Los Angeles
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Los Angeles is vast. This is just one part of it. The distant mountain is Santiago Peak, 5,689' high.
A former MP GP38 treads lightly cutting across DHL’s express service parking lot while working the now defunct LA Times Olympic printing plant.
Amtrak’s No. 4 Southwest Chief soars above the LA River on the passenger fly-over behind a pair of P42s at dusk.
A cool hazy, but sunny morning at Redondo Junction finds BNSF 7831 leading a westbound ethanol train through the truss spanning the LA River as a pair of combined Metrolink commuters make their way to Union Station overhead.
Northridge is a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California in the San Fernando Valley. It is the home of California State University, Northridge, as well as eleven public and eight private schools.
Originally named Zelzah, the community was renamed North Los Angeles in 1929 to emphasize its closeness to the booming city. This created confusion with Los Angeles and North Hollywood. At the suggestion of a civic leader, the community was renamed Northridge in 1938. Northridge can trace its history back to the Gabrielino (or Tongva) people and to Spanish explorers. Its territory was later sold by the Mexican governor to Eulogio de Celis, whose heirs divided it for sale.
The area has been the home of notable people, and it has notable attractions and points of interest. Residents have access to a municipal recreation center and a public swimming pool.
The 2000 U.S. census counted 57,561 residents in the 9.47-square-mile Northridge neighborhood—or 6,080 people per square mile, among the lowest population densities for the city. In 2008, the city estimated that the population had increased to 61,993. In 2000 the median age for residents was 32, about average for city and county neighborhoods; the percentage of residents aged 19 to 34 was among the county's highest.
The 1994 Northridge earthquake was named for Northridge based on early estimates of the location of the quake's epicenter; however, further refinements showed it to be technically in neighboring Reseda. The earthquake, which occurred on a blind thrust fault, was one of the strongest ground motions ever recorded in North America. Freeways collapsed, and many buildings suffered irreparable damages. Vertical and horizontal accelerations lifted structures off their foundations. During the 1994 quake, the Northridge Hospital Medical Center remained open and treated more than 1,000 patients who came to the facility during the first few days after the 6.7-magnitude quake.
This was the second time in 23 years that the area had been affected by a strong earthquake. On February 9, 1971 the San Fernando earthquake (also known as the Sylmar earthquake) struck, having a magnitude of 6.5.
The Los Angeles County Arboretum is a 127-acre gem, a great place to take my new zoom lens because there are so many more things than my favorite birdie creatures. You might remember the opening scene of the long-running TV series, Fantasy Island, filmed at the Arb.
My nature lesson for the day, from Wikipedia: "Cycads - constituting the division Cycadophyta—are seed plants with a stout, woody cylindrical trunk with a crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and usually pinnate (feather-shaped) leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male or female. Cycads vary in size from having trunks only a few centimeters to several meters tall. They typically grow slowly and have long lifespans. They superficially resemble palms or ferns, but are not closely related to either group. Cycads are gymnosperms. Cycads have specialized pollinators, usually a specific beetle, and more rarely a thrips or a moth.
Both male and female cycads bear strobili, somewhat like conifer cones, containing their pollen and seeds, respectively. Cycads fix nitrogen in association with cyanobacteria living in their roots. Some species are used as narcotics, while in Vanuatu the plant symbolizes peace and appears on the national flag. Cycads all over the world are in decline, with four species on the brink of extinction and seven species each with fewer than 100 plants left in the wild."
One more of a busted strobilus (plural strobili) or cone tomorrow.
Metrolink 861, one of the few F59s still earning their keep, leads Orange County-bound train 626 over the passenger fly-over on its way south.
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The traffic was horrible up to the griffith observatory that day (I know... LA traffic..). When we finally found a place to park the car, the sun had already set, and we were running like maniacs to get to the observatory before the "good light" hit. As if that wasn't enough, when I had found a spot to put my tripod down, I could barely see a couple of miles. Fortunately the fog cleared up enough to clearly see Downtown, and I got a decent shot.