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In case anyone wants to know... The Top-most picture in this thread is the St. Louis Metrolink. Connects Lambert International Airport to Downtown St. Louis to the Mid-America (Unused!) Airport/Scott AFB. They just FINALLY got a branch line under construction to other parts of the county!------ BUZZ ------ -- Power For You --
I was wondering, I was gonna guess Memphis. I recognize all the other pics, looks like Chris made a trip out to Union Ill. for some of those! I always wondered if they owned that old Metra engine or were only borrowing it, judging by the age I would say it needs to be restored to its original green and yellow colors as God and the C&NW intended. Interesting footnote, that orange engine was built for the Russian state railway, and never got delivered due to the start of the cold war. Illinois Railway Museum has a precedent, a Decapod built for the Russians in 1917 that was also never shipped due to the Bolshevik Revolution! Nothing like politics to get in the way of railroading.Well, I got a wierd thing with this here camera, guess I'm gonna have to read the full manual. I started shooting test shots yesterday using the included CD-RW, maybe a dozen shots or so. Finalized the disk in the camera so it could be read in the CD drive, loaded and copied assorted pics I thought were keepers. Put the CD-RW back in the camera, unfinalized it, shot a couple dozen more shots today, finalized it again and loaded into the CD drive. The CD drive shows all the pics I took yesterday, but not the ones I took today, WTF?! So I put it back in the camera, unfinalized again, I can scroll thru and look at all the pics I took today, so they are on that disk. Finalized again, back into the CD drive, still shows 1 empty folder, 1 folder with a subfolder containing yesterday's pics, no today's pics. Hit the refresh a few times, that wasn't it. It was my understanding the point of a CD-RW was that it could be erased and written to over and over again, but WinXP refuses to erase the files and gives error messages if I try to remove the read-only attrib. *&^%$#! computers.Anyway, to make the 56k dialuppers scream for mercy I dug up some 35mm shots and scanned those.My 'hood, lot of people seen that one before.Here's that same Laramie & Lake S-curve from the EL, looking west toward where it joins the C&NW/UP.Track repair at Clinton & Lake Street, after 2 Metra commuters and an Amtrak train derailed they finally quit deferring maintenance and decided to repair the switch.Quincy & Wells. The girder under the platform just below and to the left of the guy who looks like Fat Louie Gerettie (that ain't him tho, just a ringer) is the color the whole EL structure should be, I'm gonna hunt up that strange yellow ace and replace it with this!Looking west at Lake & Wacker (during Lower Wacker reconstruction) after crossing the double deck bridge over the Chicago River.I forget where this is, part of the old Englewood line I think. South of the Loop, anyway.
90 foot radius. Though that last curve Sniper showed us is Harrison curve, just south of the loop. The CTA has within the last 3 months replaced that curve with a banking, smoother curve that trains can operate over at 35 mph. That curve, which trains had to move through tat 10 mph, was dismantled the same day the new track was connected (over Memorial Day weekend 2003).The new curve is still pretty interesting to go through, the cars bank excessivly when traversing it, you almost feel as if you'll fall out of the car. Though it's nowhere near as interesting as the 106 year old curve it replaced.See the third picture form the top, in the first post in this topic for a picture of a train traversing the new curve.-Chris
Hee-hee, everybody's in a hurry these days, 10mph was good enough for our ancestors but now we gotta broaden the curves. Funny thing, back when steam powered train locos were first invented, there was a concensus among "experts" that 25mph would be the absolute max limit for physiological reasons - a human being wouldn't be able to breathe at speeds in excess of 25mph, and would therefore suffocate from lack of oxygen! Yeah, Dick, the curves downtown were dictated by the fact that the buildings and streets were already there, and they had to build around them. They didn't really care about going mach 1 back in 1900, so it wasn't an issue anyway. Back in 1974 one train bumped the back of another that was on one of those tight curves, the guy lost his head and hit the throttle rather than the brakes, and pushed the middle cars off the outside of the curve. 70 some odd dead and 200 or so injured, IIRC.My first two shots are the neighborhood I live in, about 6 miles west of "the Loop" (downtown Chicago). Prior to 1965 there was a steep ramp at that location and the EL went down to street level and ran on the ground out to the end of the line. With reduced traffic on the 5 track Chicago & Northwestern Galena Division (on the right, now belongs to the Union Pacific), they cut that mainline down to 3 tracks and sold or leased the right of way to the Chicago Transit Authority, and they built that banked S-curve to move over to the C&NW viaduct. That was the first high speed curve I ever saw on the EL.In that last shot it was a double 90 degree curve, the picture was taken from the last car of the train shown on the right. Here's another one: Taken from the last car again as we're turning a 90 degree corner on the Douglas line about 2 miles west of the south Loop, in the "Medical Mile" area. Note the ramp going down, it joins the Congress line on the Eisenhower Expressway median, then dives underground into the subway and turns left to run under Dearborn Street, comes back up to Elevated again on the North Side, then runs along the Kennedy Expressway median out to O'hare airport. The Douglas line is my favorite because it has so much variety.Chris, I RTFM on this CD 350, I still can't figure this out tho. The book says if you finalize you lose 13mb of disk space each time you do, but with either a CD-R disc or CD-RW disk, the CD drive won't read it unless it's finalized, and once that's done any pictures I shoot afterwards won't show up. Example, I shoot 5 pictures, finalize the disk and pop it into the CD drive on the computer, I got 5 jpeg files listed. Take it out and put it back in the camera and shoot 5 more pics, finalize again, and instead of 10 jpegs there are only the 5 that were on there previously. All 10 shots can be previewed in the camera, but only the shots before the first time it was finalized will show in the CD drive. If the manual said that, "once you finalize you can shoot more pics but won't be able to read them on the CD drive" I could understand that, but it don't mention it anywhere. The data is on the disc since the camera can read and display all 10, but the CD won't see the last five.
Thanks for the little tour of Chicagy, guys. I've always wanted to go there, and see where all the rail lines of the country go. This is really interesting! Timtimmuir@wcn.net
Electric Railroad 3D Models Sumpter Valley B&B Gang Willamette Valley Route (No timetable for release)
Actually the Feburary 4, 1977 Loop crash only killed 11, and injured 180. (and 4 perfectly good 'L' cars!) I feel a bit of coldness everytime I think of that. What it must have been like to have been there, not only on the train, but even nearby it.As far as the camera, I always use RW disks. Initialize them before I begin shooting pics, then finalize them before viewing them in my computer. If I want to shoot more pics I will un-finalize the disk, and continue shooting, when I'm ready to view again, I will finalize again.As far as CD-Rs I would imagine you could only finalize them once, otherwise the computer wouldn't be able to read it at all. If the camera finalized it again, then the computer wouldn't be able to read the data, the two Table of contents' would confuse it.Course I also have the MVC CD-200, so my proceedures are somewhat different I'm sure.-Chris
"As far as the camera, I always use RW disks. Initialize them before I begin shooting pics, then finalize them before viewing them in my computer. If I want to shoot more pics I will un-finalize the disk, and continue shooting, when I'm ready to view again, I will finalize again."Yeah, that's what I did with the CD-RW that came with it, the only problem is after finalizing the second time, anything that I shot after the first finalizing don't show up in the list. It's on the disk, after unfinalizing I can scroll thru all the pics both before and after the first time I finalized, but none of the pics after will show up. I tried installing the software that came with it (why does everything you buy include an image editor that has to be installed?) and hooking up the USB cable, but apparently the transfer software won't read it either until it's finalized.Not really that big a deal, the CD-R disks are cheap, so if I finalize with half a dozen or fifty shots or whatever I took that day it's still considerably cheaper than having 35mm film processed. As luck would have it, I got the camera last Thursday and we've had gloomy rainy overcast every day since, so no chance to try it out on trains. So I've been testing it out on assorted critters indoors.
Well, that worm was fun, wasn't it? Anyway, finally got some sunshine today, maybe I can go ride some trains with my new camera this weekend. Can't get a good angle from my back porch anymore, too many trees and wires now, *&^%$#@! cable TV and SBC have been busy stringing new ones.Zoom works pretty good tho, that's about 400 feet away.Ooops, that ain't CTA!Well, anyway, figured out how to work the little beggar well enough to shoot some pics, now all I gotta do is go find something worth shooting.
Rained again yesterday, so I put my scanner to work. What happened to all the traction fans anyway? Most recent post aside from this one is August 10th?Anyway, if Kurt or anyone else is interested, here's a great project:I know it's harder to do, but if anyone wants to tackle it I got the drawing double that size saved as a PSP file, I can export to whatever you need and email it. Closeup of the front car.
I'll go one further....I'll volunteer to fabricate the carsets if someone will texture, and engine them. Though I think I know someone who will engine them, and help me with the cab view. My main problem is the texturing.This would have to be done after the next release of the Chicago Elevated though. I've been working steadily at that, and have completed the loop elevated, and North Side Main line to Chicago (save the Merchandise Mart Station). I'm working on a portion of the Lake St., Milwaukee, and Congress lines currently, and once I complete the tiles I'm working in am planning on releasing a version 0.4.-Chris CYKWORKSHere's a Screenshot.... X that... need to patch a hole in the ground first. Will upload some screen shots soon.
Hey, I can texture like crazy, my problem was trying to figure out that 3D cad thingamy. I tried a demo once, couldn't make heads or tails of it. Give me the shape and I'll paint it PO&N green & yellow! "need to patch a hole in the ground first."Cripes, Hizzoner Junior's Midnight Miegs Wrecking Crew hit you too?!
Yep, he thought the Milwaukee/Dearborn subway was a street level eyesore, so he tore up the street down to the subway to prevent the turists from hijacking a Forest Park train!-Chris
>Interesting footnote, that orange engine was built for the >Russian state railway, and never got delivered due to the >start of the cold war. Illinois Railway Museum has a >precedent, a Decapod built for the Russians in 1917 that was >also never shipped due to the Bolshevik Revolution! Nothing >like politics to get in the way of railroading. Yep. The GE "Little Joe", or EF-4 in Milwaukee Road parlance.. Neat really big things.
My 'hood, lot of people seen that one before.
Here's that same Laramie & Lake S-curve from the EL, looking west toward where it joins the C&NW/UP.
Track repair at Clinton & Lake Street, after 2 Metra commuters and an Amtrak train derailed they finally quit deferring maintenance and decided to repair the switch.
Quincy & Wells. The girder under the platform just below and to the left of the guy who looks like Fat Louie Gerettie (that ain't him tho, just a ringer) is the color the whole EL structure should be, I'm gonna hunt up that strange yellow ace and replace it with this!
Looking west at Lake & Wacker (during Lower Wacker reconstruction) after crossing the double deck bridge over the Chicago River.
I forget where this is, part of the old Englewood line I think. South of the Loop, anyway.
Taken from the last car again as we're turning a 90 degree corner on the Douglas line about 2 miles west of the south Loop, in the "Medical Mile" area. Note the ramp going down, it joins the Congress line on the Eisenhower Expressway median, then dives underground into the subway and turns left to run under Dearborn Street, comes back up to Elevated again on the North Side, then runs along the Kennedy Expressway median out to O'hare airport. The Douglas line is my favorite because it has so much variety.Chris, I RTFM on this CD 350, I still can't figure this out tho. The book says if you finalize you lose 13mb of disk space each time you do, but with either a CD-R disc or CD-RW disk, the CD drive won't read it unless it's finalized, and once that's done any pictures I shoot afterwards won't show up. Example, I shoot 5 pictures, finalize the disk and pop it into the CD drive on the computer, I got 5 jpeg files listed. Take it out and put it back in the camera and shoot 5 more pics, finalize again, and instead of 10 jpegs there are only the 5 that were on there previously. All 10 shots can be previewed in the camera, but only the shots before the first time it was finalized will show in the CD drive. If the manual said that, "once you finalize you can shoot more pics but won't be able to read them on the CD drive" I could understand that, but it don't mention it anywhere. The data is on the disc since the camera can read and display all 10, but the CD won't see the last five.
Can't get a good angle from my back porch anymore, too many trees and wires now, *&^%$#@! cable TV and SBC have been busy stringing new ones.
Zoom works pretty good tho, that's about 400 feet away.
Ooops, that ain't CTA!Well, anyway, figured out how to work the little beggar well enough to shoot some pics, now all I gotta do is go find something worth shooting. 
I know it's harder to do, but if anyone wants to tackle it I got the drawing double that size saved as a PSP file, I can export to whatever you need and email it.
Closeup of the front car.
