Suggest the Montauk trip again, now that it has more modern equipment (bi-levels). There was also a transit bus from the station into town and the nearby beach - best done in the summer months. Get lunch or dinner "to go" and ride back.
- Paul North.
yup.
LIRR is railroad not subway
Yes, LION been on a Greenport / ferrry / Montauk ride with PAPA LION back in the 60s.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Is that why the streets on your layout are named after those in "East 'burg" ?
My father - when he was young - lived at the corner of Brown St. and Brodhead Ave., about 2 blocks from the DL&W RR. In the last 2-1/2 years my work has included a lot of time on the roads and streets in that vicinity.
Does the LIRR from Penn Station to Jamaica count as a subway ?
Ever do the trip all the way to Montauk ? Maybe too much sunshine for a subway guy ? (Any relation to a vampire ? Lions like to bask in the sun, no ?)
I have - great fun ! See how "the other half" ("1% ?") lives, esp. in "the Hamptons".
DeggestyI have to admit I'm not a big fan of the 'find the photoshopped lion in this subway picture' series of threads, but I am exceedingly amazed that Lion found time to take so many New York city subway photos if he actually lived in North Dakota.
You do not allow for the fact that the LION is a raving full-fanatical certified subway fan. Him would ride into the city with Papa LION and then while dad worked, our little LION cub rode on all of the subway trains he could find for just 15c plus a buck or two for Nedicks hot dogs.
Today LION goes back east only once a year for a vacation with the parents of him who have now moved to Pennsylvania. LION takes the bus, perhaps three times into the city to ride the subways. But the camera of him does have a 32 GB memory card in it.
Did not get to go at all last summer, spend the whole vacation caring for parents as we moved them into an assisted living center.
This summer, I will fly out (to ABE) rent a car (and a motel room) to visit the parents. My Brother is getting married in upstate NY (2 miles from Canada border), and LION will drive the parents of him up there for a few days, but upon return to PA will make about 3 or 4 trips into the city.
Eventhough him rent a car, him will not drive there, but will take the bus instead, no point in driving, tolls, parking and etc. When him is done with trip, him can relax on bus and not worry about traffic.
Back in the 1970's or so, one of the editors in Model Railroader magazine (or maybe it was John Armstrong) suggested - somewhat tongue-in-cheek - something along the lines of that a model railroad layout of a subway would be the easiest to build, becasue it could be just a table top with a few cut-outs to see the stations below . . .
I too appreciated Time and Again, an excellent book. Keeping it rail related, it has a passage where they ride a steam locomotive hauled elevated train.
Patrick Boylan
Free yacht rides, 27' sailboat, zip code 19114 Delaware River, get great Delair bridge photos from the river. Send me a private message
gardendance I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the 'find the photoshopped lion in this subway picture' series of threads, but I am exceedingly amazed that Lion found time to take so many New York city subway photos if he actually lived in North Dakota. So what gives there? Even though southern North Dakota is slightly closer to New York than northern North Dakota, only Peter Shickley could succesfully exploit that hoophole. And I believe that from the Dakotas to New York is a lot longer distance than from Fornost through Bree, Eregion, Minas Tirith, and Minas Ithil to Harrad, near or far. Or is the layout actually in The Dakota apartment building and not in the Dakotas? Also I must remark on the similarity between the biography you presented in your first post in this thread and the one in http://brelias.tripod.com/. I would think that surely for your trains.com brethren and sistern you could have described a different life.
I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the 'find the photoshopped lion in this subway picture' series of threads, but I am exceedingly amazed that Lion found time to take so many New York city subway photos if he actually lived in North Dakota.
So what gives there? Even though southern North Dakota is slightly closer to New York than northern North Dakota, only Peter Shickley could succesfully exploit that hoophole. And I believe that from the Dakotas to New York is a lot longer distance than from Fornost through Bree, Eregion, Minas Tirith, and Minas Ithil to Harrad, near or far. Or is the layout actually in The Dakota apartment building and not in the Dakotas?
Also I must remark on the similarity between the biography you presented in your first post in this thread and the one in http://brelias.tripod.com/. I would think that surely for your trains.com brethren and sistern you could have described a different life.
That apartment house is quite impressive.
Johnny
chutton01Now Br Elias, by “vow of stability" you meant "monastic community" as opposed to "monastery", right? If Koch Industries offered to buy the monastery lands for the right price, your and your fellow brethen could relocate to other lands, as long as the community (e.g the people) remains together, correct?
The Monastery is the community of people. The building is where we live. If you move from Queens to Brooklyn you are still a part of your family. Many houses of sisters do sell and build smaller buildings.
Well, I still plan to use "Lion's" title of Brother Elias going forward, as I thought the whole "Broadway Lion" schtick was a bit, well, silly back when I first encountered it on SubChat. Still, I give him full credit for many useful "budget modeling" tips.Now Br Elias, by “vow of stability" you meant "monastic community" as opposed to "monastery", right? If Koch Industries offered to buy the monastery lands for the right price, your and your fellow brethen could relocate to other lands, as long as the community (e.g the people) remains together, correct?
I shall never again make any petty remarks about Lion's naming conventions or descriptions of his travels. I clicked through to http://brelias.tripod.com/History.html and see that his layout's former name was Eastern Southwest North Dakota Central Railroad. He has outShickele'd Peter Shickele. The US Pun Patent Office can close since all puns that can be invented have been invented already.
Lion - Thanks so much for your personal bio. You have had a very interesting life & I enjoyed reading about it. Often when I'm passing someone in the store or on the street, I will wonder what kind of a life that person has had. I will be 75 years old this Fall, & I have enjoyed so many conversations with Vet's from WWII, Korea & Nam. Don't sell yourself short about being a baker either. The cooks we had in Nam did a remarkable job with what they had to work with. Everybody contibuted in some way, & all benefited from those contributions.
Tom
Pittsburgh, PA
carnej1I do recall a website dedicated to a Middle Earth themed model railway owned and operated by a member of a religious order and only now do I realise that the site and layout belonged to the one and only Lion! Am I correct that said site is no longer in existence?
Actually, the site is still on the internet. It is on a Lycos server, it is free and now chock filled with adds. But it is still there if you will let the adds load.
Another LION product is the NYC Subways 2020 site. Interesting it is if you are interested in that sort of stuff. I ought to rebuild these sites on my own servers.
carnej1 Ah ha!!!! I do recall a website dedicated to a Middle Earth themed model railway owned and operated by a member of a religious order and only now do I realise that the site and layout belonged to the one and only Lion! Am I correct that said site is no longer in existence? I've always found the small group of Middle Earth Railroading (Yep, there are other people using the theme)afficionados to be an interesting subgroup in the hobby. My interest back to an article (in RMC,IIRC) i read in my pre-teen years about a Tolkien themed N Scale layout someone had belt (set in the modern era no-less) Of course J.R.R Tolkien would have been horrified at the thought of the iron horse invading Middle Earth as he was a major critic of modernity and Industrialization..one need only read the end of "The Return of the King" where an industrial revolution has happened in the Shire to see his true feelings.
Ah ha!!!!
I do recall a website dedicated to a Middle Earth themed model railway owned and operated by a member of a religious order and only now do I realise that the site and layout belonged to the one and only Lion!
Am I correct that said site is no longer in existence?
I've always found the small group of Middle Earth Railroading (Yep, there are other people using the theme)afficionados to be an interesting subgroup in the hobby.
My interest back to an article (in RMC,IIRC) i read in my pre-teen years about a Tolkien themed N Scale layout someone had belt (set in the modern era no-less)
Of course J.R.R Tolkien would have been horrified at the thought of the iron horse invading Middle Earth as he was a major critic of modernity and Industrialization..one need only read the end of "The Return of the King" where an industrial revolution has happened in the Shire to see his true feelings.
I hope Lion does not consider this as a hijacking of his thread.
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
I don't think you meant west side, since Ithilien and Harrad are on the east side of the river.
Did any of those lines connect with the Hither Thither and Gonder?
gardendance I don't believe a word of it. Eregion is not between Fornost and Bree, in fact Eregion, which ceased to exist relatively early in the 2nd age wasn't even part of what became Arnor when Elendil came to Middle Earth at the end of the 2nd age.
I don't believe a word of it. Eregion is not between Fornost and Bree, in fact Eregion, which ceased to exist relatively early in the 2nd age wasn't even part of what became Arnor when Elendil came to Middle Earth at the end of the 2nd age.
Well, the Railroad is set in the middle of the Fourth Age, and so yes, the political notion of Eregion would indeed be long gone, but they had to call the railroad something. It ran from Gondor in the south to Fornost in the north; from the Blue Mountains in the west, to the Lonely Mountain in the east. It received its subsidy from the High King in Gondor, and so I suppose they paid tribute to the older age with the name.
Connecting with the ERR in the east was a railroad owned by the Dwarf Kings under the mountain, it was called the Iron Hills and Redwater Railroad. It was mostly a freight operation, with a combine tacked on behind the locomotive to accomodate passengers. Going north to the Iron Hills there was little traffic, and a paying customer may have had to ride in the cabose.
In the south the ERR connected with the Gonder and Southern Railway (suported by the High Prince at Belfalas. It ran along the whole souther coast through all of the fifes. There was also service on the West side of the river to Ithelian and thence south fo Far Harrad. Since that traffic was mostly oil, a pipeline would have served jsut as well, but you can not deploy trooms in a pipeline, a fact not lost on the peoples of the south.
Thanks for sharing all that. It's a much fuller portrait of an interesting person and lifelong commitments and interests.
P.S. - gardendance's comment is perfectly tongue-in-cheek.
Lion, that is an interesting account of your life. I trust that Aslan and the inhabitants of Middle Earth get along well together when he visits. He is not limited to Narnia, I see, since you have pictures of him in many places on Thulcandra. Has he any connection with Perelandra or Malacandra?
Eregion, Fornost, Bree, I haven't the slightest idea of what you gents are talking about.
However, I used to be a Lord Of The Ring-Dings. Man, when I was a kid I LOVED those things!
Great story about your railfanning and modeling Brother Lion. I supposed we've all been there, or we wouldn't be HERE.
A Lawn-Gyland boy eh? I'm from Northern New Jersey myself, Paramus to be exact.
The LION never even saw the thread that caused the stirr, though someone was kind enough to PM the question to me. I have no problem answering it here, because railroading, large or small, my interest in it and my life as a rail fan really have nothing to do with my being a monk. Admitedly monks are interesting but the root question of how I became a railfan is far more interesting than how I came to be a monk.
Once upon a time, long ago and far away, that is to say about sixty years ago in a quiet suburb of New York City, I told my parents that I wanted a train for Christmas. Now being about seven at this time, I was a bit embarassed to be asking for a train, for I pictured in my mind's eye a wooden train that one could pull around the house with a string. What I got was an American Flyer train set that ran in an oval around the Christmas tree. Well, I had never seen one of these, and it was quite delightful, but there were some obvious drawbacks to this.
First it was a freight train with a steam engine. I had never seen a steam engine, although the LIRR was still running them at this time, they were not on the branch where I would get to see them. The only thing that ran on the Babylon line were electric MU cars. Passenger cars. Which from a LION's viewpoint would have lots of tasty passengers in them.
The Second issue was, that the train could only follow the tracks. A wooden train on a string could go wherever my imagination would take it. It could run around the house, up and down the stairs, no problem. The tracks were about two miles from our house so it was still several years before I would be able to bicycle down to the tracks to watch the trains. My father warned be about the third rail, and that it had 600 volts on it, so it never occured to me to prove it for myself.
You could see the train a good three miles away, its bright orange front leading the way with its head lamp lit. The rest of the cars on the LIRR in those days were grey. Some were double deckers. I'd like to ride in the double deckers, even if they were smokers. Dad would not go in there except that I wanted to ride in them. I guess smoking was not all that big a deal in those days. Mom would know as soon as we walked in the door that we were riding in the smoker.
Eventually the LIRR elevated the line through Merrick, and I entered the Navy in time to participate in the Vietnam war. I would not call that "fighting", for I was on an aircraft carrier way out in the Gulf of Tonkin, and all that I did was bake the bread and donuts. But I am a Vietnam war veteran for all of that. While in Japan I picked up more model trains, Japanese prototypes of MU passenger equipment.
When I returned from Vietnam, I returned to my parent's home, and since I found good work, I paid room and board, but dad limited my layout to a bookcase in the basement. He *knew* what a full-fledged raving railfan could do to a basement, and he knew that this particular full-fledged raving railfan was less likely than most to keep nice, neat tidy workspace.
Eventually, through the friends that I hung out with, it occured to me that I would like to become a monk. Now that presented a little problem, because Presbyterian Monasteries did not grow thickly on the ground. So I became a Catholic, and eventually followed my yearing to Assumption Abbey in Richardton, North Dakota. Now this was indeed a long way from Long Island. The trains that ran through town (nee Norther Pacific) were Burlington Norhtern Green, and had GP40-2s on the point, three or four sometimes more pulling 100 car coal trains. Maybe twelve trains a day. I'd go down to the station to chat with the station master, and watch him hoop up orders to the trains as they went by. He is now retired, the station is gone, but the trains are still here, and more than ever. This has become a nice place to watch trains.
Now monks are different from other vocations in the church. Even our vows are different. Gone are poverty, and chastity (for these were not yet invented at the time of St. Benedict), but we do take a vow of "Stability". Monks live and die in the monastery where they make their vows. In other orders men and women can be moved from place to place as the demands of the church and of the ministry dictate, not so the monk. So, being a monk would in no way interfere with building a model railroad. All monks are encouraged to have hobbies, though spending money on them is rather restricted, yet in 30 years I have managed to create quite an empire.
It all began shortly after I made my first vows. I asked the Abbot if I might set up my model trains. Seeing a bit of the little boy in all of us, he gave his permission and I was off to the races. Perhaps in his mind's eye he saw a small layout on a 4x8 table. Perhaps he had never met a full-fledged raving railfan, but that is what he got. I spoke to the Prior, and he suggested that there were several old ping-pong tables, heavy ones, from the days when we still ran a school here, as if I might take one. I took two. He also suggested that I use the old refectory in the basement where other hobbies were indulged in. The floor was heaving up and the panneling was falling down, but I put the tables end to end and built the "Eastern Southwest North Dakota Central Railway" "Serving the middle of nowhere". This continued for several years until word came down that the room was to be renovated, and no, a model railroad was not part of the plans. This bothered me not at all for it gave me the opportunity to find a better room and to spread out a bit more.
I found a room, a former classroom, above the library, which was, shall we say, "under used." I spoke with the monk who was using it and negotiated a space swap with him and helped him move his stuff out, and then I moved my stuff in. The two ping-pong tables followed me, becoming two blobs in the middle of the room, and then I acquired some used lumber from down at the barn to create two tables 3' wide by 12 and 16 feet long. These went along the back wall, and the blobs attached to them. This was called "The Eregion Railroad" after J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle Earth. It was quite a layout, the modeled section was between Fornost and Bree, but off stage were staging yards representing points east, west and south. This delighted me for many years, and if I was not up in the train room I might be at my desk laying out the rest of the railroad, its destinations, its timetables and the equipment that it would run, all so that the proper trains could arrive at Bree at the proper times.
Now I must add here, that building model trains was a HOBBY, not my work in the monastery, for they sent me to school to become a nurse (RN, BSN). And it was about this time that the computer was invented, or at least as far as desktop computing was concerned. We go one hand-me-down computer, and Epson CR/M machine with two 5.5" floppy drives, and no hard drives. These had not appeared as yet. I took a shine to it, and while it was used by Fr. T for his work in editing a sholastic journal, I got some evening time on it, did some class work on it, and mostly figured out both it and the DOS operating system that it did not use, but waht we used on the 8086 machines in the college. Well there was reeally no rason why a raving full-fledged railfan could not also become a raving full-fledged computer geek, and so the computer network at the Abbey became my second full time job (after nursing). Today our Abbey has five servers (in my office) and over 30 workstations. I designed the computer network with its domain servers, its mail and web servers, and its backup systems. Back up is VERY importand as we shall see later, but is saved my butt many times over, and saved the work that others would have otherwise lost if we were not using proper servers.
But during this time, the work on the railroad slowed down, and then things began not to work, and not least of all was ME who found it more and more difficult to go under train tables to troubleshoot the issues. I resolved to take this railroad apart and put most of it away. THEN I asked the Abbot if I could rebuild a new railroad, so he did have the opportunity, though not the heart to say no.
Enter the Route of the Broadway LION.
The two three foot tables were set side by side on the west side of the room. The two ping-pong tables were set end to end on the east side of the room, and around the north, east and south walls, I built a three level structure around the walls. The lumber again, came from the barn, some from the floor of the old science building which we had recently torn down, and some from the corn crib, also recently torn down. I cut the lumber to size and shape as my plans required, some of it had organic matter on it which had to be removed. For the deck work on this table, I used ten sheets of Celotex, a fiber board product similar to Homosote, but much lighter, easier to cut, and more stable as well. It used to be the ceiling the community room. Today's fire codes have put this stuff off the market, although the Celotex Company is alive and well, producing modern building materials. This was to be a commuter railroad using push-pull equipment of my own design, but then inexpensive plastic subway cars became available, and the whole layout morphed overnight to a subway layout. Lower level staging tracks were pulled out, a four track main line took its place, and the name "Broadway LION" fell into place being a pun on the words LION and LINE. Aslan, the lines mascot stands at the head of the 242nd Street Station. The layout features 15 scale miles of tracks, eight trains operating at once, and automatically, a working block signal system, and an "interpretation" of a GRS model 5 interlocking machine.
Since this photo was taken, the facias have been put in and it is beginning to look more like a train layout.
But the LION is not the only one building railroads in Richardton. Several years ago local investors built an ethanol plant, with four miles of tracks and two locomotives along side of the BNSF railroad. And now there is an oil boom in this area, and apparently other people have hears or seen the boom of our oil when you go about derailing our trains! In some other places the NIMBYS are out in farce, trying to put the brakes on development, but the money is still far to great for the likes of them. Here in Richardton, industry is welcome. Haliburton is building a new rail complex just to the west of town. It will consist of some tall elevators (the spent most of the winter pounding th supports for this nto the ground) and some loops of tracks able to hold two frac sand trains at once. So if you are shipping Frac Sand, it will likely enough end up here in Richardton. To the east of town other interests are developing a rail terminal for pipe and other oil field commodities, and with room for several other industries in this complex. One of these will be a railcar cleaning concern.
Railroads, regardless of size, have found a home in Richardton, North Dakota.
In addition to nursing and computers, I am also in charge of Wine Sales, both table and altar wines, we sell about 30 pallets worth each year, but that alas does not arrive by train.
As I have said, I am not sure why I became a monk, except that this is where God placed me, and that I am thriving here. So be it.
With a little help from my friend.
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