Those Crazy Plane Spotters

I'm Grun With Envy

DC-10 Fire Bomber Tribute

Saw one of these tonight on the NBC Nightly News fighting the Yosemite fire. Really have to admire both these planes and their pilots.

Play Value

Yellow, Blue, Red - Picasa Filtered B&W Edits

Yellow Filter

Blue Filter

Red Filter

Picasa has a feature that allows you to simulate the effects of different colored lens filters on a black and white photograph (see original Kodachrome in the Eugene post below.)  The differences turned out to be a little more subtle than ususal,  probably because of the contrast level of the slide, but as you can see above, the middle blue filter does reduce contrast. The bottom red filter just about eliminates the "SP" on the nose, which you would expect.

Normally Aspirated Croatian Tunnel Motors With Mopac Stacks!

Jan Gabarek - Inheritor of Jim Pepper's Tenor Timbre

Jim Pepper - Oregon Native (R.I.P.)

You may be more familiar with the Brewer Shipley version of this classic. Thanks to B. Mitchell Reed at KMET in the early Seventies, I got to hear the orignal.  Link:  Jim Pepper Lives.

"and my little brother, Ray"

Eugene Yard - Early Seventies

8905 W. at Irving, Oregon, the north end of Eugene Yard. Note the old individual number boards.

The departure yard, Eugene, Oregon. Note the Southern Pacific Pipelines terminal. The pipeline originated in Portland.

S12 2112 working a hump trim job.

S12s dominate the Eugene garden tracks.

An odd couple, Yellow Belly UP 3001, and 70 tonner 5120.

DEPENDABLE 
TRANSPORTATION

SP MP15AC 2732, near the yard tower.

Thunder Up Top

CTA

First, the soundtrack:

Then the action:

Hans Baluschek - Part 2

Continuing with more of the marvelous work of German artist Hans Baluschek. The painting below, War Winter 1917, shows how he would work the railroad into a piece of social commentary, showing the mood of Berliners during World War One.  Also, in Kameraden, we see a locomotive on a high fill in the background. Roofing the gloom of a rainy day in Rain is an elevated station. The black and white drawings at the bottom, may be from his booklet Spreeluft.

War Winter 1917

Kameraden

Rain

Cyclus Die Eisenbahn No. 6

A contemporary Berlin photograph with gasometer, train, and Berliners.

Gartenlaube

Schwarzes Land

Hans Baluschek - "Degenerate Artist" - Painter of Railway Scenes - Part 1

Der Bahnhof

Arbeiterstadt  "Workers City" 


This painting is now at the Milwaukee Art Museum (link.)

Huettenwerk - An integrated steel mill.

Werkhaltstelle Arbeiterhaeuser - literally, "Work Stop Place"

Probably only the workers at this particular factory were allowed to use this stop.

Zur Grube - "To the mine"

Die Elektronische Lokomotiv

"A Hundred Years of German Railways"

Book Cover

Bahnhofshalle - "Station Platform"

Anfahrender Schnellzug - "Night Express"

Tiefer Schnee Sonne im Wintermorgen

Here is my stab at a translation: "A Winter Morning Sunlit Scene Under the Bridge"

Zyklus Die Eisenbahn Die Schranke

Locomotiv

Spreeluft - Cover of a booklet of his drawings.

Hans Baluschek (1870-1935) was a German artist, considered an Expressionist, but he has also been considered more of a Realist.  He was the son of a railway engineer, of the drafting table sort, and Hans had a lifelong interest in railways. Trains are the subject of many of his works, but he also worked railway scenes into many other works showing every day life in industrial and urban Germany. Baluschek was a member of the Berlin Secession, a group of artists who were organized to counter the conservatism of the art establishment of the time.  After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Baluschek was branded a degenerate artist.

Thunder Down Under

Da Plane

Snuffy's Cat Triple Threat

Corvallis, Oregon 1973

C40-3 Cupola Caboose and an Evans Products car.

Blast From the Past

Albany, Oregon O.E. Yard

Full Buck Moon - Helena, Montana

From: Helena Is In the Details

Look, Up In The Sky!

America had a certain fascination with comets and meteors in the first half of the 20th Century. This was a time when the Milky Way was considered to be the Universe, and a steady state one at that. The citrus feature is coming up soon, still doing research.

That John Kneiling Train

Not a true integral train probably, due to the fact that there are still non-powered cars on this train, but hey, Kneiling was your typical 60s technocratic douche bag anyway.

Wikipedia entry on the JNR M250 series.

Plumbers Nightmare

You don't hear the phrase plumbers nightmare much anymore. Maybe its because we have very little sympathy for the trade anymore. Anyway, the map above is just a portion of the Tokyo transit map. Gotta wonder if there is at least one error, and I also gotta wonder how many of the map makers have woken up in a cold sweat dreaming about their handiwork.

The "Other Side" of Los Angeles Union Station

Google Maps screen print. 

Metro Gold Line train departs for Pasadena - April 2014.

Two Metrolink trainsets arrive at LAUS.

The Metro Gold Line platform affords an excellent view of the goings on at Los Angeles Union Station.

Simultaneous departures at LAUS.

Metrolink departing LAUS.

Metro Gold Line train, station stop LAUS.

MTA Gold Line train departs LAUS for Pasadena.

MTA Gold Line train departs LAUS for Pasadena.

Inbound Gold Line train.

Comparison, Metrolink paint schemes, LAUS - April 2014.

A busy place, Metrolink - LAUS.

Arriving inbound Metro Gold Line train -  Union Station.

Arriving inbound Metro Gold Line train - Union Station.

The transit dance, anxious passengers boarding always seem to crowd those getting off.

Canines have better coping skills.

For reference, a view of the way the area looked as built. Model is in the LA Museum of Natural History.