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Insert Self Promotion: My job (library) released my most recent episode of REEL TALK. My movie review/history program I host! I talk about Amateur Detectives and Italian film history. (The video is not blurred like the picture from my slow internet!)
This thread brings a great deal of joy to this house.
After our recent adventure here is a snap from UK Bluebell Railway.
Oh around 1977 I helped with some filming of the BB Railway for what would eventually become a 8mm release on a 200ft spool. My priority was one specific locomotive a USA Tank in British Rail Green and a beauty to behold. We revisited the railway to be told it was on a siding needing a new boiler and £1 million overhaul = endgame. The loco was full of Asbestos sadly complicating things so recently returning I traced the locations and shots I'd take many years ago with my S8 Leicina camera. Very sad to see the loco growing plants from the boiler and much rust but we got the shots and the filming should make a nice memento from years past.
Yes, boiler work is the speed bump of many locomotive restorations:
One of the narrow gauge museums I'm a member of is contracting two new boilers right now: one for a vintage restoration and a second for a new from the rails-up steam locomotive they are building from 100+ year old Baldwin Locomotive Works blue-prints.
Even though they are maybe 1/4 the size of the boiler the Bluebell Railway would need for their restoration, the cost per boiler is $100,000, even given the fact that the boiler works are at another closely affiliated museum that is probably giving them a break.
You're right Lee: this thread has always been a highlight of this forum!
Many of these railways have long lines of out of ticket locos in the queue for work to be done on restoring them to running condition. It's not only the cost but the small numbers trained volunteers to do the work that delay things.
Yes, a lot of this focusses on skills that are becoming lost arts: the museum that is buying the two boilers doesn't just fix up old trains, but it teaches the old skills to people that may have been born 100 years too late. I've driven quite a few spikes myself, although a lot more back in my twenties than recently!
For the most part, they operate exactly as the original line would have in the 1920s. The only place that they'll bend a little on this is safety: your Conductor may be in a recreated uniform and passing hand signals, but he also has a two way radio and a cell phone on him if it comes to it. There's probably a defibrillator on board, too.
They are pretty reverent about traditions. The original line died out after a wreck in 1937. The engine tipped over and the coal spilled out: most of it is still there to this day. After that, WWII scrap drives basically dissolved the line illegally. It had been on its last legs for years: nobody cared.
The Museum revived another of the original engines after about 80 years dormant in somebody's barn. The first time they lit off the new boiler and took her out, they used coal they'd scooped up at the old wreck site.
Well tonight I thought I would take a photo of the Yamaha amp I use. All the IN have been full for a while. I have to add this amp has been great, plenty of get up and go for a home theatre set up. When I was thinking of buying a Yamaha amp, although similar in looks I opted to pay a higher price than one that may look similar, but had more power and not strain or distort sound if I was to push it along .
Everything including using the multi-channel input for the Ernemann 2 is plugged in somehow. When the Digital sound from the 35mm is fed in from its processor, what comes out of all the speakers is really something. I don't think a cheaper amp would have coped well with what this one has been subjected to..
Going through some stuff the other day and came across my old British driving license from the late 1960s now well and truly expired, I wonder how many folk have one of those from years gone by?
For the couple on the church steps, today is June 16th, 1951: their wedding day. For you and I, today is June 16th, 2021, and the picture is 70 years old.
He is Herbert Herman George Klare. His family was newly American when he was born so they named him after the President. The rest is his father, his godfather and the Family name. He’s kind of special: he’s the first child of his family born outside Germany since before 1685. That didn’t prevent him from learning English starting the second day of Kindergarten (-oops!). He’s working on getting his Journeyman card as a printer (If only the guy in front of him would stop failing his exams!). Because he grew up bilingual, he has awesome language skills. He is absolutely terrifying at Scrabble: he knows words not used since the Middle Ages that somehow are still in the dictionary and somehow have both a “Z” and a “Q” in the perfect places!
She is Doris Irene Mann (and newly) Klare. She’s not even 20 years old and barely graduated from high school. She’s very bright, and in a few years will be kind of a stone-age computer programmer (IBM key-punch) and work at Universal Studios in Manhattan in the Castle Films division. She has a wicked sense of humor and adventure. She will goad Herb into going places and doing things his Eltern had no idea even existed!
They are imponderably young! When I was their age the idea of getting married was something for years from now, but growing up back then wasn’t nearly as complicated and didn’t take as long as these days!
They will be a great couple: they will take great delight in the ordinary things many people take for granted: marriage, parenthood, work, home, friends, faith. Without any concern for growing rich or powerful or famous, they will be very happy with what they have and who they are. They will make and leave many great memories.
In eleven years they will become my Mom and Dad. Growing up with them was a great privilege: they always encouraged me to seek the best things in myself. Since neither of them went to college, they were both generous and even forgiving putting my sister and me through college (-and the forgiveness was mostly for ME!). I found I never went wrong when I tried to make them proud.
Happy 70th Anniversary Mom and Dad! May it be that today you are as young and happy as you were in that picture and will stay that way forever!
Last edited by Steve Klare; June 16, 2021, 07:15 PM.
Maybe twice per year, we go down to a local fishing boat basin. We're too lazy (and unmotivated) to actually board a party-boat at 6AM and go fishing: instead we walk the docks and get some sea-air, maybe stop in and get some hot dogs and clam chowder.
Someone else was a lot more high-seas oriented than we are. While we were there a small boat docked and created quite a stir! .
They said it's a thresher shark and they are good eatin'!
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