~ Andy
interesting building facades on Bridge Street (Jim Sacco's influence at work in me).
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A few weeks ago, my wife and I took a much-needed weekend getaway trip to Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. We stayed at the Lodge at Geneva-on-the-Lake, which was the site of the 2011 NMRA MCR Convention (take no offense, but it was better with my wife). Geneva is located in Ashtabula County which has lost many manufacturing jobs, particularly in the automotive industry, as a result of the economic downturn. However, they are making a play for tourism by promoting their many wineries and 17 covered bridges. With steady rain falling Saturday morning, it seemed like a good day to do a driving tour of the area. Looking at a map, I saw that we were less than 30 minutes west of Ashtabula where there are coal docks. We decided to head for the eastern end of the county via Ashtabula and Conneaut, following the shore of a very gray Lake Erie. ~ Andy We arrived in Ashtabula a short time later and after two turns found ourselves on Bridge Street where we were met by a raised drawbridge - not something we see often in Pennsylvania! Signs identified this as a bascule bridge, which I always thought was one that rotated about a vertical axis, but Wikipedia says I am mistaken. The name comes from the French term for "balance scale." The bridge guards the harbor where the Ashtabula River flows into Lake Erie. It is opened every half hour to allow recreational boats to pass beneath. While we waited for the drawbridge to lower, I couldn't help but study the interesting building facades on Bridge Street (Jim Sacco's influence at work in me). Bing Maps provides this nice overview looking north towards Lake Erie. There are actually five pennisulas that make up the coal docks. From what I can see, it looks like this is all for the purpose of loading material from rail cars onto ships, likely for export to other countries. There were no ships in dock during our brief visit, so it was nice to see a ship in this birdseye view from Bing. These pictures were the best I could get from the ground using a zoom lens. As if on cue, a CSX train arrived with loaded hoppers carrying what I believe was coke based on the medium gray color. My curiosity satisfied, we continued on another 15 minutes to Conneaut, Ohio, the northern terminus of the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad (now owned by Canadian National). My understanding is that CN makes good use of their hopper cars in both directions; coal is brought north from Pittsburgh for export, and iron ore (actually taconite) is hauled south from the Great Lakes to USS Edgar-Thomson Steel Mill in Braddock.
And one final image looking east shows the Conneaut Creek snaking around the loading areas to reach the lake (at left). The ground colors make it clear where taconite versus coal are handled! Thanks for joining me for this little journey - another item I can cross off my bucket list... It was then time to visit covered bridges and enjoy some wine tasting.
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A few weeks ago I installed a decoder into a non-DCC ready Atlas locomotive to allow it to run on our now DCC equipped layout. The task seemed daunting at first but turned out to be very simple. I will describe how I did this more in depth below but it can be summarized in four steps. |
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