I do indeed! And to think I went there for some smoke unit repair parts and hoping that maybe, just maybe, they'd have a restored 2035 "Blockbuster" for sale. Hey, I've gotten a 2055 and a 681 Pennsy Turbine there.
No "Blockbuster," but I'm not complaining, considering what I did get.
PS: I spent most of the afternoon running the new Camelback. Good runner! Fixed that dead smoke unit (on another engine) as well.
The Sterling Lindner tree was big. But another favorite memory of Clevelanders began it's 95th year today. And for many the holiday season is not complete without a drive out to the Noble Road headquarters of General Electric's Electric Lamp Division at Nela Park.
Nela Park is located just a short distance from where New York Central's Collinwood Roundhouse, service facility and laboratory once stood. As late as the mid 90's a few buildings shown in this pic were still standing on the property and I always looked forward to seeing them too on the way to GE.
The Nela Park campus:
Back in ye olde days, before there were a lot of cars on the roads, they let you drive through the campus.
This map was handed out to the thousands of visitors during the 1957 season.
Noble Road is on the left of the photo below and the factory where the unknown millions of tiny incandescent lamps that made Lionel and other toy trains brighter were made is on the right.
Driving through ended in 1959 when traffic often stretched for miles each evening. From then until 2017 all the decorations have been along the large buildings fronting Noble Road.
It's still a magical sight, especially on a snowy evening.
From the 6 O'clock news:
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Gorgeous! Glorious! I don't have the words!
It's like a "Penny Trains" Christmas layout on steroids!
They're gettin' it done in Cleveland all right!
Thanks for the photos Becky!
I gotta find a way to model that operation! And I take back everything I ever said about how implausable Lionel and Flyer Christmas tree carrying cars look!
The Cleveland Press Christmas Parade had some amazing balloons.
Mister Touchdown.
"Space Ship - 30ft long balloon"
Look at the size of that crowd!
Okay. Here comes the "train balloon"...
Wait....haven't I seen that face somewhere before?
Close relative?
Not a balloon, but a good antidote to whatever that was:
I guess that's what happens when both Goodyear and Firestone are headquartered nearby.
Thank you so much for those pics of Higbee's! We always watch Ralphie every year and got to go visit The Christmas Story house a few years ago. I was born in '63, and never got to experence the big deptartment stores at Christmas time. Todays kids are certiantly missing out.
Dave
It's a TOY, A child's PLAYTHING!!! (Woody from Toy Story)
In between seasons at Cedar Point, I had to find winter work and in 1990, I found it at the Twigbee Shop at Tower City Center.
Tower City of course, is inside the former Cleveland Union Terminal.
It was amazing to work down there during the Christmas season.
Higbee's started the Twigbee shop as a special place where kids could go and shop on their own at Christmas, with the help of "elves". I'm not sure when they started the tradition, but I remember (barely) my aunt taking me down there in the early 70's. About all I remember was passing a Fanny Farmer store in the terminal "underworld", a VERY red room with a big chair in it (undoubtedly Santa's throne, although I remember it being empty) and buying a remote control airplane for my brother. (Back then remote control planes were attached to a battery box/controller by a wire.)
By the time I worked there, the Twigbee Shop was run under lease from Higbee successor Dillard's by the Mallard Bay Gift Co. I remember the day (day!?! when you're 20 you can work 48 hours straight!) when we brought the merchandise from the warehouse in Rocky River down to the store. Being an employee, I had access to the areas behind the stores that hadn't been renovated. It was a rail lovers wonderland full of artifacts that looked something like this:
Those are construction photos from the 20's, but they remind me of what I saw. And no, I didn't collect any artifacts.
Every day for just over a month I drove to the Brookpark Rapid Transit station and hopped on the RTA headed for downtown.
RTA trains come in from the west accross the CUT viaduct.
Here's a short video I found of the ride over the viaduct.
I found this pic that shows the escators to and from the Tower City Rapid Transit station. The Twigbee shop would be off to the right in this view and the area with the big skylight would be off to the left with the foodcourt where I ate lunch nearby.
The Twigbee shop had a small door and over to the left was "Bruce the Spruce".
Everybody went to Higbees.
Ozzie Nelson.
Charleton Heston.
Jesse Owens.
Lucy apparently preferred Halle's.
Thanks for the train ride Becky!
Wandering into those old railroad tunnels you must have felt like you'd wandered into King Tut's tomb! Except there were no "wonderful things."
Well they did have the "dust of the ages".
Tried this stuff AUFULL...cant get rid of it either.
What stuff Dave? From your callsign "divebardave" I'm assuming you know your adult beverages, but which one are you talking about?
I assume he means the Christmas Ale.
Maybe he'll let us know when he floats back over here.
Anyone know how many dive bars there are between here and the "Trains" magazine Forum?
Depends on wether there's more in the garage to restock the fridge.
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