small pleasures
I’m not, by any stretch, a serious railfan. No vacations centered around sites to watch trains, no vest or baseball cap studded with rail-themed collectors’ pins, no log of serial numbers of cars I’ve...
View ArticleChildhood
I was 34 years old when my son was born; my father was only 29 when I was born. Yet despite the fact that more time will have elapsed between my childhood and my son’s than between my father’s and...
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tracking the abandoned
There is, presently, one railroad line through Ithaca, New York. Freight trains still use this line, taking coal to the Milliken power plant along Cayuga lake and hauling salt from the Cargill salt...
View ArticleOutside Lies Magic
In response to my post about following railroad tracks, commenter Richard Layman suggested I borrow his copy of John Stilgoe‘s Outside Lies Magic. I did (lending to him A Pattern Language and David...
View ArticleBringing Streetcars back to DC, part 1
Prologue Bringing a 50-mile streetcar network to Washington DC is the top priority for the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club. I have been following this issue with the Sierra Club since 2002, and it was...
View ArticleBringing Streetcars back to DC, part 2
Part 1 of this series looked at the beginnings of the DC government’s effort to expand the transit network. We left off in the Spring of 2005, having been to several meetings and having received...
View ArticleBringing streetcars back to DC, part 3
Parts 1 and 2 of this series looked at the public side of the DC Alternatives Analysis process that took place between 2002 and 2005. Several newsletters were published, public meetings were held, and...
View ArticleTravels with our toddler
We recently took Matthew on his first overnight train trip; regular viewers of the Matthew Picture of the Day can expect a couple of shots from on board. We took the Capitol Limited all the way to and...
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