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Topic: Your today in pictures..
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted December 18, 2017 08:54 AM
Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Victorian Christmas
This weekend we took it on the road to Coastal Maine. One of my favorite railroad museums anywhere has a special Christmas weekend every year and we’ve gone about every other year. Don’t get me wrong here: it wasn’t all trains: there were horse-drawn wagon rides, lobster dinners and shopping too!
I like to think this is a pretty picture, but for reasons I don’t have a huge amount to do with, it is also an amazing picture. First of all, no vehicle in that picture is less than a hundred years old. The three coaches were in revenue service from before the turn of the last century until the Depression, and then in tourist and museum service here and there ever since. They are beautifully built: the woodwork and ironwork are no less than works of art. The engine is another story: she was in revenue service from the 1890s until the original line went under in the 1930s. Then some hobbyists trucked her down to Connecticut, where she sat in a shed for 60 years. (Sometimes we hobbyists bite off more than we can chew, right?) The museum trucked her back to Maine in the 1990s, did a very thorough restoration on her and a few months ago she took steam for the first time in 80 years. She may be headed for 130 years old, but for all intents and purposes this is a new machine. What’s also kind of amazing is absolutely nothing in the picture was there 20 years ago: no train, no track, no station, just a weedy path where the original railroad had been torn up prior to WWII.
It’s amazing what a bunch of like-minded people can do when they work together.
For my own part I shot two and a half rolls of Tri-X this weekend, because that is one of the great parts of Super-8 film and sometimes I almost forget that side of it. It took a little adjusting to using a camera with a lens cap again, but I enjoyed myself!
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Graham Ritchie
Film God
Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted January 08, 2018 02:40 PM
Looks yummy Dominique...what's the small object that's put into it?
That reminds me that when I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, my mother would make a Clootie Dumpling for Christmas, what I remember about it the most was, that it was wrapped in cloth and boiled in a large pot. Inside was some "coins" mostly threepenny bits if I remember right. I cant imagine that being done these days
Reading about the weather today in the US...hope it improves as it sounds very cold indeed.
Last night I sat and watched some of our old home movies. My spare GS1200 for a while now, would not run at 18fps, however a good prod with a cotton bud on the 18fps "trim pot" brought it back to life. ....me around the 1979 mark... Another screen shot from last night, the digital camera did not like the movement....but it does show the colors still look great, anyway, now that this three bladed GS is again running, I will watch some more old home movies very soon.
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted January 18, 2018 12:33 PM
To Everything there is a Season…
I went to a meeting in another, much older building here at work. I found this wonderful relic of past times. It’s called a “phone booth” (fohn büth). This was a place you went when you had a flat tire or you needed a taxi or you were a superhero in need of a quick costume change (Where do they go now?). If you wanted to ask somebody out and you didn’t want your little brother overhearing, a handful of change, one of these and a little courage was all you needed.
This is a really nice one: the woodwork looks to be oak. Everything feels solid, like it was meant to last a century. For better or worse in the last twenty years they’ve gone from being a life essential to a waste of space. This one doesn't have a payphone in it, and probably hasn’t within our decade. The lights don’t come on when you close the door anymore either. It’s almost begging for a purpose: maybe somebody should hang a sign above it “Have your cell phone arguments HERE!”. (It is soundproof, after all…).
The building where I work was a muddy field as recently as 2009. There are no phone booths, and there aren’t any roll-up screens either. Yet who knows what relics they’ll find when they decommission us in 2035! -One way or another, I don’t intend on being at Work that day!
Time passes relentlessly. I remember thinking my parents were old when they were much younger than I am today, but time moved forward and now their aches are mine! This empty little room is a great symbol of this. I kind of miss there not being a nice, robust pay-phone inside there, but I took these pictures with my own cell phone, didn’t I? My son is 15 years old. When he was little people were already walking around with phones in their pockets and pay phones were few and getting fewer. Just for laughs I’m going to send him these pictures and see what he thinks that odd little room is for.
-He loves history: I think we have a shot here!
Graham:
-As I said: Seasons pass. It'll be spring here...eventually!
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted January 19, 2018 02:18 PM
Thanks, Janice!
I appreciate that!
The interesting part of that whole story is how cellphones made it possible. If I didn't have a cellphone on me I wouldn't have been able to get the pictures, then again if everybody didn't have a cellphone on them there wouldn't have been a story in the first place!
In other news:
Every week I go out to my old college for an Adult Ed. course. I'm in second year German. (Some people go bowling, I do this!)
It's held in the Physics building.
Last night somebody diddled with the electronic locks and we lost access to our regular room, so we borrowed one and found this on the chalkboard: (Plus another 10 linear feet downstream of it...)
For those of you that think I'm showing off, I want you to know I haven't the remotest clue what this is about! Even if I had the remotest clue back in college days those same tides of time have certainly washed most of my clues away! (The LETTERS! I STILL know the Greek letters!...other than that...)
However, I actually may have made a material contribution to the Sciences last night.
-For all I know it's a calculation to perk the best possible pot of coffee, but if it really IS Nobel Prize level stuff, I deserve credit for stopping my teacher from erasing that chalkboard!
-------------------- All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Graham Ritchie
Film God
Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted January 19, 2018 08:43 PM
I never could understand that stuff
Steve we used to call them a "Phone Box" it wasn't until my father retired, that we got our first phone, it was a big thing to have your own phone, before that it was the "phone box" down the street. One of the amazing things about the internet of late, was coming across those old photos of the high school in Scotland I went to until I left at 15yrs in 1967. This school building has now been demolished, when I look at photos of a place I have never seen since leaving it, it certainly brings back memories. Back then, if you stepped out of line, you got the belt...and remember once getting it after being caught running along a corridor during a lunch break, some of those teachers were down right nasty. All in All... I survived The Gym..."P.T"...known as "Physical Torture"
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