Oh, that's great! As my father says "Some things shouldn't change and should be around forever!"
I'm glad your Tech Model Railroad Club is one of them. We all need unchangeable things to hold onto in this too-changeable world.
And since the TMRRC goes back to the late 40's I'd guess you were one of the "Founding Fathers," so the fact the club's still around must be doubly gratifying for you!
You should contact them, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
[quote user="Firelock76"]
David, is this the Tech Model Railroad club you're speaking of?
http://tmrc.mit.edu/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=STVdCJaG0bY
Looks like they're still very much in business!
[/quote above]
YES!
My only memory of a Howard Johnsons was on a trip the family took to visit my mom's aunt in Shaker Heights - chain restaurants were extermely rare in the then semi-rural piece of southern California I was living in. Rural enough when we first moved there to see flocks of sheep being herded on the street from fields where the local high school has been standing for 55 years (most famous graduates were Michael Richards and Kurt Russell).
daveklepper Penny, please do me a favor and post a similar photograph after you have added the necessary additional ties on your two-rail narrow-gauge line? Why settle for 99% when you can be 100? Love that orange roof!
Penny, please do me a favor and post a similar photograph after you have added the necessary additional ties on your two-rail narrow-gauge line? Why settle for 99% when you can be 100?
Love that orange roof!
That little multi-use 4 foot by 6 foot board gets upgraded a little every time it switches theme. Here's a more recent photo (summer layout) showing the S gauge line with popsicle stick ties added:
The O gauge line got ties too.
The HoJo started life as a standard Plasticville school that I bought cheap at a train show. I added a "Simple Simon and the Pie Man" weathervane that I made out of an authentic HoJo sandwich pick!
There's also a billboard:
The complex now has a lighted sign:
I loved the frankfurters and the chocolate malts.
http://hojoland.homestead.com/
http://www.highwayhost.org/Orangeroof/index.htm
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Point well taken David, AF being narrow gauge compared to Lionel!
You should have a look at the "Classic Toy Trains" website, especially their Forum, lots of good nostalgia over there. As far as adding ties, some folks do, some don't, it all depends. Some like the look of the classic old tubular track as it complements their vintage toy trains. I run O gauge myself but use modern track, I like the look, but if others want to run "old-timey" stuff that's fine too. Toy train fans are a pretty easy-going bunch. Big tent you know.
Well, S-gauge American Flyer is narrow gauge to Lionel's O-gauge, isn't it? But adding the ties so it looks good should be a winer. And of course do the same for the Lionel three-rail track.
I moved directly from Lionel (Flying Yankee) to HO American Flyer, J1 Hudson with New Haven coaches. My PRR K4 is probably still at the Tech Model Railroad Club after some 65 years.
The canonical HoJo's meal was roast beef and mashed potatoes... lots and lots of potatoes!
I have a shameful thing to account for someday. In 1973 our group of budding high-school Thespian Society kids had gone to see "The Cherry Orchard" at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and ... for whatever reason ... we only had about 45 minutes from bus arrival to curtain time to get lunch, which was at HoJo's.
Now, in that day you did NOT stand between me and a whopping plate of the tastiest roast beef, potatoes, and gravy, and I was mulling over how sad it was going to be to forego this pleasure when my eye lit on the centerpiece of our table. There in a little holder resided one of those 'rate your visit' cards ... with a long list of items, in order, judging how well your service had been conducted.
Being in theatre, it was but the work of a Stanislavskian minute to get into character ... the character of an ICC examiner. I pushed my glasses down my nose, ostentatiously started getting ready to start marking categories ... why, what's this? here's a waitress eager to take my order! And how quickly my roast beef came out, and my dessert too, even while most of the other kids were still waiting on their cheeseburgers or patty melts or whatever expedient they had ordered.
I gave the whole staff good ratings, but then, they had thoroughly earned them.
Getting at least partially back on topic: FINALLY the EL-4 is on its way to IRM. (It was spotted early this morning moving around the Horseshoe Curve area. Apparently all the railfan stories about how it was being cosmetically restored, painted for Conrail, etc. are untrue. I'm looking forward to see what IRM does with it.
Lady Firestorm has fond memories of Howard Johnson's, but NOT of the times her mother insisted she take her there for a feast of liver and onions!
The aroma made it almost impossible to get down her french fries and Coca-Cola!
No offense meant to those who like "L&O," but it's just not Lady F's thing.
The only time I ever had liver was in a Marine chow hall. Not bad, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. Hey, if you're a veteran you know how it is, you eat what's there or you go hungry.
Always liked "Ho-Jo's" myself, too bad they're gone.
And David, that's not just a narrow-gauge line, that's vintage American Flyer! Becky doesn't get into the "Who's best, Lionel or American Flyer?" argument, she runs's 'em both!
God bless you Becky, I don't know what we'd do without you!
Fantastic work!
Gentlemen, realize how lucky you are, Becky's work usually only shows up in the "Classic Toy Trains" Forum.
daveklepper Remember Howard Johnsons?
I do!
Host of the highways, couldn't do a 1950's layout without it!
Thanks for the great response Dave...those stated ideas are terrific.
Well. there are a few fast-food chains that do offer healthy food. Remember Howard Johnsons?
Of course I agree with you, and in addition to steam and branchlines, also streetcars and interurbans.
I worry about loosing more. How is one to really tour the country if long-distance trains go? Perhaps the reduction in civility in political discourse actually results from fewer opportunities for people to meet others with different views because of less passenger train travel?
I see hope with the resurrection of streetcars and interurbans in the form of light rail. The position of steam as a curiousity seems better every year and also better to simulate what is was when it was transportation, not curiousity. The next step should be, and I believe it will come in time, for a railfan CEO of a properous freight railroad to go all the way and schedule one daily or weekly round-trip freight or even a passenger train behind "modern" steam, any of the beautiful 4-8-4s could do the job. I think this will come. It has already happened in transit, with the F and E lines in San Francisco run exclusively by vintage equipment (mostly PCCs and Milan Peter Witts very similar to those that ran in Philadelphia) but still key lines in the overall transit system. (OK, SF was in the game already with the three-line cable-car system.) I believe it has already happened in Poland, Great Britian, and possibly in some other European countries.
So Dave I've had time to ponder over your response and have a bit more to say. Gonna set my soapbox down right about...here.
Of course all those older electrics were built in the steam era so their appearance fit the know how, manufacturing, engineering and practices of the day of course. Like the steam of the day they were very powerful and capable locomotives. Also they were built more to custom to fit the specifics and requirenments of that particular railroad. They all had something in common but they were all quite different.
So I'm guessing you know where I'm going with this.
Diesels were one size fits all. The riding public may have said they prefer them, cinders and all that, but really they knocked out all the romance of railroading from the public mind. Trains around the Christmas tree today remain steam locomotives and a whistle, perhaps an older electric. It is still the perception and the charm of railroading.
The early diesel era with the steam builders still in the game provided a brief time of at least some variance but it did not last.
This whole changeover to Diesels went hand in hand with the decline of the passenger train, the rural trains, the locals, the everyday scenes in every town and the precipitous fall of the railroads themselves. The end of the roundhouse, the end of much business, express service, then the mail, the end of so much of the revenues, bankruptcy, the destruction of Pennsylvania Station for crying out loud. The end of so much individuality and independence.
The folks who had the vision to build the Virginian and Pennsylvania Station were forgotten. Really forgotten.
So EMD/GM did a good job, wiped out the competition, wiped out passenger service, streetcars, even the famous Pacific Electric, you name it. Unintended consequence or "the plan". You choose.
Was it natural and progress or were we sold a bill of goods and just went along being good obedient servants. As a society this is what we chose but we could have gone another route, especially with small towns, rural service and passenger in all forms to everywhere.
So some like the chant of 567's or whatever. How come then, when I saw the E's and F's and Geeps on the CASO line I knew that a lot more than steam was over. Everything was over. Not just me, people knew it.
We just finished talking about Port Burwell. That whole scene is gone. Plenty of Port Burwell's across the land. Rails to everywhere lifted, independence over. We will be the last that remember the PRR and the New York Central and the Nickel Plate. It will mean little to nothing to anyone in the future. We, perhaps our children by osmosis, are the last.
Steam has become a novelty act. Vintage electric locomotives even rarer. More novelty.
Today the railroads primarily haul defective cheap merchandise from China and the East that ends up in garage sales for a quarter, a buck. or the garbage. Opioid crisis across the land including Port Burwell.
I luv the picture of the those Virginian Electrics but I wonder how many realize just how much was lost, and what was to come ...so you see those B&M GP7's, their revered builders and what they accomplished mean diddly squat to me. Next thing your going to tell me is fast food chains are good healthy eating. As my old Geology professor used to say "You can't fool an old horse fly".
Perhaps I live in a romantic fantasy as you say but I look around and my eyes see the reality of the chosen path.
Dave- Well at least you are with me emotionally. When we get to the great roundhouse in the sky you are welcome over to visit mine anytime. I remember an old Twilight Zone where at the end Rod Sterling says " A man can walk through the gates of hell with his eyes wide open, but even the devil can't fool a dog"...guess we are a pair of old dogs!
I truly love you for your fanatasy, but I have to recognize it as fantasy. Emotionally I am with you, but intellecturally I appreciate what Dick Dillworth and Blount and their co-workers did. Indeed, I could have ended up as an EMD troubleshooter. I stiil treasure my memories of riding B&M special GP-7s 1567 and 1568 for my MIT Bacholors Thesis with "my" idea of modification of the load regulator control which was adopted for the GP-9.
Another great book for my digital library.
You know those Virginian Electrics, the Squareheads as folks call them, could easily be still running today. Refurbished, reworked, re-whatever, they were built for the ages.
Quite the accomplishment and such a bold move at the time.
In my books electrics such as these and on the Milwaukee, Great Northern, New Haven, NYC, Pennsy et al are the only locomotives acceptable to be with Steam. They look, feel and sound like the railroad. I will afford small credence to Fairbanks- Morse, maybe those Lima built switchers for NYC, maybe a Shark or two but only small credence.
You can sing the virtues of 567's until the cows come home for all I care. Falls on deaf ears. The notion that Diesels "saved railroading" is hilarious...man it sure did!...from my seat it went hand in hand, step by step, to the destruction of railroads and out of the public mind. The Staggers Act and deregulation saved the railroads in the end.
Those folks over at the Virginian had vision! Can do..get it built. From nation builders to whiners and welfare. Yikes.
https://archive.org/stream/railwaylocomotiv38newy#page/n9/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/railwaylocomotiv39newy#page/n3/mode/2up
Penny Trains stairs
stairs
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WRgGVlolDtk/hqdefault.jpg
http://pm1.narvii.com/5756/242c06a1688fb828cbe10185a8db48975b39ed0b_hq.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/2/1425/4602827649_1572fd0169_z.jpg
http://sean.adventureteam.com/pages/dw-secondkey/inside-the-tardis/dw-4-blueprint-dalek-stairs.jpg
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I don't know, present day Daleks can levitate, but if you haven't seen a Doctor Who show since Tom Baker's time you couldn't know that, it's a recent improvement on the Dalek's part. Stairs certainly did stymie the little buggers for the longest time, though!
Thanks for those shots Becky! And everyone, see what I mean about those EL2B's? Hard to put into words the impression I get from those things, dominating, lordly, regal? There's just something about them.
The New Haven had some interesting electrics as well, check this out...
www.northeast.railfan.net/electric11.html
And SD70, Lady Firestorm and I concur with your findings, shows a fine tactical appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of both combatants.
Great shots! A shame none were preserved except for one EL-C/E33.
Firelock76 In a battle between the Daleks and the Borg, who wins? Who gets exterminated or who gets assimilated?
In a battle between the Daleks and the Borg, who wins? Who gets exterminated or who gets assimilated?
It would be a tough fight at first, but I see the Borg winning easily after that. They are far more adaptable. The Daleks would likely destroy a few cubes right off the bat, but once the Borg took a few hits and reconfigured their shields to better resist Dalek weaponry it wouldn't be a fair fight.
Also any captured Daleks would be quickly converted into drones, increasing the Borg numbers while the Dalek ranks diminished.
Beautiful pictures. Great stuff. My what we have lost.
I'll hold my answer for now since I gave it to you on another forum. Let's see what these guys have to say!
And to stay on topic, EL-1A
EL-2B
EL-3A
EL-C
I like the EL-1A's but I've always been partial to the EL-C's, probably because of the Lionel model of the 50's.
I also really like the N&W LC-1's.
Lady Firestorm would ask this question herself, but she's getting ready for work so I have to ask for her.
Since this thread is close to being well-and-truly derailed (there's some railroad content for you!) she asks...
I had to ask. "Resistance is futile!"
Firelock76 Jeez, I got hungry lookin' at that thing, and I just ate!
Jeez, I got hungry lookin' at that thing, and I just ate!
Great, just great. Now I get hungry every time I see a Dalek. Just what my beer gut needed.
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