Sorry it has been so long since the last post, it has been a very busy couple of days and it has turned out to be rather fun these last couple of days also.
    Made it into Florida on Thursday afternoon and spent my last night on the road in a rest area just west of the town of Tallahassee. That left me only a mere 200+ miles to drive on Friday to get to the campground I was aiming for. So there was no hurry to get there too early in the day so I dawdled some along the way stopping at the grocery store and a local Wally World near the highway.
   I pulled into Otter Springs Park around 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday and found that they had my reservation all ready to go. I just needed to sign my name a couple of times and then pull the trailer over to my site and get it all set up. They have me in a real nice site along one edge of the campground several campsites away from everyone, yet still pretty close to the bath house, laundry and swimming pool.
    Unhooking and setting up was easily accomplished since the site is pretty level over all. It was nice to see that the patch I did to the water hose, putting a new male fitting on, is holding up well with not a single drip when the water is on now.
   I pulled my hitch all the way off when I unhitched as there has been some problem with one of my torsion bars staying in place on bumpy roads. It did not surprise me to see that one of the welds in the piece that holds one end of the bar in place had busted out again. It had done so once before and my brother in law had beat it back into place and re-welded it for me last summer. But it busted out again over the last several months of travel and won't work like it is suppose to any more.  
   I am sure it can be fixed once again, maybe welding a couple extra brace pieces along side, but it is most likely at that point where it will cost me nearly as much to get it repaired as it will to buy a new one. So I will price a new set while I am up in Virginia this next month and see how it will work out. In the meantime I will keep the old one and see if my brother in law might like to have it just in case.
    So I pretty much just hung out at the trailer on Friday night. Did turn the water heater on and take a nice long shower that night, but otherwise I just chilled out and read my book.
    Yesterday was pretty busy for me though. I went ahead and drove into Gainsville in the early afternoon as there was holiday shopping that I still needed to do. Quick stops at some big box stores took care of most of my purchases for the day. It was also time to go get the tires rotated and checked so that was another hour or so out of the day.
    Last on the list for the day was to stop in at Trader Joes and pick up a case of cheap wine. Two Buck Chuck, or I guess it is now up to Three Bucks, it is all blended wines and despite how many disparaging remarks I have heard about it, it always seems to get drunken up none the less. As most taste tests have shown, if no one knew what it was, or how much it cost, it does very well against many wines that are much more expensive. I buy it to take up to the week long dance in Morgan Town WV during the week between Christmas and New Years Eve. And while I think my friends are worth the price of some decent wine, since many of the people who are drinking it are people I really don't know.... well to heck with them. ;)
    I ate dinner last night at the little hole in the wall Mexican place Rima and I found last year. They have huge burritos of all kinds on the menu as well as other real Mexican meals. I had a very nice goat burrito and some chips and salsa to go with lots of fresh brewed ice tea. It was all really yummy!
    Finally for the night; I went on over to the Gainsville Hippodrome, one of the local theatre's, and took in one of their holiday plays. Last nights pick was the 'Winter Wonderette's', one of a series of Wonderette plays that have been making the rounds of the states for a few years now. Not a great play by any means, it was still entertaining enough, and that is all that really matters. I'm really not even sure I would call it a play, as there really isn't much of a plot to it. They use the excuse of putting on a hardware stores holiday party for 4 women to sing and dance to a lot of different holiday songs and carols. The singing was pretty wonderful, all four of the women had pretty amazing voices, but that is about all it had going for it. Oh well, not every play can be Emmy worthy.
    I drove down to Ocala this afternoon in  order to finish up the last of my shopping. Wandered around a couple stores down there and picked up a few things I needed. Caught a quick bite to eat after that, and then headed on back up to Gainsville. They were having their by-monthly contra dance this afternoon and they had a special band and caller in for the dance. The band was Contra Force, three young musicians with a lot of sound and 'big' energy and the caller was Emily 'Rainbow Face' Abel. Another one of those young musician/callers that has been coming up through the ranks for the past couple of years.
    I got there just a little bit late, it's farther back there than I thought, but still had plenty of time to dance enough to get rather hot and sweaty. It was fun to see and talk to so many people whom I haven't seen or danced with for several months or more. Interesting to me is that the first women I danced with today though was actually from Arizona somewhere, I think Phoenix, but we both knew each other from dancing somewhere out west together at some point. Otherwise it was pretty much just Floridians from the local area that I got to dance with. It is a bit sad that today will be the only local dance I'll get to do for a while, but there will be plenty of time in the new year to dance a few more of the local dances in the area.
   The plan is to just hang out tomorrow and not do a whole lot. Will try to get a few  presents wrapped and then mailed out, but that may well mean a trip into town to buy wrapping paper at least. Oh well.
   Here are the rest of the photo's I took several weeks ago at the California Railroad Museum. Sorry for the delay. Sometimes life just gets in the way of the writing.

California Railroad Museum in Sacramento California.

Nov. 21, 2014



Several of the refurbished train cars they had on display. These from the 1800's were from several narrow gauge lines that worked up in the mining and timber towns of the Sierras and along the coast, such as the Virginia and Truckee RR and Monterey and Salinas Valley RR.

This combination passenger and baggage car is obviously from the Monterey and Salinas Valley RR's.

All of the cars and locomotives have been beautifully restored and painted before being exhibited.

Part of the inside of one of the passenger cars. Many Railroads competed with each other in which one could have the most ornate and beautiful cars on their lines.

A beautiful wood burning 4-4-0 'American' style wood burning locomotive. You can almost always tell a locomotive burned wood by this type of smoke stack on it.

During WWII many of the servicing jobs of the railroad were taken over by women as all the able bodied men went off to the war. Here you see one oiling up a big 2-8-2 'Mikado' locomotive.

This style of engine was often used as both motive power for passenger as well as freight trains. Fast moving passenger trains would often have 4 small wheels, or trucks, in front however, as it helped in following the curves of the tracks at high speed. They would also often have huge diameter driving wheels, sometimes in excess of 6 1/2 feet in diameter.

By the early 1950's the age of steam was on it's last legs. This engine, an EMD-F7 has always been one of my favorites. Used in combinations of from 1 to 4 units, in what were known as A or B Styles, the A unit looking like this one and the B unit being just an engine without the control cab, they started pulling many of the big 'named' trains such as the 'Sunset Limited' or the 'City of New Orleans'.



This one is painted in my favorite Santa Fe paint scheme known as the 'War Bonnet' style. It would of been wonderful to see a train headed up by a 4 unit, A-B-B-A set of engines followed by 16-18 heavy weight Pullman style passenger cars.

Back when train travel was still a big deal they would have a full galley on board. I was surprised to find out that they would often make up to 3,000 full meals, with appetizers, main entrees, bread and desert, per day.

One of the few places where people of color could not only work, but could excel and actually be in charge, would be in many of the service jobs required of running the railroad. Of course it still wasn't 'equal' in any way to what none minorities could do... but it was a start.

Locomotive #112 turns out to be the last engine my cousins grandfather ran while working for the Northwestern Pacific RR. So I had to take lots of pictures of it while there.

This is just about as classic of a look as you can get.

One last photo of the boiler front on locomotive #112.

This final picture is of part of the 'link and pin' style coupler that railroads used to join cars and locomotives together. Each car would have a fitting like this one on each end. To join two together, or to attach cars to a locomotive, a heavy steel bar with a hole at each end would be slipped inside the coupler box. The pin would be pulled up enough for the link to enter into  the box where the pin would go down through the hole and lock it in place. With a pin on each end, the cars would all be joined together. It doesn't look like it would be too hard to do, but I guess many, many railroad workers ended up losing fingers or hands or whole arms when they misjudged the speed or the angle or some other variable. All in all it was much better when the more modern knuckle coupler was invented.

brk*