Buildings
Johnstown Trip
On July 24, 2016, Dad and I visited the museum commemorating the Great Flood of 1889 which killed 2,209 people. Johnstown then was a coal, steel, and railroad town of 30,000 people, many immigrants from either Wales or Germany. It is about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, among the western ridges of the Appalachian Mountains. I only took one flood-related photo, near the lower entrance to the incline railway, maybe 25 feet above street level. When the floodwaters from a failed dam hit the city, the force was said to have been comparable to the Mississippi River. The destruction of the city and people portrayed by the museum is hard to watch.
Beside the flood, Johnstown is also known for its incline railway built just after the flood. We parked nearby, then walked very slowly in hot sun and perhaps 90F, 32C, across this pedestrian bridge to the lower station. As senior citizens, we could ride for nothing. Each car can carry 60 people, or 6 motorcycles, or one car. A single journey takes about ninety minutes. At one time it carried a million people a year, mostly commuting from homes above to industry below.
We know how much power it takes to do all that lifting.
So we were glad to find some excellent refreshment at the top.
David’s 95th birthday weekend
Above and the next two photos were taken by Elspeth. Old 95 Sweet and Strong Ale was specially brewed by Tim to celebrate David’s 95th birthday. Sandy took the first four in the bottom row, and Elspeth the last one. Click to enlarge or start the slideshow.
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Moving-In Day
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Christmas lights
Almost time to take them down.
General Election
Working the polls at Hartwood Church
Owen’s 3rd birthday
More at ElspethAndTim.
As the same train left Manassas station, I noticed the famous End of Train Device — see that tiny red box on the back of the last car, below. This was the technological advance in the late 70s which put almost all cabooses out of work within ten years. See Wikipedia EOT article.
With Ed, Loretta, and Amber
With Ed, Loretta, and Amber, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Those are the Chuhuly Red Reeds (see story), as also seen in 2010 at the Kennedy Center. The Robinson House is beyond.
Dark Satanic Mills
124 Argyle Road
As seen recently on Google Maps from St Stephens Ave:
Built about 1900 maybe, Wena’s birthplace, the Roberts home for sixty years. Not in frame was a renovator’s sign, Project One. Changes since we knew it: the front garden gone for parking of course, with new entrance on St Stephens Ave. Also gone, both the side door to the street (you can just make out the new brickwork where the door with no doorknob used to be). The nearby door in the wall permitting entry to the back garden is also gone. So is Ieuan’s motorbike shed, revealing either an extra window or a new door to the scullery. (And are those two kitchen windows new? Otherwise Ieuan’s shed would have blocked them, and I don’t remember that.) Definitely new since we were there, perhaps replacing the leaky old scullery skylight, is a vaulted skylight perhaps providing light both to the scullery and the dining room, probably a very nice idea. And there’s a new skylight above the back bedroom. Not in frame here, but a rather fuzzy view on Google seems to show an almost derelict garage at the bottom of the back garden, with an entrance from St Stephens Ave. The satellite view of Argyle Road at this point shows the strikingly straight row of perhaps twenty houses, presumably all the same except for this, the only one with a turret (above the master bedroom, which Ieuan said was the coldest, draughtiest room in the house). This house was said to have been kept by the builder for himself. I think Granddad must have bought it on his schoolteacher’s salary about 1920. It sold in 2002 for £700,000.