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I was sitting at my desk last Friday when I got a call from the boss telling me to get my bum out the door and get a picture of the moon. I had no idea what he was talking about so I wandered around my building until I saw it. It was gorgeous!! Like a good employee I rounded everyone up for a look and while all were nicely distracted, I slipped out the backdoor. :-)
Totally uncomfortable with night photography, there I was in the freezing cold and wondering how to do this. There is a line in a song I like, "It is better to feel pain, than nothing at all," and let me tell you, it was painful. :-) Literally, my hands hurt, I could't feel my face, also no tripod. So I propped the camera up on a bollard and gave it a try. I lasted ten minutes max before I thought I would freeze to the earth.
Anyhow...here is the wolf moon. I wasn't sure if I was doing it justice but regardless, I loved being out there. Me and night photography.....a stubborn love.
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I'm snowed in today but cozy, happy, and hopped up on coffee. Wishing you all the same good Friday feels!
I swear everytime I post something its related to some stupid change which has occured. Ugh. The last of the MRL locomotives have finally been removed from mainline service due to BNSF PTC going live. How ironic that the MRL was actually who began this PTC project but in the end became the victim. It's truly a waste as all 5 GP35's are likely sidelined but at the very least unable to lead trains any longer. Over the last few years of its existence the MRL spent over $500,000 to upgrade all 6 GP35's with a complete rewire and upgrade of the control system. MRL 405 has an easy tell by the red antennae right behind the cab. A close eye will also reveal the MRL 404 has been completed, as the class lights it wore its entire career have been removed and tastefully patched during the rewire. This was all done in house by MRL employees, not contractors. Now, who knows what will happen to them? Always thought they were pretty neat units who didn't seem to be very popular elsewhere but for the most part were very good workhorses in local service across Montana.
I went to our local Woolworth to see what they had for Halloween and I found myself being watched. Maybe I should confront this employee I thought and was stumped by the worried look. Is it possible redundancies are on the agenda?
PS: Until I went close to this skeleton (life size) I had no idea it had eyes, it was almost a bit scary
In 2019, UP unveiled a new special paint that celebrated the company’s employees. UP 1111 would tour the system shortly after, making stops at every major terminal across the railroad’s thousands of miles of track. However, the irony of the locomotive made it a target of graffiti shortly after being put into service, with UP laying off many employees shortly after making 1111. Despite this, two years later UP would make another one of these units, this time celebrating the company’s diversity.
Just after six years of service, 1111 is seen bringing an MPDRV onto its final miles into Roseville. It was quite the problematic train, a centerbeam with a problem, the train took ten hours from Dunsmuir to Roseville, and a hot axle caused the train to stop just minutes after taking this photo. The train would finally get into Roseville shortly after 9 PM.
There were a few WC units lettered for different things over the years. 7551, 3012 and CR 3312 lead GBSOA at Gilchrist on January 31, 1999. The run through CR GP40(or any other run through power) wasn't common east of Gladstone. The little trees that had recently been planted in this location are probably 25 feet tall now and this location that I'd shot from 1975 through the WC era is now grown in, not that your likely to see a morning eastbound here anyway nowadays.
Here's a close up detail shot of this week's Freight Car Friday offering that I posted earlier with this caption:
For this week’s Freight Car Friday here is an old covered hopper that caught my eye entrained on Providence and Worcester Railroad local PR-3 rolling through ORMS interlocking on Main 7 at MP 186 of Amtrak’s New Haven Line main headed to the Port of Providence. This car is now lettered SLWX 1137 for its present owner Saltine Warrior and is used in short haul rock salt service between the port and Vermont salt sheds. The car is clearly of Chicago and Northwestern Railway provenance and is a 263K, 60 ft. 4750 cu ft covered hopper built in Feb. 1981. I’m not sure of the original number or manufacturer of this car but suspect it was originally in the 190000-19099 series of 1000 cars built that year the first 500 by Berwick Forge and Fabricating and the second 500 by Ingalls Shipbuilding at the Decatur, AL plant. If anyone can confirm the manufacturer and original number I’d love to know.
The car still carries its classic ball and bar logo with the ‘Employee Owned’ moniker from the period after 1972 when the struggling granger was spun off from the parent company to its employees after they were unsuccessful in selling or merging the road. The idea first belonged to Larry Provo, who had joined the company as an accountant at age 29 and would go on to succeed Heineman as president. After two years of negotiations, the employee buyout deal was completed in early 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, employee purchasers had to commit to buy at least $1 million worth of stock. In May, $3.6 million worth of shares were bought when the stock was offered, making the company the largest employee-owned corporation in the United States. One thousand of the 14,000 employees of CNW took part in the purchase, ranging from Provo himself, who invested $100,000, the maximum allowed, to secretaries who bought the minimum ten shares for $500. The official name of the company was then changed to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. In order to create an easier mechanism for diversifying, a new holding company, CNW Corporation, was formed in 1985 and after about that date the employee owned logo was no longer used.
In 1989, CNW Corporation was purchased in a leveraged buyout by a group of investors that was led by Blackstone Capital Partners L.P. The group also included the securities firm Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette, the Union Pacific Railroad, and CNW senior mangement. The buyout was engineered in order to avert a hostile takeover attempt by Japonica Partners, a New York-based investment group. Valued at $950 million, the buyout exceeded Japonica’s bid of $747 million. A new holding company, Chicago and North Western Holdings Corporation, was thus formed to take the place of CNW Corporation, which continued to exist on paper as a subsidiary to “Holdings” and parent company to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. As part of a $1.2 million recapitalization of CNW, the company went public once again in 1992 with a $200 million stock offering, but this final era was short lived and in 1995 the Union Pacific bought out the shares it didn’t own and merged the CNW out of existence into its vast system.
Providence, Rhode Island
Monday April 20, 2026
UP 1111, an SD70ACe honoring employees, slowly moves west through the town of Glen Ellyn with manifest train MCHNP as they are behind a westbound Metra.
I revisited the closed bridges that must have connected Mahwah, NJ with the ford plant across the Ramapo River.
Bodie, ghost City in a middle of nowhere in California
In 1859 William (a.k.a. Waterman) S. Bodey discovered gold near what is now called Bodie Bluff... On day ... 10 000 persons lived here.
104 leads an employee train at Joliet in July of 92. The train operated from Corwith to Joliet and return.
Hard Rock Café, Pier 39, San Francisco, California, USA
© Xuan-Cung Le
All rights reserved
seen in :
Only one more minute after shooting number 25 I lensed number 26 out of 54 trains I ultimately photographed in the span of 4 hr 45 min here at Dobbs Ferry. Metro North train 876 is a 4:31 PM inbound from Poughkeepsie making a 1 hr 44 minute trip to Grand Central Terminal.
The train consists of seven cars (various models of Bombardier 'Shoreliner' coaches of which MN operates 133 in east of Hudson service) shoved by GE P32AC-DM 214 (blt. Apr. 1998 and one of 31 on the roster including four owned by CDOT and dressed in New Haven McGinnis style colors). This unit is the fifth of seven (so far) special Metro North 'heritage' units and pays tribute to the railroad's employees with the mosaic images on on the unit being made up of over 3000 individual photos of the railroad's workers
You can read more about this unit here: www.mta.info/press-release/photos-metro-north-railroad-un...
This is MP 20.5 as measured from Grand Central Terminal on modern day Metro North's Hudson Line, the four track former New York Central water level route which traces its history here back to 1849. In 1913 the NYC installed third rail electrification through here as far as Harmon, 33 miles north, a system that remains to this day.
Today this route is astonishingly busy with over 150 MNCW trains passing this point on weekdays with electric MUs operating as far as Croton-Harmon and diesel powered trains to Poughkeepsie, 73 miles north. In addition another 22 Amtrak trains pass to and from points as far flung as Burlington, VT, Montreal and Toronto in Canada, and Chicago. Lastly rounding out the parade is a nightly CSXT road freight between Selkirk Yard near Albany and Oak Point Yard in the Bronx.
A dozen miles down river can be seen the George Washington Bridge and less than twenty miles away are the high rises of Midtown Manhattan.
Village of Dobbs Ferry
Town of Greenburgh, New York
Friday June 20, 2025
Still looking remarkably good 23 (ugh...) years post-merger, is the CNW 178323. This PS 4750 was built in March '80 (class CH 100-226), and when I photographed it, the car had been set out in Union Pacific's yard in Lawrence, KS.
Sad news today with Stobart Air going into liquidation with immediate effect 12th June 2021.
Stobart Air had been a regional carrier in Ireland & UK, operating the "regional " brand for Aer Lingus using its fleet of ATR42 & 72 aircraft with 480 employees who have now lost their jobs & thoughts with them at this difficult time, the aviation industry continues to suffer badly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stobart Air ATR 72 EI-FAV "St. Eithne" is seen above in happier times in September 2015, humour from the flight deck - thank you :-)
In March 1943, about 1,000 international people living in Shanghai were interned in Chapei Civil Assembly Centre by the Japanese. As the war progressed, food rations became smaller and less varied. Many people living in the camp were helped by people living in Shanghai from countries which were neutral during WWII, like Sweden. Also Chinese employees from foreign companies sent their former colleagues food.
This photo shows a label of such a food aid package, sent by the Swedish family Asker, to the Dutch family Hennus. Mr. C.G.C. Asker worked for the Maritime Customs Service of China (as per Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China 1854 –1949 Part Three: Semi-Official Correspondence from Selected Ports by Professor Robert Bickers, University of Bristol).
The text reads:
"DONOR: Mr C G C Asker, Swedish ...
1300 Rue Lafayette
CONTENTS:
Milk powder, 12 ozs
Jam, 1 tin 12 ozs
Sugar, 2 lbs
Margarine 1 lb
Peanuts 2 lbs
Tomato sauce, 1 bot
Cocao cubes 1 pkt
Fruit drops, 3 pkt
BENEFICIARY:
Master M F Hennus, Netherlands, C.829
CHAPEI CIVIL ASSEMBLY CENTRE
4th Febr. 1944"
Chapei Civil Assembly Centre was liberated on 15 August 1945, 76 years ago today.
California Digital Newspaper Collection, Vestkusten, Number 39, 28 September 1944:
"SWEDEN PRAISED FOR ASSISTANCE IN BRINGING AID TO WAR PRISONERS. By Dr. I). A. Davis, Associate Executive Director, Y. M. C. A. Worlds Committee,
Sweden and Switzerland, spared the horrors of warfare, are doing their share to lighten the burden of war victims. These two neutral countries are cooperating with the War Prisoners Aid of the Y. M. C. A., with headquarters in Geneva and New York, in sending material aid to war prisoners and civilian internees in Europe and the Far East. The rights and privileges of more than 6,000,000 prisoners of war confined behind barbed wire throughout the world are protected by the treaty called “The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” signed by 47 nations on July 27, 1920. Among other things the Geneva Convention specifies that various welfare organizations may have access to war prison camps to render certain services to prisoners; thus War Prisoners Aid, under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. World’s Committee carries on its stimulating programs of educational, recreational and religious activities among war prisoners, regardless of race, creed or nationality. The role that Sweden plays in this important services are manifold, for giving financial support as well as supplying materials for leisure-time activities. They provide also a large percentage of the personell necessary. From Sweden comes books, writing materials, lumber and other materials hardly found now in other european countries and piany of the neutral secretaries are permitted to visit war prison and internment camps. “We sail never forget what your Swedish colleague, Hoffman, did for us in England,” said a German prisoner of war to Gunnar Celander, Swedish representative of War Prisoners Aid, during a recent prisoner of war exchange between Germany and England, through Sweden. Boatloads of German prisoners from Canada, U. S. and .England, and British prisoners from Germany, docked at Trelleborg and Goteborg, while they transferred to boats waiting to take them home.
The Swedish Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross Lottas, Swedish rail roads and welfare organizations assumed a large portion of the responsibility of looking after these men— most of whom were invalided and blind during their short stay in the country. Food, travel facilities, reading matter, games, gramophones supplied with records of German and British music were made available to make the men comfortable. Crown princess Louise visited the prisoners, with representatives of the Swedish government, who officially welcomed them. Mr. Celander reported “We Swedes are happy that it was the privilege of our country to arrange this exchange of prisoners in the spirit of conciliation and kindness in the midst of the fire of conflict. I longed to share with the entire Y. M. C. A. and its secretaries the memory of the happy faces these homeward-bound prisoners and their many proofs of gratitude. All these men can testify that we were able to serve them in of their liberation. That is the highest reward and greatest encouragement for our work.” In Stockholm a War Prisoners Aid office is under the able leader their capacity as well as in' these days ship of Hugo Cedergren, Associate Director of Y. M. C. A., and National Secretary of the Swedish Y. M. C. A. Mr. Cedergren, who has visited prisoners in Europe, U. S. and Canada, said recently in America: “The spirit of prisoners is excellent. I can say that honestly from my own experience. The treatment they are receiving is correct and good.” Mrs Ceder gren is the daughter of Prince Oscar Bernadotte, brother of King Gustaf. He is honorary president of the Swedish Y. M. C. A. Pastor Carl-Erik Wenngren of the Stockholm Diocese, Associated National .Secretary of the Swedish Y. M. C. A., is now in U. S. as a neutral representative of the Ecumenical Commission for Chaplaincy Service to prisoners of war, of the World Council of Churches, and as a representative of War Prisoners Aid of the Y. M. C. A. He is visiting camps throughout America carrying the message of the church, especially to German prisoners, conducting services and other functions of a minister. Gunnar Celander, Henry Soderberg, Gunnar Janssen, O, M. Carlman and Erik Berg have been recruited from Sweden to visit war prison camps in Germany, while Bengt Hoffman carries War Prisoners Aid service to allied fliers detained in Sweden in compliance with neutrality laws. Civilan internment camps in France ares visited by mr. and Mrs. Hemming Andermo. The Swedish representative in India is Fredrik Franklin. (In the Philippine Islands, aid to prisoners of war and civilian internees is carried on under a neutral committee of Swiss, Irish, Danish, French, Belgian and Norwegian citizens, headed by Swedish Ex-Consul Helge A. Jansson, in Manila, and appointed by W. J. K. Bagge, Swedish Minister to Japan, since July 1942, chairman of neutral citizens, responsible for Y. M. C. A. services to prisoners and internees in Japan and Japanese-controlled areas. All contact between War Prisoners Aid and Japanese government are made through Stockholm. Through Minister Bagge, War Prisoners’ Aid received the first complete information about aid work in the Philippines. Final permission was given by the Japanese for the YMCA to purchase monthly in the Philippines sorely needed relief supplies for shipment to camps there in which Allied prisoners are interned. War Prisoners’ Aid service to allied war prisoners and civilian internees in Japan and Japan-held territory other than the Philippines is headed by I. P. Troedsson, Swedish Consul to Japan, assisted by N. E. Ericson of the Swedish Legation in Tokyo, under supervision of Minister Bagge. Swedish representatives of War Prisoners’ Aid make regular visits to camps in Japan are B. Gawell, John Anderson, A. Swensson and O. Pettersson, C. G. C. Asker works in Shanghai, and in Thailand, War Prisoners’ Aid service is carried to prisoners of war by F. Ehnstedt, Swedish Consul there. N. Arne Bendtz, with headquarters in Chungking, is in charge of War Prisoners Aid Services in Free China. He was responsible for taking aid not long ago to the more than two hundred German and Italian Catholic Fathers who had been interned for more than a year in the Honan Province. Traveling hundreds of miles over famine-stricken war-ridden country by car, rickshaw and on foot, climbing bleak, rugged hills, fording gushing streams, enduring scorching heat, mud and a plague of locusts, Bendtz finally reached his destination and found that the missionaries were living in dilapidated buildings, lacked essential food and clothing and faced grave financial difficulties. “For about three weeks I lived among these Catholic missionaries sharing their daily life, which I shall never forget,” wrote Bendtz in his report to Geneva. “They had suffered a lot during the past year and we came, as one said, “like an angel from Heaven, to soothe and comfort their sorrowful hearts.” “They had not met another foreigner since internment, and the concerts and speeches made in honor of the War Prisoners’ Aid representative were visible tokens of their gratitude.” Solutions to many problems facing War Prisofters’ Aid of the YMCA, a participating agency of the National War Fund, in its service to prisoners and civilian internees in Europe and the Far East, are greatly facilitated by the cooperation of Sweden.
Swedish representative of Y. M. C. A. War Prisoners’ Aid, Henry Soderberg (center), talks with prisoner and German camp official in war prison camp somewhere in Germany."
Courtesy Hennus family archives
It's gone, but far from forgotten. When I'm out trackside, I love to capture heralds from fallen flags on freight cars. The Chicago & North Western has always been a favorite. So, when I saw an old C&NW Pullman Standard covered hopper on a cut of cars in Ogden, UT, I had to capture a photo of the classic logo.
Metro-North Railroad P32AC-DM no. 214 is seen leading the railroad's employee holiday train through Brewster Station, bound for Southeast Yard. The locomotive is the newest in the railroad's 40th Anniversary fleet, and is decorated with numerous employee photos as a mosaic of locations along the three east-of-Hudson lines.
UP 1111, the Employee Pride Unit heads up Union Pacific train MPRAS (Manifest, Proviso, IL, to Alton & Southern RR run-through, East St. Louis, IL) as it blasts through Thornton Jct. in South Holland, Illinois on UP's former C&EI/MoPac-L&N Villa Grove Sub. The second and third cars of the train are hitting the diamond with CSX's former GTW Elsdon Sub.
I suspect Thornton Jct. had its name from the village by that name to the south before the village of South Holland annexed this far south and grabbed up this land.
The wooden armstrong lever tower that controlled the diamond here lasted into the 1980's, possibly the 1990's(?).
UP SD70ACe 1111 began life as UP 8362 before being repainted and renumbered by UP, and was built by EMD for Union Pacific in May of 2005.
To see more information and watch 1111 get repainted in hyper-speed, check out UP's own video below. I take no credit for creating UP's video:
Pretty sure this was right in the back corner, as there's another of those directories right there beside the door, for my much-needed guidance!
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Rite-Aid, 1998-built (closed May 2018), Goodman Rd. at Tulane Rd., Horn Lake MS
Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.
The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.
Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.
Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".
Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.
In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).
Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.
Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.
As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.
As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.
Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.
Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.
On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.
The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.
During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.
In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.
The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.
Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.
The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.
Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.
By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942
In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.
Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.
The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.
Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .
Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.
The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.
In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.
The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.
Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.
The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.
The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.
The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.
After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.
Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.
The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.
During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.
During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.
In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.
From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.
One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.
In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.
The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.
Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.
In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.
In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.
At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.
Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.
In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.
Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.
Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.
To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.
Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.
In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.
Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.
In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.
I took this from the Gatwick Express train on our way back home. It was interesting to learn about the redevelopment of Battersea. See below for a description of the project.
From New York Magazine
Written by: Justin Davidson
nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/review-of-the-redeveloped...
“If you were going to anoint a single great temple to the deity of fossil fuel, you might choose the Battersea Power Station, just across the Thames from some of the costliest real estate in London. From the 1930s through the ’70s, it sucked up coal and pumped out electricity. Now it’s burning through £9 billion ($11.5 billion) in the hope of generating much, much more, and that process of transformation is an awesome, troubling thing to behold. Bristling with cranes, it hulks over the river like some rough beast, slouching toward Westminster. Londoners know it from a distance — the quartet of chimneys jabbing at clouds, its mountainous brick bulk — but few have been inside. That will soon change, along with everything else about it.
I recently toured the construction site with Sebastien Ricard, an architect at the firm Wilkinson Eyre who is in charge of disemboweling, shoring up, and rebuilding the structure for use as a zone of white-collar lifestyle and work. Even when I stand inside the shell, the great fluted columns of the turbine hall rising toward a distant ceiling, the scale of the place is hard to fathom. One of the two boiler houses is filled with an impenetrable thicket of scaffolding. In the other, fresh armatures of concrete and steel have grown up beneath a new roof. Not long ago, Battersea Power Station was a ruin, left exposed by a developer who went bankrupt before he made good on a plan for an open-air amusement park. For years, only the rain and the odd nocturnal creature penetrated the decaying interiors.
Now, money is flowing again, thanks to a consortium of the Malaysian development group Setia, Sime Darby Property, and Employees Provident Fund. Ricard points out a vast slab of raw concrete that one day will host cocktail parties, with expansive views onto the Thames. Beyond, an undergrowth of apartment blocks is already growing around the outer walls, supplemented by an esplanade, a riverboat stop, and a couple of still-quiet cafés. Leisure is on the move.
There’s something simultaneously exciting, a little sad, and bracingly preposterous about the rehabilitation: exciting because the project brings fresh life to a central city tract that has been forlorn for a couple of generations; sad because that life consists of a narrow and familiar set of ways to make and spend money. Preposterous because the task of converting a huge machine for the postindustrial era means treating it as a precious relic. To satisfy Historic England, the body that oversees “listed” buildings, the developers had to demolish and rebuild four of those graceful but useless smokestacks, match thousands of damaged tiles, and order a million hand-made bricks from the same workshops that furnished the originals. It’s a multibillion-dollar fixer-upper.
The largest brick building in Europe, it inspired awe in the kingdom of energy. The architect was Giles Gilbert Scott, who brought a classicizing finesse to tough utilitarian structures like the Bankside Power Station that later became Tate Modern, and the U.K.’s famous red telephone booth. (The booth has an exquisite architectural pedigree: It’s based on the 19th-century architect Sir John Soane’s mausoleum, which in turn got its characteristic shallow dome from the breakfast room in Soane’s own house.) As if to guard against inevitable obsolescence, Scott encrusted the Battersea colossus with Art Deco flourishes, including the opulent control room with coffered ceilings. (In the next incarnation, that will become an event space.)
The power station burned a million tons of coal a year, hewn from the ground under Northumberland and Wales, hauled by train or loaded on barges, and transferred from a jetty on the Thames. When the facility was first proposed, Londoners objected to the idea of spitting so much coal smoke into the air of their city center. Not to worry, the journal Nature chirped in 1932: Recent technological advances had “proved conclusively that the emission of sulphur fumes can be reduced to a negligible quantity.” That was partly true: An innovative process scrubbed the gases of their most noxious ingredients by “washing” them with water — which was then dumped into the Thames. Keeping the lights on amounted to a choice between visibly poisoning the air and invisibly poisoning the river. Eventually, though, coal did both. In 1952, a thick cloud laden with toxins settled over London, and by the time it dissipated five days later, it had killed 12,000 people. Battersea’s B section was still under construction.
It was the album cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals that gave the almost-retired plant a global profile and a reputation for mayhem that continued through rock concerts, festivals, and raves. (Algie, the inflatable pink pig tethered to one of the chimneys for the photo shoot, broke free and soared into the Heathrow Airport flight path; police helicopters chased it for miles until it alighted in a field in Kent.) The powerhouse glowered over the banks of the Thames, but it loomed even more impressively in the lives of commuters, who passed its great brick cliffs on the train just before pulling into Victoria Station. “It looked like a gate, or a castle,” says the aptly named Peter Watts in his book Up in Smoke: the Failed Dreams of Battersea Power Station. “When it came into view, that was the moment you were entering the city, which was always so much more exciting than whatever town in Surrey you were coming from. It looked primal and permanent. I fantasize that at the end of days, everything else will be gone and the power station will remain.”
And yet the apparently eternal hulk was supremely fragile. In 2004, it cropped up on the World Monuments Fund’s endangered list. Dozens of schemes, each more grandly harebrained than the last, were rolled out, threatening various combinations of rescue and destruction. The New York–based architect Rafael Viñoly contributed several idas: A decade ago, a group of Irish developers hired him to design a new ostensibly “clean” power plant tucked below ground and topped with a new 1,000-foot chimney, next to an office park that would have been covered by a plastic “eco-dome.” That dream went the way of so many others in the 2008 financial crisis. Later, the Chelsea Football Club recruited Viñoly to design a soccer stadium there, though what he really wanted was a concert hall. The architect Terry Farrell suggested stripping the carcass down to four chimneys and two walls and enshrining it in parkland as an immense, evocative ruin. That proposal addressed the central conundrum of its redevelopment. Preserving the structure’s mysterious isolation, its sheer brooding strangeness, meant leaving the land around it vacant or, at most, scattering it with low-rise buildings the way a medieval village huddles around its cathedral. But builders don’t make money by not building, and the quantities of cash needed to preserve the thing, never mind reinvigorate the area, were inconceivably enormous. By 2014, the station was back on the WMF’s watch list again.
When Setia and its partners landed the site, Viñoly returned, this time with a plan that wrapped the brick monolith in glass apartment complexes (one designed by Frank Gehry, another by Norman Foster), close-cropped lawns, and fountains with the usual dancing jets of water. A year and a half from now, a new Northern Line Underground stop will stitch a long-inaccessible area back into Central London.
The power station itself will contain an immense indoor shopping center and rentable party spaces, topped by crow’s-nest penthouses. Apple has scooped up most of the offices that will crown the structure. Wilkinson Eyre’s design reclaims the site’s history and smooths it over at the same time, inserting an elegantly generic lattice of black steel, glass walls, and airy voids. Where once generators roared, now milk will be foamed, code written, and brand identities polished.
One detail captures the ethos of spectacular silliness that pervades almost every huge development project these days: a sightseeing elevator that glides up through one of the pristine chimneys and pops out the top, giving passengers a quick 360-degree vista, before dropping back inside. Let’s hope that a metamorphosis on this imperial scale yields something more solid and meaningful than a soap bubble with a view. Still, if this all seems more like a default option than a thrilling destiny, consider the imaginative alternatives that failed because of the site’s sheer scale and the possible squandered fortunes. The current future isn’t ideal, but it’s probably the least bad solution — far better than just letting the whole thing collapse into a disconsolate pile of rubble.”
Source: New York Magazine
Wien - Donau City
Mischek Tower
Donau City, or Vienna DC, is a new part of Vienna's 22nd District Donaustadt, next to both the Reichsbrücke and the left bank of the Danube's 21.1 km new channel, Neue Donau.
Construction work for the first building on this site, the Andromeda Tower, started in 1996.
Although the Danube river has been inextricably connected with Vienna, for centuries, it had played only a subordinate role in the city of Vienna.
Unlike in many other cities, the Danube River, because of the numerous floods it regularly caused, was omitted from the urban area. Buildings grew up in Vienna on both sides of the Danube - but not up to the Danube. Only after extensive flood-control engineering and the creation of the New Danube relief channel, with Danube Island, in the 1970s, was the surrounding cityscape of the Danube of interest to builders.
The establishment of Donau City had its origins in the organization of the Vienna International Garden Festival in 1964. This was on a site of a former landfill, later superficially rehabilitated, in an area between the Old Danube and the New Danube.
In 1962, the construction of the Danube Tower began, and two years later, the Garden Festival was held. The site of the garden show was known as Donaupark. Not far from Donaupark, in 1967, the planning of the UNO-City was started, opened in 1979. Through the construction of the U1 and the Reichsbruecke (Empire Bridge), the UN-City had a high-ranking access to the traffic system.
The terrain gained increasing importance with the opening of the congress center Austria Center Vienna in 1987. Next, at the end of the 1980s, there were plans to hold a Vienna-Budapest EXPO along the northern bank of the Danube in Vienna. However, the planned EXPO 1995 was canceled because a majority of Viennese voters rejected it in a referendum on the project. The site was then developed for a subsequent use as a multifunctional district.
In 1991, the EXPO organizing corporation was succeeded by the Vienna Danube Region Development Corporation (WED), with major Austrian banks and insurance companies (BA-CA, Erste Bank, Raiffeisen Bank for Labor and Economy, Invest Bank AG, UNIQA, Wiener Städtische) as principal shareholders.[2] WED owns the area and is responsible for its overall development. Within a few years, the district became a second urban center in Vienna, with residential and office buildings, research facilities, recreational facilities and event locations.
Work on the construction of infrastructure for future use began in 1993. The Danube Bank Motorway (A22) was roofed over, providing more area. The foundation for the first building was completed in 1995, with the start of construction of the Andromeda Tower.
The total area is 17.4 hectares. Of this total, approximately 1.7 million cubic meters are used for construction, which represents a gross floor area of approximately 500,000 square meters. Nearly two-thirds of those buildings are already completed and utilized.
Following the cancellation of the EXPO in 1991 was then still in the undeveloped area within a few years, an urban centre with residential and office buildings, research facilities, recreational facilities and event locations, the Donau City.
The Donau City development concept is a broad mix of uses: office and commercial uses, up to 70 percent, residential use of about 20 percent, and cultural and Freitzeiteinrichtungen of approximately 10 percent.
Approximately 7,500 people currently live and work in this new "city within a city". With the overall expansion, which is expected to be completed in 2012, the population could increase to 15,000. International companies such as IBM, sanofi-aventis and Bauholding Strabag SE are also located in Donau City. Also established are well-known high-tech companies that deal with their employees and scientific institutions in Vienna's first Science and Technology Park, Tech Gate Vienna.
In addition to the above institutions, Donau City has stores, restaurants, cafes, offices, a school and a church. The area bordering the Danube Island has recreation areas, Donaupark and Old Danube. Donau City has two direct connections to the motorway network, and the Vienna International Airport is about 20 minutes away.
(Wikipedia)
Die Donau City ist ein ab 1996 neu errichteter Stadtteil im 22. Wiener Gemeindebezirk, Donaustadt. Sie liegt unmittelbar neben der Reichsbrücke und ist das stadtzentrumsnächste Viertel am linken Donauufer.
Die Donau ist untrennbar mit der Geschichte Wiens verbunden, verlief aber jahrhundertelang außerhalb der Stadt und fungierte als Verkehrsweg ebenso wie als Verkehrshindernis. Die zahlreichen Überschwemmungen des unregulierten Stromes ließen es nicht geraten erscheinen, wichtige Gebäude direkt am Wasser, in den flachen Donauauen oder auf den vom Strom gebildeten Inseln zu errichten. Brücken bestanden zumeist aus Holz und mussten nach Hochwässern nicht selten neu errichtet werden.
Die Donauregulierung von 1870 bis 1875 machte das Areal der Donau City durch den neu angelegten Hubertusdamm, der parallel zum neuen Hauptstrom das Hinterland vom Überschwemmungsgebiet abgrenzte, hochwassersicher. Der bisherige Hauptstrom wurde zum stehenden Gewässer, Alte Donau genannt. Auf dem Areal befanden sich aber ein Altarm, das südlich der Wagramer Straße bis heute bestehende Kaiserwasser, und Aulandschaften, die als Bauland vorerst nicht gefragt waren. 1935 erwarb die Stadt Wien dieses Auland vom Stift Klosterneuburg. Teile des Areals dienten zwischen den Weltkriegen und danach als Mistablagerungsstätte, andere Teile wurden mit Schrebergärten besiedelt. Die schlechte Bauqualität der in Notzeiten errichteten Hütten führte zum Namen Bretteldorf. Die Pachtverträge der rund 1000 Einwohner dieses Gebietes wurden von der Stadt bis in die 1960er Jahre nach und nach gekündigt. Im Gegenzug erweiterte diese die Mülldeponie.
Die Freimachung des Geländes (die frühere Deponie wurde nur oberflächlich saniert) und die Abhaltung der Wiener Internationalen Gartenschau 1964 (WIG 64) auf einem Teil des Areals bildeten die Initialzündung für alle weiteren städtebaulichen Investitionen. Der ab 1962 errichtete Donauturm wurde zum Wahrzeichen der Gegend; das Gartenschaugelände blieb als sogenannter Donaupark großteils bis heute erhalten. Für den Geländestreifen entlang der Wagramer Straße, der wichtigsten Ausfallstraße Wiens nach Nordosten, wurde städtische Bebauung geplant, ohne dass damals bereits konkrete Projekte vorgelegen wären.
Dies änderte sich, als Österreich 1967 den Vereinten Nationen (UNO) ein Amtssitzzentrum in Wien versprach. Das sogenannte Vienna International Centre (VIC), Teil der UNO-City, wurde schließlich ab 1973 zwischen dem verkleinerten Donaupark und der Wagramer Straße errichtet und im August 1979 eröffnet. Die Bauten des VIC gaben größenmäßig einen neuen, großstädtischen Maßstab für ihre Umgebung vor, die bis dahin Stadtrandcharakter hatte.
Der Einsturz der zweiten Reichsbrücke 1976 sollte eine zusätzliche Aufwertung des Areals bedeuten. In den Hohlkasten der bis 1980 wiedererrichteten Brücke wurde nun auch eine U-Bahn-Trasse eingeplant. Die Linie U1 erreichte somit bereits im Jahr 1982 – früher als ursprünglich geplant – das nördliche Donauufer. Über die Station Kaisermühlen – Vienna International Centre ist das Stadtzentrum seither in wenigen Minuten erreichbar. 1972–1988 wurde die Donau im Raum Wien neuerlich reguliert, um verbliebene Hochwassergefahren zu beseitigen. Neben dem Areal der heutigen Donau City entstanden dabei, parallel zum Hauptstrom, die Neue Donau, ein zumeist stehendes Gewässer, das sich für Freizeitnutzung eignete, und die Donauinsel zwischen Neuer Donau und Hauptstrom, die nach Entscheid der Stadtverwaltung nicht verbaut, sondern ebenfalls für Freizeitnutzung bereitstehen sollte. 1987 wurde als zweiter Teil der UNO-City neben dem Vienna International Centre (VIC) das von Staat und Stadtverwaltung finanzierte Kongresszentrum Austria Center Vienna (ACV) eröffnet.
Ende der achtziger Jahre erwog Wien gemeinsam mit Budapest im Jahr 1995 eine Weltausstellung auszurichten. Am 14. Dezember 1989 erhielt man für dieses Vorhaben den Zuschlag. Die Expo 95 sollte demnach von 29. April bis 26. Oktober 1995 stattfinden. Als Ausstellungsgelände wurde der Bereich „Donauraum – Konferenzzentrum“ (ca. 50 ha) definiert. Die Nachnutzung des damals noch kontaminierten und alluvialen Stück Lands wurde als entscheidender Faktor der Expo-Planung bestimmt. Das Gelände sollte im Anschluss an die Weltausstellung gänzlich in die gegebene Stadtstruktur integriert werden. Am 30. März 1990 wurde hierfür ein Leitprogramm für die städtebauliche Entwicklung beschlossen. Die Gestaltung des Ausstellungsgeländes sollte dabei auf Grundlage eines von der (1989 gegründeten) Expo-Vienna AG ausgelobten Architektenwettbewerbs erfolgen. Auf temporäre Bauten größeren Ausmaßes sollte verzichtet werden. Der Wettbewerb „Bebauungs- und Gestaltungskonzepte EXPO 95 in Wien und Nachnutzung“ wurde bis Ende 1990 abgehalten. Teilnahmeberechtigt waren Architekten aus Österreich und Ungarn, sowie ausgewählte internationale Büros. Weiters wurden auch Studierende eingeladen sich zu beteiligen. Aus insgesamt 84 Projekten (65 von Architekten und 19 von Absolventen) wurde jenes von Sepp Frank und Rudolf Zabrana ausgewählt. Entgegen ursprünglicher Pläne die einstige Deponie mit einer Platte zu versiegeln, wurde diese schlussendlich vollständig ausgehoben. Diese Begleitmaßnahme der Expo-Vorbereitungen umfasste einen Aushub von insgesamt rund 965.000 Tonnen Material, davon 240.000 Tonnen Hausmüll aus der Nachkriegszeit bis 1963/64. Im Zuge einer aus politischen Gründen durchgeführten Volksbefragung vom 14. bis 16. Mai 1991 sprachen sich 64.85 % der Befragten jedoch gegen die Abhaltung der Expo aus; ungeachtet breiter Unterstützung durch Politik, Medien und Wirtschaftskreise. In Folge dessen zog die Republik Österreich die Bewerbung für den Standort Wien in der Generalversammlung des BIE am 5. Juni 1991 wieder zurück.
Nach Absage der Expo war man bestrebt das ungenutzte, aber bereits im Umbau befindliche Areal weiter baureif zu machen und zu entwickeln. Hierfür wurde noch 1991 die Auffanggesellschaft WED Wiener Entwicklungsgesellschaft für den Donauraum AG gegründet. [3] Anfang der neunziger Jahre wurden daraufhin die Architekten Adolf Krischanitz und Heinz Neumann mit einem Masterplan für einen neuen, multifunktionalen Stadtteil auf dem freien Areal (das vom ursprünglich größeren Donaupark abgetrennt wurde) zwischen VIC, ACV und Hubertusdamm bzw. Neuer Donau beauftragt. Die WED wählte dafür den Namen Donau City. Bereits im Zuge der Planungen für die Weltausstellung wurde erwogen, die Donauufer Autobahn A 22 im Bereich des VIC zu Überplatten; auch im Hinblick auf eine spätere Nachnutzung des Geländes. An diesem Vorhaben wurde festgehalten und die Autobahn bis 1996 schlussendlich auf einem Abschnitt von 2.150 m überplattet. Der dadurch entstandene Tunnel Kaisermühlen ist heute die am meisten befahrene Tunnelanlage Österreichs. Die Überdeckung der Donauufer Autobahn wurde gleichsam als Fundament für eine künftige Bebauung konzipiert. Dafür wurde über dem Fahrraum des Tunnels ein 2,20 Meter hoher Hohlkasten ausgebildet, der beispielsweise Kellerabteile und Technikräume künftiger Neubauten aufnehmen kann. Die für den Autobahnbetrieb erforderlichen technischen Anlagen sind hingegen vorrangig in seitlichen Kollektoren angesiedelt.
Um die nun entstandenen enormen Niveauunterschiede (nach Aushub der einstigen Deponie lag der gewachsene Boden neun Meter unter dem Niveau der Umgebung) auszugleichen, wurde auch der neue Stadtteil durch eine solche Überbauung (die sogenannte Donauplatte) charakterisiert. Für den Auto- und Fußgängerverkehr sind dabei unterschiedliche Ebenen vorgesehen. 1993 wurde mit der Errichtung der Infrastruktur für die kommende Nutzung begonnen. Der Grundstein für das erste Gebäude, den Andromeda-Tower, wurde 1995 gelegt. Als technische Voraussetzung für die Haupterschließung des Areals wurde 1996 ein – parallel zur Autobahn verlaufendes – Verteilerbauwerk fertiggestellt, welches alle Bauplätze erschließt. Das Ebenenkonzept hat bis heute Bestand, der ursprüngliche Masterplan wurde jedoch nicht weiter umgesetzt. Nach Fertigstellung von knapp zwei Drittel der Gesamtplanung wurden hier bis 2005 ca. 1,7 Millionen Kubikmeter verbaut; das entspricht einer Bruttogeschoßfläche von rund 500.000 Quadratmetern.
Im Jahr 2002 ließ die WED dann einen internationalen Gestaltungswettbewerb für den letzten zu entwickelnden Abschnitt ausschreiben. Den Zuschlag in diesem Gutachterverfahren erhielt der Architekt Dominique Perrault aus Paris. Im Anschluss wurde er mit der Erstellung eines Masterplans für das Gebiet beauftragt. Basierend auf diesen Plänen wurde ein städtebauliches Leitbild entworfen und am 1. Juli 2004 vom Gemeinderat beschlossen. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Projekten am Standort, wurde hier eine gemischte Nutzung vorgeschrieben. Perrault konzipierte als „Brückenkopf“ die beiden DC Towers als gebautes Eingangstor für den Stadtteil.
Nach Eröffnung von Turm 1 im Februar 2014, sollen in den kommenden Jahren die drei Hochhaustürme Danube Flats, DC Tower 2 und DC Tower 3 die Skyline vervollständigen. Der Zeithorizont für diese Bauvorhaben wurde in den letzten Jahren jedoch stets verschoben. Der Uferbereich war in den 1980er Jahren unter dem Namen „Copa Cagrana“ bekannt geworden und wird mittlerweile als „Copa Beach“ vermarktet.
(Wikipedia)
Der Mischek Tower ist ein Wohngebäude im 22. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Donaustadt.
Das Gebäude wurde von 1998 bis 2000 nach Entwürfen des Architekten-Ehepaars Delugan-Meissl von der als Generalunternehmer agierenden Baufirma Mischek im Auftrag des Bauträgers Wiener Heim errichtet. Das 110 Meter hohe Bauwerk war bis zur Fertigstellung des Hochhauses Neue Donau im Jahr 2002 das höchste Wohngebäude Österreichs. Errichtet aus Betonfertigteilen gilt der Mischek Tower mit seinen 35 Stockwerken (ab Niveau Donauplatte, das Straßenniveau befindet sich auf Ebene −3) als das höchste Fertigteilhaus der Welt.
Gelegen am Rand der Donau City zwischen Donaupark und Austria Center Vienna dient der Riegel-förmige Bau optisch als Abgrenzung von Stadt zu Park. Neben dem eigentlichen Hochhaus gibt es zwei weitere Gebäudeteile mit jeweils 9 Stockwerken. Zur Donau hin grenzt unmittelbar an den Gebäudeteil Stiege 3 südlich ein Wohngebäude des Wohnparks Donaucity an.
Das Gebäude steht im Eigentum der Käufer der etwa 500 zum größten Teil durch das Land Wien geförderten Wohnungen.
(Wikipedia)
BNSF's Employee Special enters Fort Worth Trinity Park at the beginning of its run to Cresson, Texas on the FWWR mainline. Photo October 23, 2016.
Three-storey retablo, a distinctive nativity scene from Peru, seen in the Museum Würth during an exhibition of cribs from all over the world, Gaisbach, Franconia (Baden-Wuerttemberg)
Some backrground information:
Retablos are a sophisticated Peruvian folk art in the form of portable boxes which depict religious, historical, or everyday events that are important to the Indigenous people of the highlands. The Spanish word retablo comes from the Latin retro-tabulum ("behind the table or altar"). This is a reference to the fact that the first retablos were placed on or behind the altars of Catholic churches in Spain and Latin America. They were three-dimensional statues or images inside a decorated frame.
Retablos probably originated with the Christian knights of the Crusades and the Spanish reconquista (the 700-year struggle against the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula). The Christian warriors, who frequently found themselves far away from their home churches, carried small portable box-altars for worship and protection against their enemies. These earliest retablos usually featured religious themes, especially those involving Saint James, the patron saint-warrior in the fight against the Moors.
Retablos came to the New World as small portable altars depicting nativity scenes and other religious topics used by the early priests to evangelize the Indigenous. In a syncretic process, the early retablos brought by the Spanish merged with Indigenous beliefs in the Andean region to acquire certain magical or symbolic properties which had been the attributes of local spirits before the conquest. These early South and Central American retablos were wooden boxes with figures inside carved from stone, ivory or wood.
Later, retablos evolved to include daily scenes in the lives of the Andean people, such as harvests, processions, feasts, and tableaux depicting shops and homes. The use of wood for the outside box remained, but other materials, such as gypsum, clay, or a potato-gypsum-clay paste mix, were increasingly used for the figures because of their ease of handling and durability.
As you can see, the retablo in this picture shows the Nativity in its top floor. In the middle floor some kind of celebration is shown, with lots of female and male musicians playing traditional Peruvian instruments. And in the bottom floor, a hat shop is depicted. The hats there bear a close resemblance to the typical North American ten-gallon hats. The three-storey box is carved from wood, while all figures inside are made from clay. I guess that the whole ensemble has a height of 80 centimetres, which means that it’s definitely no pocket size retablo, but one that was perhaps used as some kind of home altar.
In the 1940s more and more artists were using retablos as a vehicle for affirming and recording the distinct identity of the Indigenous people of the Andean region. They are also a defense of Indigenous culture and values in the face of the modernization and the penetration of their culture by the one of the white Hispanic elites of Lima.
If you drive through the countryside of the rural district of Hohenlohe with its pastures and little villages in the northeast of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, you wouldn’t expect an art museum of international reputation being located in this area. However the museums Würth 1 and Würth 2 are and that has a particular reason: Both museums are attached to the headquarters of Würth Group, a multinational company and the biggest producer of screws in the world.
In 1954, the German billionaire Richard Würth took over a two-man business from his father at the age of 19 and made it a successful worldwide concern with almost 86,000 employees today. In the 70s, Würth began to collect art. Since then, he has collected roughly 18,500 works of art. His passion for collecting art even resulted in art becoming an important element of the Würth company culture. The most important works of art are made publicly available in altogether five museums of the Würth Group. All of them are freely accessible.
A Merry Christmas 2024 to all of you! Have a great festive season together with your families and friends!