Seti Refuge Bar & Bistro Wing of Cafe Einstein

Ummm, If you're paying the cab fare home, then why not.

Not fun the next day .....

[ Now is the winter of our discontent .... ]

[ ... there is screwing up, and then again there is power assisted screwing up. Richard The Third : Act 1, Scene 1 ]

That is the valve for the air brakes, so I guess I'm a pneumatic sort of person. There is also a small, annoyingly high-ptiched whistle on it which I am required to blow in a standard fweeeeee fweeeeee fwee fweeeeeee(until I'm over the road)eee for each of the two public roads we cross, and any other time I deem it necessary to warn someone they're being an idiot and about to get run over by the train. (Okay, truth is, I was just posing for the picture. There was really no reason for me to have my hands on the valve at that location. However, in another half a mile, I had to start releasing air to bring the train to a safe, comfortable stop before the end of track. Almost did it correctly, too. (Further truth: now that I'm qualified, I can tell the engineer to make the stops, but I do it for the practice.))

Hence why I posted a link instead of putting it in the post.

It's a Baofeng, but I understand it's compatible with Kenwood. The radio in my back pocket, to which the mic is connected, is also a Baofeng, a cheap Chinese thing that manages to do its basic functions well. The firmware leaves something (actually a lot) to be desired, but I can deal with it. It's the Baofeng model with an 8 in it, and I paid extra for the version that can be set by computer interface so the user can't manually enter frequencies. (Of course, having a General class ham license, I disabled the restriction.) It works in both ham and business bands in 2M and 440.

Oh, yes, LACKAWANNA. Start of the trip: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, welcome to Illinois Railway Museum. For your safety, we ask that you please remain seated while the train is in motion, and please do not put hands, arms, heads, small children, or anything else you don't want to lose out the window at any time. The car is over 90 years old and so are the window latches. Tickets please." Then a bit later or at the east end: "This is Kishwaukee Grove. We call it that because just in front of us is the Kishwaukee River. We stop here because we don't have a bridge over the river and trains don't float. The car you're riding in is originally from the Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad. It was built in 1923 [or was it 1914? I need to check that] for commuter service in northern New Jersey. You would ride to Hoboken and then take a ferry across the Hudson. It remained in service until the 1970s, when it came to the museum. Our railroad was originally the Elgin & Belvidere Electric Railway, an interurban that opened in 1907 and shut down in 1930. Everything was sold for scrap, the track, the overhead wire, and even the bridges. In the early 60s, the museum bought six miles of the right of way for back taxes and started laying track again. We own another mile east of here, but as I said, we don't have a bridge. Are there any questions?" We got these cars just days after the Erie Lackawanna (DL&W had merged with the Erie Railroad) took them out of service, with functioning batteries, generators, etc., none of which they have today.

The train that day, from the rear, was two Lackawannas, C&NW 7700 (a coach/baggage combine which serves as our ADA car), a Railway Post Office car (just there for looks, mostly), another combine (ditto), the milk car that carries extra water for the steam engine, and the steam engine.