Our RV Adventures

Our heartfelt thanks go out to all our service men and women who gave their time, and in many cases their lives, to protect our country.

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Our last day here at Park of the Sierras started about 10 am with coffee and some of Miss Terry’s warm banana nut muffins, and more work on our trip schedule for the next couple of months. It looks like things are falling into place and we have a pretty good idea where we’ll be until about 21st of July. After that things become a little more foggy. But it’ll all work out. It always does.

Going outside I was able to successfully bypass the tail light converter and get the lights working. I’ll replace the converter while we’re at the Lake Minden Thousand Trails Resort north of Sacramento starting tomorrow.

About 12:45, Nick, Terry, Jan, and I drove over to the Chukchansi Casino to meet Rick Phillips for lunch at the buffet.

We first met Rick last Thursday when we visited the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad.

Rick is the conductor on the railway and we enjoyed meeting and getting to know him.

Rick and his wife Laurie have a lot here at Park of the Sierras, and have known Nick and Terry for a number of years. We met Rick’s wife Laurie at the railroad where she works in the Railroad Museum. She was suppose to meet us for lunch today, but she was feeling under the weather, so it was just Rick today.

I was looking forward to talking more with Rick about the YMSPRR’s equipment, since most readers know how much I like trains, both big and little.

Lunch took a little longer than we had planned since it was so busy due to the holiday, but it did give us more time to talk.

After a really good meal at the Casino buffet and Jan losing $20 in the slots, we said our goodbyes and drove into Oakhurst to drop off a Gypsy Journal for Terry Nevins at the Taste of China restaurant where we ate last night, and then Terry wanted to stop back by Von’s to pick up some more of the blueberries they had on sale.

Getting home, I went over to Nick’s and finished putting his water bay back together after working on his black valve leakage problem. Finishing that up I got out my air compressor and added some air to one of my tires that always seems to lose some when when we’re parked. Then it was in for the night.

Later in the evening, Jan served some of the Miss Terry’s Kringle from last night.

The perfect end to a great day.

I’ve reposted some more train stuff from our visit to Pennsylvania in July of 2009.

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Thought for the Day:

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

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Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and more trains…

Originally posted on July 14, 2009

The indoor part of the Railroad Museum resembles a large railroad station, with multiple tracks full of trains.

This is the John Bull. It’s a replica of the first locomotive to run on a railroad in America.

In 1831 the first railroad was built between Philadelphia and New York and the John Bull was the engine. It’s hard to think now of how this revolutionized travel in the US.

It cut the travel time from Philadelphia to New York from 2 days by coach to 5 HOURS!. It’s hard to do that by car now.

I saw this same locomotive last week in the Smithsonian, but wasn’t able to get close enough to read the display due to the crowds. I was surprised to learn here that the one I had seen in the Smithsonian was the REAL John Bull, from 1831.

It ran a regular route until 1866, then traveled around the US on exhibitions until it was donated to the Smithsonian in 1884.

This beautiful example of a 2-6-0 Mogul locomotive carried silver ore on the Virginian & Truckee railroad in Nevada from 1875 to 1944.

The ’2-6-0′ type of nomenclature describes the layout of a locomotive’s wheels, and only applies to steam type locomotives.

The Mogul above has 2 small wheels up front, 6 drive wheels in the middle, and no small wheels in the rear. Thus, it is a 2-6-0.

This locomotive #7002, dates from 1902 and was the first one in regular service to exceed 100 mph.

Note that this one is a 4-4-2, although you can just barely see the 2 wheels under the tender at the far right of the photo.

Arguably the largest locomotive ever built was the ‘Big Boy’ built for the Union Pacific to pull large coal trains up and down the Rockies out West.

Note that this one is a 4-8-8-4. That’s a lot of wheels.

Below is a type of locomotive I’d never heard of.

This one is unusual in that it doesn’t have a boiler or generate its own steam. It’s basically just a big thermos bottle. It’s filled up with live steam from a stationary boiler and then operated, usually in the rail yard, until it needed to be refilled.

Outside was even better.

It was a rail yard full of more trains. And it has a real operating roundtable, used to move locomotives in and out of the yard.

Even more locomotives…

And a rail crane used to lift derailed engines and cars back on the track.

I’ve always been fascinated by the big steam engines and this was a great chance to see them up close.

Today was our last full day in Pennsylvania so we headed into Philadelphia to see some sights.

We started off with another duck tour with Ride The Ducks. Here we are hitting the Delaware River on our trip.

We saw Betsy Ross’ house, the site where William Penn first landed in Pennsylvania, and more.

After our tour, we had a Philly Cheesesteak from a street vendor before visiting Independence Hall,

And the Liberty Bell.

Finally, we headed home, stopping by Wal-mart on the way.

For dinner we did the smorgasbord at Miller’s again.

And then home to get ready to leave for NY tomorrow.