Finally cleared off last night so it was a bright, sunny day this morning when I woke up. Not sure why I was up at 8:00 in the morning, not after making the mistake of drinking a diet Dr Pepper last night and suffering through an inability to get to sleep. So only about 5 hrs of sleep last night, and yet it seems like it was enough.

     Headed for the city of Roanoke late in the morning to see what sights it had to offer. Emma, my GPS, was still being stubborn and not acquiring any satellites, so I was feeling kinda screwed. I turned her on and off a dozen times, even rebooted the whole 'on' sequence a couple of  times. It wasn't until I unplugged her from the cigarette lighter and then plugged her back in that she started working correctly. Not sure what it was about doing that, or even if that had anything to do with her starting to work again, but you can bet I'll remember that trick for next time.

    Made it into the city with no problem and even made it to a very precise address where I met a friend for a nice lunch outside on the patio. The food was good, the company fun and the feel of the sun on my face was outstanding. A fun time there and then a quick hike up one of the local hills to a spot where we could look out over most of the city and the mountains in the distance. Other than a bit of humidity, it was a darn nice walk. Would of been even better if I hadn't been wearing a cotton sweat shirt... but at least I had shorts on.

    Had time after lunch to go over to the Roanoke Transportation Museum for a couple of hours. In fact I closed the place down as it was just so interesting. A very nice collection of old cars and trucks including several Model T's and A's, old Studebaker's and a couple other odd cars that I forget the names of. They did have a few more modern cars such as a nice 55 Impala and a 65 Mustang. One of the more interesting however was one of the few EV1's that didn't get crushed. This was the 1st modern electric car that came out back in the 70's as a leased car only. What is amazing to me is how much like a modern electric car it looked like, even way back then. There will be pictures at some point.

    There were other displays of some of the boats from the Virginia area as well as a couple of displays of small planes, jets and plane parts. They even had one whole display dedicated to Greyhound buses. But what was most interesting to me of course were the train cars and locomotives. Top of the list was the only 'J' model 4-8-4 steam locomotive still in existence. This is the very sleek, streamlined style of local that you might see in pictures of old classy train advertisements. Capable of speeds up to 110 mph it was once the Norfolk and Westerns passenger train pride. Next to it was one of the very few 2-6-6-2 articulated behemoths that use to latch on to more than 100 fully loaded coal cars and run them through the country side at better than 70 mph. An articulated locomotive was made up of two separate 'engines', each having, in this case, 6 driving wheels each. The set closest to the cab of the locomotive were rigidly attached to the frame like most loco's were and used high pressure steam to power the cylinders that drove the cranks and side rods on either side. A second engine was placed in front of this one and could actually swivel from side to side under the boiler. This allowed the whole loco to go around much sharper curves than one that couldn't swivel could. The 2nd engine was either powered by another set of high pressure steam cylinders, making it a 'simple' type of articulated, or it could reuse the steam from the 1st engine in a much larger, but lower pressured set of cylinders to power it. This would be considered a 'compound' style of engine. Either way they were often referred to as Mallet style locomotives after the man that invented them.

   Also out in the yard were several more modern diesel style locomotives including what was either an RS-2 or RS-3 style, I'm not real sure about the difference, engine. One of the 1st diesels introduced back in the late 40's and early 50's that would soon take over from steam locomotives. There were also a couple of small 0-4-0 tank style loco's and a nice 4-6-2 Pacific and a 2-8-0 Consolidation. Plenty of things to look at in any case.

    Decided to drive south out of the city on the way back to park just to see what there was to see. To that end I drove south to Martinsville where I was yesterday, and then back to the park from there. All in all a very nice day.

    Going to stay in the area most of tomorrow. Decided it was time to go do laundry tomorrow  some time and then head to Floyd later on. They evidently have a kind of street fair every Friday night there in town, with lots of local musicians playing and lots of arts and crafts type things going on. Sounds like fun anyway. Right now though it's time for bed.