Here's a picture of the train that I took to Chicago from Michigan City, Indiana.
The South Shore trains run frequently between
the South Bend airport and downtown Chicago.
The pier lighthouse at Michigan City, Indiana
stands at the mouth of Trail Creek.
It began service in 1904 with a fifth-order fresnel lens,
and was electrified in 1933.
The catwalk provides access for keepers when storms make the jetty unsafe.
San Francisco Photos - 1978
I confirmed that our trip east with the Rio Grande Detour was April 1978.
I looked up P30CH and Caltrain on the web and found some other photos,
all daylight, taken in 1978.
Some of the later ones, August 1978, show the locomotives with SP Bi-Level coaches,
so maybe these were taken in April of that year.
I always tried to take my vacation around holiday weekends
in order to maximize the days off, while minimizing the vacation days used,
so maybe this was around Easter. I dunno.
Here are a couple more. Again, I'm not sure of the date on the Golden Gate Bridge, but I think I gave you a print of this one long ago. I'm pretty sure the streetcar was 1978, near West Portal. And the day may have been the Monday after Easter; I'm sure it was a holiday, because I remember seeing a guy get off this streetcar and go to a nearby bank and tug on the door, stop and read the sign, and then storm away angry because the bank was closed for the holiday.
Golden Gate Bridge
Streetcar
Caltrain Station Photos - Taken Years Ago.
It was just before Caltrain's bi-level cars arrived, and just after
Amtrak took delivery on the P30CH locomotives.
The GE-built P30CH wasn't a great success;
I can't remember what the reasons were,
and they might have been weight and reliability.
Their use soon dwindled to the Auto Train and some trains run over CSX lines,
and they were only a few years old when I saw a bunch of them in the scrap line
at Amtrak's Beech Grove maintenance headquarters in Indianapolis.
Compare that with the smaller, ubiquitous GM-built F40's
that served for nearly twenty years before being replaced.
Many of those went to freight roads who used them for a while.
It was strange to see Norfolk Southern freight trains rumbling through Fort Wayne
with passenger locomotives on the point, still painted in the Amtrak scheme.
It seems to me that it was the Friday evening after Thanksgiving,
and passengers were few.
A light rain was falling, the light was failing, and I didn't have a tripod.
I set my Rolleiflex on the cement platform and propped it up with the lens cap,
and then used the self-timer to make the exposure.
The Amtrak locomotives were on loan;
Amtrak had ordered them to pull the Superliners
which hadn't yet been delivered,
so Caltrain had borrowed them to to try with the bilevel cars
that they were about to receive.
Then again, I may have it all wrong.
It was a long time ago.
My Tractor - 2003
This is my 1937 Case model L tractor.
I had wanted one of these since I was about fifteen, and when I was 26,
I found out about this one in Wisconsin from another collector.
It looked awful, and it DID run...
I paid $150 for it.
This truck photo was taken at a rest stop in Wisconsin in February, 1966.
The Case L was a big tractor in its time, with a reputation for
power, reliability, and ease of operation.
Mine runs as well as it ever did.
I've used it to power a threshing machine at a local tractor show,
and it did a good job.
I primed it with Vari-Prime self-etching primer,
followed by gray primer-sealer and DuPont Centari acrylic enamel ($100/gallon),
mixed for an exact match to the original colors.
Reproduction decals were available, and I studied old pictures
and a couple of magazine articles to get the trim and striping right.
To find out how such a wreck could run so well, I took it apart.
Two days with big wrenches, lots of penetrating oil, and an acetylene torch
reduced a running tractor to a pile of rusty parts.
Then, I got distracted and it sat that way in the back
of the barn for more than thirty years. THIRTY years...
In 1998 I decided to resume the project. THIRTY years...
First, I cleaned out about a five-gallon bucket full of acorns, walnuts and fuzz
from the engine's water jackets, and then my brother and I overhauled the engine,
put a new core in the radiator, rebuilt the governor, and had the magneto repaired.
Then, everything got a good cleaning.
I sandblasted most of the removable parts.
I bought a reproduction hood in Ohio,
and a sheet metal shop in northern Indiana replicated the fenders.
The finished restoration.
The Twin Towers - 1986.
Also in memory of Greg Robbins, who was with me
on the Staten Island Ferry when I took this photo.
Greg rarely had an unkind word for anyone,
and he always seemed to make a good day
out of whatever came along.
He was a good friend.
Greg died in September, 1993 at age 33.
He went into hypoglycemic shock in his sleep,
a side effect of the pentamidine being used
to treat his pneumocystis pneumonia,
and never fully regained consciousness.
The Detroit-Superior Bridge
The Detroit-Superior Bridge, renamed the
Veterans' Memorial Bridge several years ago.
It is a massive structure (opened in 1917)
that crosses the Cuyahoga River
just west of downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
At the time of its opening, and for many years afterward,
it was the world's largest double-deck reinforced concrete bridge.
Until 1954 when the city streetcar system shut down,
it carried streetcars on the lower deck.
The lower deck and subway tunnels have been closed since then
and the present rapid transit system uses a 1929 viaduct nearby
that was built for the Union Railroad Terminal.
Twice a year, on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends,
the county engineering department opens the lower deck
and subway station and tunnels at the west end of the bridge
for self-guided walking tours.
This is a photo of the east end of the Detroit-Superior,
taken from the west approach of the Old Viaduct, its predecessor.
The Old Viaduct was built shortly after the Civil War,
with massive stone arch approaches
and a swing bridge across the river.
The west approach still stands, strong as ever.
Fifteen years ago, it afforded a classic view
of the Cleveland downtown skyline
and the entire Detroit-Superior bridge.
Recent development and construction have impinged on the view.
Photo Taken In August/September, 2003.
Martin Whitney & Molly-The-First
San Francisco, 1984
Usually, I remember some detail about every time I've clicked a shutter.
For the life of me, I can't remember taking this.
It's dated 1984, and that was the visit that I made to SF over Christmas,
when it was cold and wet and I was battling some ghastly respiratory thing
that was making me sweat gallons at night.
I remember that on the train trip home, as soon as I got into the Sierras,
the air was clear and dry and bitter cold.
At Sparks, I got off the train to stretch my legs while they boarded passengers,
and I realized that I was completely over my affliction.