Southeastern Railway Museum

It’s not a vacation without at least on train museum, is it?  And the day before my birthday, I took my brothers to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA.  This was the first standard-gauge museum I’ve ever been to without a single piece of Union Pacific rolling stock;

We rode behind this rather impressive Geep.  We also squeezed into the park train and rode the narrow gauge:

It was actually pulled behind a scale locomotive:

I sat in a caboose and watched some Norfolk Southern freight pass before my eyes:

My brother got to “drive” a steam engine:

They had a Heisler steam engine there too.  I had never seen one and was amazed to see a geared steam engine on this side of the country, with its two huge cylinders on the side that formed a “V”:

Even Walker looked small compared against the drivers of a conventional steam locomotive:

It was a great day!

Willis Tower in Chicago

Despite living in Chicago for fifteen years, I had failed to do something that’s considered necessary by all tourists: Visit the top of the Sears, I mean Willis Tower, the tallest building in North America.

 The day was hazy but the view was still good.  I felt like a giant model railroader having modeled the entire city!  I also wanted to step into the Willis Tower’s newest attractions, the glass skyboxes sticking over a thousand feet above the street.

 From the other side of the building, I saw my favorite train station from way up in the air and could watch the Metras come in from miles away.

 Even the buildings that looked enormous at street level were tiny from the top!

California Trip

Well, I’m on my two-day time in Dallas again between the Sutter Creek and Chicago portions of my vacation!
My first week went very well. I got to do a lot, and I took a lot of pictures with my new digital camera! Here’s a summary of my activities:

One of the first things I did was buy my grandmother a new computer. Seeing as her desktop was from the stone age of the early 2000’s, anything was an upgrade. I also transferred her files and photos for her.  More family photos were found! I scanned in another hundred.

The rest of my family rented a house in the Sierra foothills for the family reunion. The view behind the family picture was very good:

We lounged in the pool, ate barbecue, and celebrated together.

Walker and I hiked up a very high hill and then walked down again.  See how small he looks!

We also hiked around Silver Lake, a beautiful lake in the Sierras.

Before going to the airport, I got to see the outdoor portion of the Sacramento Railroad Museum and view the trains!

24 hours in Saginaw Train and bike day

Today was the start of Memorial Day weekend.  To kick it off, I decided to dedicate my time to two of my favorite activities.  Bicycling, and train watching.

I chose a rural route to bike, one that would lead to a railroading wye.  The long grass in Texas was just fading from spring green to summer brown.  I enjoyed watching it ripple as the sky above me constantly changed, threatening severe weather at some moments and completely tranquil at others.

 

Not only did I find the wye, but there were two trains on it!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen four-axle KCS power before, but needless to say, I was thrilled.  Kansas City Southern is the only major North American railroad not to have a direct entry into Chicago, so it’s the Class 1 I know least about.

The train was stopped, but I could hear it start up and get moving through the countryside parallel to me as I returned to Denton.  I got a good shot of it over a large hill.

After getting back to my apartment, I thought to myself, why let the train greatness end?  I had heard on Facebook that Saginaw, TX has an annual train-watching ritual.  Every Memorial Day Friday evening, several dozen railfans gather in the old depot (now a museum) beside two major rail lines and spend 24 hours, day and night, and do nothing but watch trains, talk trains, photograph trains, discuss trains, and do everything that train-related.  All of this was only forty-five minutes away!

I decided to catch the tail end of the event, called “24 hours at Saginaw.”  When I got there, I was greeted with an encouraging sign:

The depot was wedged in front of several diamonds and between three massive, massive grain elevators.  I had seen the grain elevators miles before I had arrived.  They looked like shuttle launchers, blotting out the horizon.  I would later learn that the three combined consisted of arguably the largest grain complex in the world (Harrison, Kansas seems to have the title of largest elevator, but the three elevators of Saginaw, all owned by the same company, might have more storage capacity).  So large were these elevators that every time a train came by and blew its horn, the horn blast would be completely repeated by their massive concrete walls.  I have no photograph of them in their entireties, however, as even the second-largest one was too big for my zoom.

The trains were a little scare, but not too bad.  I saw an Amtrak passenger train and was hearkened back to my memories of riding from Longview to Chicago.  There were also two Santa Fe Yellowbonnets that did some track work around the massive elevators, and a track truck.

Between trains, I fraternized with my fellow railfanning brethren (not a sexist term; pretty much the only females there were wives who had been dragged along) and looked at the antique railroading equipment on display:

Several railfans brought along their own equipment, including several old Speedsters that they worked on.  Some kids and I rode a maintenance cart up and down the inactive track in front of the depot.

All in all, it was a great day!  I even got my own paper train to commemorate the event (as opposed to paper dolls I guess!).  Next year, I’ll have to tough it out for all twenty-four hours!

 

Bike train excursion

What is the perfect day off?  I’m sure that there’s as many answers to that question as there are people.  But for me, it consists of a multi-faceted approach to relaxation and productivity.

Yesterday was my spring break day off.  I’m a graduate student, so I don’t get an entire week!

It started by me waking up and checking on my computer.  I had reformatted it for it’s seventh year of operation and I wanted to make sure it was running faster than when I had just bought it.  It was blazing fast.  I sighed deeply and wondered if I’d be in my fifties before I could justify buying myself a new laptop.  I put Microsoft Office on it as well as Google Chrome and some other programs I needed and then just let it be.  I did some homework, ate some Manwhich made from my previously purchased ground beef, and prepared for my next leisure.

It’s hard to bike in Denton.  There’s a lot of traffic and not always very nice traffic.  But there’s also a very major train line here (major part of the reason I chose the school) and I found a moderately busy road that paralleled it.  After it ducked under two major highways, the road became smooth and empty, and the trains started piling on.  I saw three; one downtown, one on the way to Denton and one being staged in its ascent up from Dallas.  But the coolest thing I saw was right after the road turned away from the tracks:  A critter next to a giant elevator:

By the looks of the concrete in front of the rails, it is safe to assume that some operator pushed a string of grain hoppers too far once:

 

After this, the road became much more rural.  Trees surrounded either side.  And then I saw a new park, “Clear Creek,” that I had never been to before, alongside the road.  Since it was my day off, I decided to explore it.

The park consisted of a large collection of hiking and mountain biking trails.  Although my bike is not entirely suited to off-road usage, my extra-grippy tires did pretty good.  The narrow trails followed a river for a couple of miles.

I got back home to my apartment a bit later than I expected to but nonetheless happy.  After dinner, a little more homework, and an episode of the Twilight Zone, I decided to bike over to the campus water park.

One of the great things about staying over for spring break is that everything is almost empty.  Parking is easy, there’s never a line, and students don’t clutter the sidewalks.  The water park was no different.  I had to ask a life-guard to turn it on for me.  Then, I floated down the lazy river, splashed in the whirlpool, and soaked in the hot tub for an hour while three life guards watched me!  It was a great break overall.

 

California Ranch

My grandma lives in the scenic Sierra foothills, on top of a valley.  I’ve explored the valley as the road goes past her house, but on this trip, I also got to hike through the cattle ranch that makes up the valley as well:

There are two hills behind the ranch; a “small” one and a bigger one as well.  The small one gave a good overview of the layout of the buildings and the valley.

The largest of the two hills, which towered above everything, gave a tremendous view of all that was in sight, although sliding down it was quite difficult!

Hidden behind the two giant hills is a secret valley with a spring and a dried up creek bed:

This is the heart of gold country, so it’s not surprising that a few abandoned mine tunnels are still around.  The ground has caved in around this one, but it’s still there!  I hear it can be explored in summer when there’s no water in the bottom.  You can see it in the distance in the picture above and up close below:

The rocky Sierras have also made their indelible mark upon this land in the form of eerie, graveyard-like formations.

Perhaps the most unusual discovery I made was in finding the remnants of a tiny mining railroad.  The rails were sticking out of the ground, and are so small and cute!  Back home, I’ve seen much heavier rail which rusted almost to nothing over a much shorter period of time, but the balmy California climate preserved it.  Behind them and out of view is another tunnel which has been converted into a water line to supply water for the ranch.

And at the end of the day, a spectacular sunset!

End of an era with the Chrysler LHS

The date was July 24th, 1999.  Windows 98 was the dominant operating system.  Cell phones were still a thing of the future for all but the most exclusive few.  There was a small family from that era who had just moved into Chicago from Texas.

An eleven-year-old boy sat bored at a car dealership.  His dad was negotiating for a new Chrysler LHS – the flagship luxury car of the brand at the time.  The little kid was restless, and his mother and a salesman suggested he go sit in a minivan sitting in the big glass showroom and pretend to drive it.

“But what if I start it up and crash?” He asked.

“Oh, I’m sure they disabled it,” his mother said absentmindedly.

So the little boy played in the minivan.  First, he made “vroom, vroom,” sounds.  Then, he adjusted the seats.  He decided that he wanted to feel really grown up and turn on the radio.  The keys were in the ignition – should he turn them?  After all, his mother said that the car couldn’t really move.

Well, the dealership was not destroyed, but it came rather close to it.  Instead, a salesperson ran over and shut off the minivan right before the little kid shifted it out of park as he leaned over to turn on the radio.

Ever since then, the car became part of the family, first at a regular fixture of suburbia house and then at a more rural location.  It didn’t always get in the garage when it rained, as a bunch of children’s toys usually ended up there, but at least it got the carport.

The car was around for a lot of things.  The eleven-year-old boy passed his driver’s test on it.  The boy’s dad threw a Frisbee at it which left a mark that he could never get off.  When he was seventeen, the boy and his dad went to a mission trip in Oklahoma in the car, where it was featured prominently in the parking lot and was permanently dyed by splatters from girls painting a picnic table.

When he turned eighteen, the boy spun it out and missed the SAT.  At twenty, he drove across the country in it with his grandmother in pursuit of history and trains.  For his last eight weeks in college at LeTourneau, he brought it down to pack his stuff in and to (unsuccessfully) cruise chicks with.  He drove it back north when he graduated, and then south again for graduate school.  His last major journey with it was heading south, where he saw relatives, those who would not be relatives, museums, historical sights, and places of railroad significance.

Still, it had never been a very reliable car.  The air conditioner broke just a few short years into the car’s existence and was never able to be permanently fixed.  The electronics system, the tires (the boy was driving it once at 70 mph when one tire blew off the rim), and many of the other components failed sooner than they should have.  After a strut broke as the culmination of several repairs, the man realized it was time to move on.  After all, his dad’s first car had to be towed, and since his car was low mileage, the boy hoped to recover some value from it.

He listed it on Craigslist and was honest about the good and bad of the car.  A neighbor picked it up with the intent to fix it up for his daughter.  Since he is a mechanical fellow and has all the tools, he will be able to maintain it much cheaper.  And the boy is happy knowing that the car is still around.  But never again will he drive it to school, and that little kid riding in the back seat on the way back from church is forever just a memory.

Coming soon: the car that replaced it.

Trip to Tioga

Years and years ago, during a different millennium which now has passed on into memory, a little kid went to a famous cowboy restaurant in rural Texas.  His father loved the barbecue and genuine Texas cooking.  The little boy loved the train line that ran next to the old place.  He would put pennies and bottle caps on the rails for the trains to smash.  Remember, this was in the previous millennium, and little boys wouldn’t get arrested for putting pennies on the railroad track.  But it was there that the little boy became infatuated with trains and their almighty power and impressive speed.  It was there that a lifelong passion was truly born.

Well, this evening, I went back.  Very little had changed in the place.  A few new trees had been planted between Clarke’s Outpost and the railroad tracks, but the rest was just about the same, including the famous yellow sign:

Little had changed in the interior as well.  It still looked old and very rustic, and the paint was peeling even more.

This time, I didn’t have to order from the children’s menu.  I got a beef brisket patty and lamb fries.  And since my parents weren’t there to tell me no, I also bought dessert.

I also visited a local zoo.  They had a lot of interesting foreign animals, including zebras, lemurs, camels, bears, and kangaroos!  It is impressive what you can find in Texas.  In all my family’s years of living nearby, we had never visited it.

Masters and Bike Ride

Yesterday, I got my last signature on my masters thesis.  It was with great pride that I submitted it to the graduate website of NIU – I am now done and will receive my diploma in December!

To celebrate, and to enjoy the cooler weather that has finally taken hold of the Dallas area, I decided to take a 20 mile bike ride.  The trail followed an abandoned train line that has recently been converted into a light-rail commuter artery.

The trains look very different than the freight trains that used to go here, but there’s still a lot of signs of the industry that used to be along the tracks.

In fact, the Denton station parallels a very active Union Pacific mainline, and by looking carefully, you can see how the tracks used to interchange.