale Trains The quarter-scale trains cover a large variety of locomotive types. Most of this collection came from the estate of the owner of the Donnelly publishing empire. Two-foot Gauge Trains One of the prettiest two-foot steam locomotives in operation, #242 ran at the Chicago's Brookfield Zoo from the 1930s until 1985 and then sat rusting in storage until 2002 when the Donnelly Family helped Hesston Steam Museum obtain it. This weekend's first public operation is the culmination of restoration and overhaul work that began in 2002. At the Brookfield Zoo #242 operated on almost entirely flat track and pulled four cars. Hesston has grades up to 5.5 per cent (five and a half feet of rise per hundred feet of lateral run) in curves, and just one coach challenges the skills of engineer and fireman. Three-foot Gauge trains 1929 Shay geared locomotive #7 is the most powerful locomotive at Hesston. The first Shay locomotive was designed by Michigan lumberman Ephraim Shay, and Shay locomotives were built by Lima Locomotive through 1944 and used in logging and mining throughout North America long after steam disappeared from mainline railroading. The Shay gets its power from a three-cylinder, double-acting upright steam engine mounted on the right side of the boiler. The engine's power is transmitted to the axles via a driveshaft with universal joints and slip couplings. Every axle, including the ones under the tender, is driven. The gear reduction provides great torque and the flexiblity provided by the pivoting trucks allows the engine to maintain adhesion (traction) on tight curves and uneven track typical of logging and mining operations where conventional diesel or rod-driven steam locomotives would perform poorly. At Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia, Shay locomotives perform well on grades in excess of nine percent. Two percent is considered a tough grade on a typical mainline road.

It's nice they got rid of all the buildings cluttering up the place and made enough parking so that people in cars can bring prosperity! :-)

Thanks for reminding me! :wink: Indeed a nice county seat, nicer than some I have covered. I've been in that area, but haven't been to Brookville since I got into photographing cities and towns. It looks comfortably active yet laid-back; the Who Cares Bar & Grill looks like a good place to hang out and have fun while clogging your arteries.

What local ordinances apply to that park regarding alcohol? If a teen drinking party gets busted, your daughter could end up in court even if she wasn't drinking. If you don't want her to risk getting an arrest record, the least you should do is keep your her away from there. Any chance you could get together with other parents and have a supervised party at the same time, to make you know where the kids are?

Quite a charmer! "Wow!" to some of those houses!

Holy smoke! The cabinets shown in one of the photo sets are 1950s - 60s Geneva, enameled steel. That's top-of-the line stuff, and those look in good shape. The doors and shells on those are double-walled steel, with fiberboard fillers in the doors to deaden sound. Close them and they sound like an old-fashioned big American car door - solid. The shelves are chrome-plated wire racks, similar to oven racks. You can see up through the bottoms of the shelves in the upper cabinets to see what's on them.

Thanks for the tour! That area looks like the sort of place one might go to die; after a few days there, you'd have done your penance and you'd be glad to be dead! I wonder if the folks on the bench at the railroad depot are waiting for the Empire Builder, or they're just hanging out for lack of anything else to do. Do you ever get challenged as to why you're taking photos in these isolated small towns?

Awesome photo tour of bleakness in the midst of desolation! :wink: Imagine that place in Montana winter. A lot of military base buildings, especially the older frame-constructed ones, were built with the intention of using them for only a few years. They stayed in use far beyond their intended lifespan, and I can only imagine what they'd be like after years of neglect. Looks like a good set for a horror film involving extraterrestrials landing in the middle of nowhere; I'd be afraid to go out after dark.

It used to be used for transit. There are no current plans to do so again. No current plans, but speculation never dies. Given the changes in enviromental and transit awareness, I think something will take root in the next 10-20 years. I just wish they'd get rid of that awful jumper-prevention railing on the upper deck of the bridge and open up the spectacular city views that I remember from the seventies.

Thanks for sharing those; the town looks good. There's a variety of interesting buildings and some great churches, and I like the murals a lot. Excellent photos!

I'm not familiar with those cars (Although MARC bought some used Metra gallery cars to help accomodate heavy loads on some of their trains). There could be various factors in the decision; are the cars you describe built as MU electrics with control cabs so they can be operated as married pairs or combined in longer trains, or are they all locomotive-hauled? There may be clearance issues overhead or on curves, especially in the underground facilities at Randolph Street/Millennium Park. I'm confident that there are sound economic and operational reasons for the choices Metra and South Shore have made, and South Shore did save some money by piggy-backing on the already-proven Metra design, with a few modifications to suit their operation; they have restrooms, and in addition to the high-level center doors they have end doors for use at low-level platforms at some of the smaller outlying stations.