Back around 1954 or so, when I was around 4 years old, we moved from Norwalk to Weston, Connecticut, back when it was still a semi-rural town.
I wanted to go on a train ride, so my parents took me down to South Norwalk to catch the Norwalk-Danbury train. In those days it was an old single MU electric car, one of the 1920's era production, not the stainless-sided "washboard" MU's that came later.
My mom came with me on the train north, and my dad drove up Route 7. We got off at Cannondale and he picked us up there.
Over the years I've taken pictures of the Cannondale station a few times.
Here it is in 1976, just out of the Penn Central days, somewhat ragged but still in use:
The Danbury branch at the time was just as rough and ragged:
But as time passed, both the branch and the station got uplifted.
Here it is in 2014, front and rear:
That was a good first train ride.
I probably should have quit while I was ahead!
Old Engine Man, your second photo reminded me of this one:
Our fire departments up here are allways careful to protect their equipment!
73
Ray Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western R.R. (S.L.O.&W.) in HO
We'll get there sooner or later!
David get better soon, man. I'm told that many hospitals are doing about 2/3's the covid business as they were at the peak.
Mike best wishes for your daughter's recovery
Garry and all you old guys, keep going to the dermatologist. I lost my uncle to skin cancer. He lived in Malibu for a good chunk of his life. He had melanoma but a squamous cell cancer was what killed him.
Ken someone emailed Ken a couple months ago and he said he had computer problems. I hope he is OK.
Timonium is going to have a show Oct 2? I'd like to go, but now it is nearly a 4 hour drive and I will be headed in that direction 2 weeks later to celebrate my mother's 93rd.
Poor Gabby made some wrong choices. If my son came home and told me he offed his girlfried on the trip, I would not hide him. His best outcome would be that I called the police.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
ricktrains4824JaBear - Any ill effects from the earthquake in Austrailia for you?
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
To my surprise, upon reading the plaque, it was the actual bus, having been restored to its original paint scheme, after its retirement from work in 2000.
That is a handsome paint scheme for a bus. I have saved that photo to my ideas file. Hopefully I can get a bus from 1954 looking something like that.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Howdy.
Old Engineman ..... Good to see you. Thanks for pictures of Cannondale and the Danbury Branch.
Ray .... Intersting to see Fire Depatment is equipped to protect hoses like that. Hopefully, they don't need to do that across a high speed rail line. LOL
Bear ..... I like the various items in the transport museum. Neat stuff.
Kevin .... I bet you are not referring to the bus with tiger stropes, but instead the other one. I agree about its paint scheme.
Henry ..... Well, I guess I should admit to being an "old guy". I have had the same primary care doctor for a long time, and he refers me to specialists such as the dermatologist as needed. Actually, he has saved my life by sending me to a cardiologist .
Everybody ..... Have a good day.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Good morning, diners. Just black coffee today.
It's another grass cutting day. The good news is that it's only in the 50s right now, so it will be cool work.
I have not touched the layout in weeks. The weather has been too nice, and the outdoor projects multiplied.
While this is not a railroad station, it is a neat place to visit. It's an old Carnegie library in Council Bluffs that has been turned into the Union Pacific Railroad Museum. It's a short trip across the bridge from Omaha's Union Station and the Omaha Burlington Station.
It was partially founded and funded by the Union Pacific. As a result, it has lots of actual UP materials and artifacts that the railroad donated.
If you ever travel I-80 through Iowa into Nebraska, it is a very neat place for people interested in railroading. During Omaha's annual Railroad Days, a free shuttle runs between the various sites in Omaha, and one of the stops is this museum:
Have a good day, everyone. I hope the missing diners are OK.
York1 John
Heartland Division CB&QKevin .... I bet you are not referring to the bus with tiger stropes, but instead the other one. I agree about its paint scheme.
Your bet is correct!
The tiger stripes are a bit too much, but not as bad as this RV!
Kevin, that's probably the ugliest RV I've ever seen.
Yesterday was the equinox. Yesterday was also the day our local Walmart put out all the Christmas stuff. For some strange reason, the Christmas stuff is out before the Halloween stuff at our local store. Maybe they don't sell as much Halloween stuff as some other places.
John York 1 ......
I recall drivng across Nebraska before I-80 was completed in the 1960's.
While in Salt Lake City in May 2019, we saw the Union pacific Sation and the D&RGW / WP station.
Here is the UP station:
Good Morning Guys. TGIF! What an exhausting week. I'm ready for a day I can sleep in!
David (plus any others in need), praying for a speedy recovery for you. Hope you are doing okay.
Got a small honey do list for this weekend, and 3 soccer games I have to attend, only one of which is for my own child. Combine that with a desire to watch some football and my railroading plans for this weekend are starting to look like they're in jeopardy, but I'm going to try. Tried running a few trains last night and it didn't go so hot. Clearly time for a good track cleaning. Didn't have the energy last night, so I shut things down and went upstairs.
Friend of mine got in an accident this week that totalled his truck. He had the cruise set at 46 mph, going home on back roads to avoid the traffic (we live in a rural area). A woman blew a stop sign at an intersection and they connected at the front drivers side corner of his truck. With trees/bushes/etc, he never saw her coming. Her little car was going fast enough to turn his 3/4 ton truck onto its side and spin it 180 degrees. Luckily he was okay. He just made his second payment on it. He uses the truck like a truck and needs another just as capable. He spent 4 hours online that night looking for another with the same set-up his had. With the current vehicle shortage, he couldn't find another one for sale in the country. I feel so bad for him.
Breakfast on me today guys. Dig in.
Mike
Good morning, everyone. Bacon, eggs, and black coffee, please.
I'm going to lay low for several days. I haven't been feeling real well, and I think I need to just take it easy for several days.
Mike, that's too bad about your friend's accident. It's good he wasn't hurt worse. I, too, live in a rural area. The roads are all laid out in mile sections, and most of the intersections don't have stop signs.
When we first moved here, we learned that rural stop signs are often ignored. There is so little traffic that some people just drive right through. It's the worst time of the year right now because the corn is so tall that you can't see crossing traffic until you are right at the intersection. Hope your friend is able to find a new truck.
This is the Fraser station on the White Pass & Yukon RR. It's the border crossing from Alaska into Canada. Even though the train went further, we got off here and drove the Klondike Highway to Dawson City, with an overnight stop in Whitehorse. Not very many people here, and the highway was pretty deserted.
Good morning .....
Mike: ..... Thanks for the waffles. Yummy! Sorry to hear about your freind's accident. I wonder if the other driver was distracted by a cell phone.
John : ..... That is a neat little station at the border way up north.
....
I may be receiving tomorrow some of the stuff I ordered for my next project. It will be another prototypically correct passenger car.
I have been in a few quakes, the strongest one was here in 2008 it was 5.2.
The initial S wave woke me up, it sounded like something hit the house, then the P waves came and shook the house for a pretty good while. The center was up in Wbash County IL quite a ways from us
we have had a few smaller ones. I was sitting in the home office once and felt the s wave hit the house, but little to no p waves with that one. My wife asked what hit the house, I told her an earthquake.
moelarrycurly4 I have been in a few quakes, the strongest one was here in 2008 it was 5.2. The initial S wave woke me up, it sounded like something hit the house, then the P waves came and shook the house for a pretty good while. The center was up in Wbash County IL quite a ways from us we have had a few smaller ones. I was sitting in the home office once and felt the s wave hit the house, but little to no p waves with that one. My wife asked what hit the house, I told her an earthquake.
MLC ..... I remember that happening. .... There is a website where they report seismic activity at the New Madrid Fault which is in western KY, western TN, southeastern MO, and southern IL.
York1When we first moved here, we learned that rural stop signs are often ignored. There is so little traffic that some people just drive right through. It's the worst time of the year right now because the corn is so tall that you can't see crossing traffic until you are right at the intersection.
As an urban city guy who has now made several cross-country car trips...
Rural driving is horrifying!
Everyone drives in the center of the road, 20 MPH over the posted limit, and just tapping the brakes at stop signs. Deer jump out in front of you, and trees or crops block all visibility.
It takes me about ten days on the road to get used to it.
Good morning from the beautiful West Coast where it should hit 25c/77f again today.
I was feeling totally drained for quite a few days, it was enough to curtail my daily workouts. I am back at it now and feeling great again.
Our friends in Virginia that ended up with covid are back at home. The husband was not expected to live and is now bed or wheelchair-bound on Oxygen for the rest of his life as so many of his organs were ravaged. The wife is somewhat better off but will also have life-long issues. They are well off and have full-time care so far.
Earthquakes, we get a rattle once in a while, so far nothing more than a door needing adjustment or a couple of cracks in the drywall. We always take geography into consideration when house hunting, tsunamis, and possible flood and/or slide zones are always avoided.
I have a lot of driver training provided by the Federal Government and while the hazards tend to be different when comparing city to rural driving, looking at insurance/accident rates in the different areas pretty much tells the story.
With the vehicle shortage, I have had many ridiculously high offers for my 21-year-old truck. It is in super shape for its age, but it would leave me without a truck until I could get another. I could get by without it for a while but it would need replacing at some point. I think I will just keep it for now.
We sure like our new Toyota Highlander Hybrid AWD. The lots were and are still empty so we had to pay full price as it was the only vehicle we could get our hands-on. I gave my son our 2016 Mazda for a grad present and we were already short a vehicle at that point. The Toyota is getting 50MPG which is pretty amazing for the size of it. I don't think I would be happy taking it places where I have gone in the truck exploring as it has low ground clearance and just does not seem that tough. A glorified grocery getter is about all it is. The safety features are amazing on it.
I have been spending a lot of time in the trainroom the last two weeks as sitting on my butt was all I wanted to do as I was feeling like crap. I made good progress on my Kanamodels CPR coaling tower and have been tuning up the layout in a couple of spots. Ran the CMX car around before the first train and everything ran perfectly except for a wee problem with a Hudson that was remedied.
The wife is at the hospital with her mother still every day. She has mostly recovered from her surgery and will soon be moved into a care home. The one she will go to is really nice and will be much closer to where we live. Some of our friends had their parents at this one and had nothing but praise for the staff and facility.
Time to go hop on the Deere. We have about seven weeks of grass cutting left before she gets a good bath and tucked in for the Winter.
I usually turn the furnace on October 1st, however, it is so warm we may get an extra week or two on that. With both kids now out of the house our gas and electric bills have plummeted to around $150.00 a month for both. Our house is 4000sqft with a 1200 sqft garage that we heat sometimes electrically, I can't complain about the cost.
When I wasn't feeling well, I turned the fireplace on in the trainroom and had it really toasty. I rarely ever put it on because it is always plenty warm in there without it. It felt good to have it at the time though.
All the best to all........Ken, hope all is okay with you.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
I think this is the tenth day of heavy rain down here.
The lawn service cannot mow my lawn because the soil is so soft. It is looking like a jungle out there.
The mosquitos are getting real bad as well.
Oh well... it will be paradise soon.
Good morning.
I'm not starting out today on a good note. I have not been feeling well for a while, and today seems a little worse. Old age.
I hope David's bout with the virus is going OK.
Alliance is a small town (8,000) in western Nebraska. It has a large BNSF shop and yard, and deals with a lot of the Powder River coal trains.
I found it unusual that a such a small town had such a majestic Burlington station years ago.
Have a good day, everyone.
Good morning from perfectville.
SeeYou190The mosquitos are getting real bad as well.
Insects are not an issue here, we leave our doors and windows open all day long and seldom get an intruder. Had a Bat fly in through the door at night a couple of times, but it was easily caught and shown the door.
Woke up to another perfect day where the temps should hit 25c/78f. I am going to pour a third cup and sit out back and enjoy the early morning view. Then I think I will take the dogs and head out through those rays of sunshine in the photo below for a couple of hours, come home grab another cuppa and sit with the guitar(s) for two or three hours out on the deck. The silence is deafening today.
We are getting a new backdoor and the guy came to measure yesterday, he kept saying how beautiful our property was, and if he lived here he would never leave. I feel the same way and usually only leave on foot with the dogs.
John, hope you are feeling better soon, I just went through a spell of feeling like crap and was about to go to the drive-through testing centre to get checked. I feel great again now except I put on a couple of kilos half of which have been removed already by being active again.
We have been asked out for diner to a nice oceanside seafood restaurant tonight, which should be nice. It is only the third time we have been out to eat since the pandemic started. I am looking forward to it, I already can't decide what to have. It will likely be nice enough to sit out on the deck.
Isn't retirement grand?
Lovin the station pics.
All the best to all.
Good afternoon, everybody .
Kevin ..... It sounds like a lot of rain. I recall Floridians calling rain "liquid sushine".
Brent ... I like your photo of the CP RDC along with the station.
John York 1 .... You said your were not feeling good, and I hope you get better soon. I have seen many pictures of the CB&Q Alliance, Nebraska station. It is one of several CB&Q stations which were retangular shape with 2 or 3 floors. Upper floors were for office space, and such stations usually were full of desks for clerks keeping records before computers were used. They would be normally be at places where they had freight yards and also where tracks intersected.
The Alliance station was one I was considering to be the station the "West End" of my layout. However, I put so many other things in "West End that I only had room for a small depot.
Another Burlington station was in McCook, Nebraska. It was also somtning I might have tried to make for "West End". One half had three floors. The other half was for the passenger waiting room which had a very high ceiling. The third floor was about the waithing room, but that half of the building did not have the second floor. I like the arch windows of the waiting room part of the building.
McCook station:
McCook is on the former CB&Q main line from Chicago to Denver. It is an Amtrak station, and Burlington Northern used the office part of the building when the picture was taken. The green BN vehicles are a clue to when the picture was taken.
So instead of combining the two threads for weekend photo fun, sombody deleted one of them . Contributions in one are now gone.
I cringe every time I hear of another Amtrak derailment.
This time on the BNSF just west of Havre:
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/3-dead-amtrak-train-derailment-020118615.html
My condolences to those families.
The engines and baggage car seem to have passed over the defect. Or possibly it was a defect on one of the trailing cars. Not as likely, though.
We can do better, can't we?
Regards, Ed
Good Sunday morning.
Just an observation -- not a complaint -- but the diner seems to have very few customers lately. Maybe the time of year with outdoor projects is keeping everyone busy. I hope David is doing OK.
I'll post this picture of the Chicago & North Western station from the small town of Plainview, Pierce County, Nebraska. It was originally the station for the Fremont, Elkhorn, & Missouri Valley RR, Looking at all the photos of stations, this one looked a little different than the rest.
I hope all the missing diner patrons are doing well. Please check in every once in a while so we know you're OK.
Just a quick message. In a rough way with covid. In hospital.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
Horrible news. Please know that we are praying for you and your wife.
Heartland Division CB&Q I recall Floridians calling rain "liquid sushine".
Garry: That's the term for when the sun is out and there are no clouds in the sky, but it is raining anyway. Gotta love it!
Heartland Division CB&QSo instead of combining the two threads for weekend photo fun, sombody deleted one of them . Contributions in one are now gone.
I kind of thought that would happen, that is why I posted in both. I remember one month we had two "Show Me Something" at the same time, and one got deleted.
gmpullmanI cringe every time I hear of another Amtrak derailment.
Me too. I have not seen any news on this one, but I heard people at work talking about it.
York1I'll post this picture of the Chicago & North Western station from the small town of Plainview, Pierce County, Nebraska.
Wow, John... that is a neat looking structure. You're right. It really is different than other stations and depots.
NorthBritJust a quick message. In a rough way with covid. In hospital.
David, this is terrile to hear. We are pulling for you to make a full recovery. I hope all will be well.
Thinking of you David. Stay strong.
Garry, that McCook station looks like a converted factory.
SeeYou190Oh well... it will be paradise soon.
Cheers guys!
Good Morning,
David, hope you have a speedy recovery!
We are having summer like weather here with temps in the 70's all week. Lots of migrant birds visiting the yard. They come for the water in the pond and the food. Some are repeat customers as they know where to look for the food. We moved the spot but many are going at first to the place where it used to be. They are mostly white throated sparrows but a few Juncos are coming too.
No train news. I have to go to the LHS to pick up a display case I ordered a year ago for my brass Hudson.
Time to check the feeders again.
CN Charlie
NorthBrit Just a quick message. In a rough way with covid. In hospital. David
We have a friend here who was admitted to the hospital with Covid. He was there several days, and he claims they literally did not treat him at all.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.