"The Shape of Speed" Portland Art Museum.

The Portland Art Museum is pleased to announce The Shape of Speed: Streamlined Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1930–1942, a special exhibition debuting at the Museum in Summer 2018. Featuring 19 rare streamlined automobiles and motorcycles, The Shape of Speed opens June 16 and will be on view through September 16, 2018.

portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/shape-of-speed/

The 1938-1940 Graham Supercharger was the remarkable, radical "Spirit of Motion," better known as the "sharknose" Graham.

Introduced for recession-plagued 1938, it underwhelmed the market. The Graham Supercharger was first offered only as a four-door sedan in two trim levels, but expanded to include a two-door coupe and sedan for 1939-40 in Standard and Custom versions.

The Graham-built centrifugal supercharger was the only blower available in a popular-priced car and boosted horsepower on the Continental six from about 90 to 116 for 1938-39 and 120 for 1940. It was quietly dropped in 1940 in favor of the Hollywood, which was based on the Cord 810 dies.

A year later, Graham-Paige abandoned the car business altogether for $20 million worth of defense contracts. Joseph W. Frazer gained control of G-P in 1944 and briefly returned to the field with the 1946 Frazer, but soon sold its automotive interests to Kaiser-Frazer Corporation.

Pluses of the 1938-1940 Graham Supercharger:

Exotic, if bizarre, styling

Good performance

Rarity

Minuses of the 1938-1940 Graham Supercharger:

Body parts very scarce

Good examples hard to find

Production of the 1938 Graham Supercharger:

2,410

Production of the 1939 Graham Supercharger:

2,479

Production of the 1940 Graham Supercharger:

under 1,000

Specifications of the 1938-1940 Graham Supercharger:

Wheelbase, inches: 120.0

Length, inches: NA

Weight, pounds: 3,250-3,370

Price, new: $1,070-$1,295

auto.howstuffworks.com/1938-1940-graham-supercharger.htm

I really like this streamline design. It looks extremely fast and with adequate motors, I expect it had to be.

Unfortunately I don't know which model this plane is. If anyone knows, please tell.

"Built in 1944, the streamlined, single-storey, yellow brick Forest Insect Laboratory is located on the south side of Queen Street in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario, north of the Ontario Provincial Air Service Hangars.

The Forest Insect Laboratory is of heritage value because of its association with important government research activities between 1945 and 1966 and is one of the few remaining examples of Art Moderne architecture in Sault Ste. Marie.

The Forest Insect Laboratory was established to produce research on the control of forest insects and diseases. It was the result of a joint research agreement between the federal Department of Agriculture and the Ontario Department of Lands and Forest between 1945 and 1966. Under this agreement, Ontario built and maintained the laboratory and the federal government provided staff and equipment. The laboratory in Sault Ste. Marie pioneered research into eradicating destructive forest insects such as the Spruce Bud Worm. An insect identification centre was also established at the laboratory. This centre was the first of its kind in Canada and earned an international reputation for its work.

The Forest Insect Laboratory was built in 1944 to the design of Toronto architect Ernest Davidson and is one of the few remaining examples of Art Moderne architecture in Sault Ste. Marie, a style popular during the 1930’s and 1940’s. An addition, consistent with Davidson's design, was added in 1958.

Key character defining elements that reflect the buildings value as an example of Art Moderne architecture include:

-the overall streamlined effect, achieved through the use of rounded corners

-the flat roof and the continuous horizontal elements, such as the copper facia above the windows and the stone sill course

-the repetition of the horizontal banded features on all elevations, including those of the 1958 addition

-the asymmetrical arrangement of bays accommodating the main entranceway

-the asymmetrical arrangement of a series of large windows divided either by round columnar pilasters of limestone or by brick panels

Key character defining elements that reflect the buildings use by the Provincial Government include:

-the Ontario Coat of Arms, carved in Indiana limestone, which is located above the facia and entranceway set into the brickwork." - info from Historic Places.

"Sault Ste. Marie (/ˈsuː seɪnt məˈriː/ SOO-seint-ma-REE) is a city on the St. Marys River in Ontario, Canada, close to the Canada–US border. It is the seat of the Algoma District and the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay.

The Ojibwe, the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of the area, call this area Baawitigong, meaning "place of the rapids." They used this as a regional meeting place during whitefish season in the St. Mary's Rapids. (The anglicized form of this name, Bawating, is used in institutional and geographic names in the area.)

To the south, across the river, is the United States and the Michigan city of the same name. These two communities were one city until a new treaty after the War of 1812 established the border between Canada and the United States in this area at the St. Mary's River. In the 21st century, the two cities are joined by the International Bridge, which connects Interstate 75 on the Michigan side, and Huron Street (and former Ontario Secondary Highway 550B) on the Ontario side. Shipping traffic in the Great Lakes system bypasses the Saint Mary's Rapids via the American Soo Locks, the world's busiest canal in terms of tonnage that passes through it, while smaller recreational and tour boats use the Canadian Sault Ste. Marie Canal.

French colonists referred to the rapids on the river as Les Saults de Ste. Marie and the village name was derived from that. The rapids and cascades of the St. Mary's River descend more than 6 m (20 ft) from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. Hundreds of years ago, this slowed shipping traffic, requiring an overland portage of boats and cargo from one lake to the other. The entire name translates to "Saint Mary's Rapids" or "Saint Mary's Falls". The word sault is pronounced [so] in French, and /suː/ in the English pronunciation of the city name. Residents of the city are called Saultites.

Sault Ste. Marie is bordered to the east by the Rankin and Garden River First Nation reserves, and to the west by Prince Township. To the north, the city is bordered by an unincorporated portion of Algoma District, which includes the local services boards of Aweres, Batchawana Bay, Goulais and District, Peace Tree and Searchmont. The city's census agglomeration, including the townships of Laird, Prince and Macdonald, Meredith and Aberdeen Additional and the First Nations reserves of Garden River and Rankin, had a total population of 79,800 in 2011.

Native American settlements, mostly of Ojibwe-speaking peoples, existed here for more than 500 years. In the late 17th century, French Jesuit missionaries established a mission at the First Nations village. This was followed by development of a fur trading post and larger settlement, as traders, trappers and Native Americans were attracted to the community. It was considered one community and part of Canada until after the War of 1812 and settlement of the border between Canada and the US at the Ste. Mary's River. At that time, the US prohibited British traders from any longer operating in its territory, and the areas separated by the river began to develop as two communities, both named Sault Ste. Marie." - info from Wikipedia.

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Concours of Elegance Hampton Court 2020

The MV Kalakala operated from 1935 to 1967 in Puget Sound. Here is a mural on the side of a building in Port Angeles depicting the ferry leaving that city's harbor. The artist is Cory Ench.

Note: "MV" stands for motor vessel.

New York Central 4-6-4 Hudson, J3a class, streamlined Empire State Express steam locomotive # 5426, is seen scooping water at speed along the mainline at Rochester, New York, 1947. This locomotive was one of two locomotives constructed with this style of streamlined art deco stainless steel jacket. This locomotive also makes use of a standard centiped tender, while the other locomotive of it's type has a special configured stainless steel sheather tender. Notice the track pan for water located between the rails on which the train is operating. The mainline track to the right also has a track pan for the use of tenders to scoop water on the fly. You can notice the tender's overflow pipes ejecting excess water at times. It is interesting to note that even though this is a streamlined passenger train, the RPO car is a standard heavyweight car. In the background you can see a coal tipple with some coal hopper cars heading toward it. This photo came from an unknown source.

The name of the photographer that took this photo is unknown.

Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for the purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

In two years of production less than 1,000 Salsbury Model 85 were built in Pomona, California in 1947 and 1948.

Close up of the Burlington Zephyr train for #dogwoodweek15, Artistic: Metal #dogwood52

The hulking remains of the great streamlined Art Deco ferry that once graced Seattle's Lake Union is but a rusting shell of its former glory. It's being towed to the scrapyard Thursday for its final grave.

With its distinctive plywood-skinned oval section streamlined fuselage, the Albatros D.V entered service in May 1917, but from October 1917 was supplemented in large-scale production by the strengthened Albatros D.Va with different upper wing and aileron control system. One D.V, D2859, was flown by ‘The Red Baron’, Manfred von Richthofen.

At its operational peak in May 1918, over 1,000 often brightly-coloured Albatross D.V/D.Va fighter aircraft were serving on the Western Front as well as in Italy and Palestine. This was an attempt to overcome the Allies by quantity rather than capability, since the outclassed Albatross Jagdstaffel units suffered heavy losses in combat in the German’s Spring offensive of 1918 and as a result of structural failure of the lower wing, leading in 1918 to a prohibition of prolonged diving in the type. Despite this, the type remained in production until the November 1918 Armistice, with over 3,000 produced, of which only two survive, in the U.S.A and Australia.

Actually painted as a D.V aircraft from a batch of 400 ordered in May 1917, this flying replica was built by New Zealand Company The Vintage Aviator Ltd (TVAL) in 2011, and uses an original contemporary Mercedes D.III engine from RAF Museum stocks. It represents an aircraft flown on the Western Front by Jasta 61in 1918. Flown a number of times in New Zealand and the UK in 2012, it arrived at Hendon in October 2012.

Some background:

The VF-1 was developed by Stonewell/Bellcom/Shinnakasu for the U.N. Spacy by using alien Overtechnology obtained from the SDF-1 Macross alien spaceship. Its production was preceded by an aerodynamic proving version of its airframe, the VF-X. Unlike all later VF vehicles, the VF-X was strictly a jet aircraft, built to demonstrate that a jet fighter with the features necessary to convert to Battroid mode was aerodynamically feasible. After the VF-X's testing was finished, an advanced concept atmospheric-only prototype, the VF-0 Phoenix, was flight-tested from 2005 to 2007 and briefly served as an active-duty fighter from 2007 to the VF-1's rollout in late 2008, while the bugs were being worked out of the full-up VF-1 prototype (VF-X-1).

However, the fighter remained active in many second line units and continued to show its worthiness years later, e. g. through Milia Jenius who would use her old VF-1 fighter in defense of the colonization fleet - 35 years after the type's service introduction!

General characteristics:

All-environment variable fighter and tactical combat Battroid,

used by U.N. Spacy, U.N. Navy, U.N. Space Air Force and U.N.Spacy Marines

Accommodation:

Single pilot in Marty & Beck Mk-7 zero/zero ejection seat

Dimensions:

Fighter Mode:

Length 14.23 meters

Wingspan 14.78 meters (at 20° minimum sweep)

Height 3.84 meters

Battroid Mode:

Height 12.68 meters

Width 7.3 meters

Length 4.0 meters

Empty weight: 13.25 metric tons;

Standard T-O mass: 18.5 metric tons;

MTOW: 37.0 metric tons

Power Plant:

2x Shinnakasu Heavy Industry/P&W/Roice FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, output 650 MW each, rated at 11,500 kg in standard or in overboost (225.63 kN x 2)

4x Shinnakasu Heavy Industry NBS-1 high-thrust vernier thrusters (1x counter reverse vernier thruster nozzle mounted on the side of each leg nacelle/air intake, 1x wing thruster roll control system on each wingtip);

18x P&W LHP04 low-thrust vernier thrusters beneath multipurpose hook/handles

Performance:

Battroid Mode: maximum walking speed 160 km/h

Fighter Mode: at 10,000 m Mach 2.71; at 30,000+ m Mach 3.87

g limit: in space +7

Thrust-to-weight ratio: empty 3.47; standard T-O 2.49; maximum T-O 1.24

Design Features:

3-mode variable transformation; variable geometry wing; vertical take-off and landing; control-configurable vehicle; single-axis thrust vectoring; three "magic hand" manipulators for maintenance use; retractable canopy shield for Battroid mode and atmospheric reentry; option of GBP-1S system, atmospheric-escape booster, or FAST Pack system

Transformation:

Standard time from Fighter to Battroid (automated): under 5 sec.

Min. time from Fighter to Battroid (manual): 0.9 sec.

Armament:

2x internal Mauler RÖV-20 anti-aircraft laser cannon, firing 6,000 pulses per minute

1x Howard GU-11 55 mm three-barrel Gatling gun pod with 200 RPG, fired at 1,200 rds/min

4x underwing and 2x underfuselage hard points for a wide variety of ordnance, including:

- 12x AMM-1 hybrid guided multipurpose missiles (3/point), or

- 12x MK-82 LDGB conventional bombs (3/point), or

- 6x RMS-1 large anti-ship reaction missiles (2/outboard point, 1/inboard point), or

- 4x UUM-7 micro-missile pods (1/point) each carrying 15 x Bifors HMM-01 micro-missiles,

- or a combination of above load-outs

The kit and its assembly:

Another build of one of these vintage ARII kits, primarily for the (fictional) livery. This one was inspired by a profile found in a source book (the "VF-1 Master File" from Softbank Publishing), where I found a profile of a late VF-1P from 2024 in a pale, three-tone desert paint scheme, similar to an IDF aircraft, with some white trim on the wings and a white radome. While this machine basically looked attractive, I was a little confused by its supposed operation theatre: Australia. There, over a typical outback landscape, the paint scheme would IMHO hardly work, the tones being much too light and just "wrong". From this, the idea was born to create a "Valkyroo"!

Since the model would rather center around the paint scheme, the VF-1, an “S” variant kit, remained basically OOB. Nevertheless, it received some standard mods and some extras. The basic updates include some additional blade antennae (leaving out the dorsal antennae for a Block 13/14 aircraft), a pilot figure and a modified dashboard. This time the VF-1 would have its landing gear extended, but the ventral gun pod was nevertheless modified to accept one of my home-made VF-1 standard display stands for in-flight beauty pics over the Australian desert.

Since the machine would, in its wraparound paint scheme, rather look like a low-level fighter bomber and mud mover, the ordnance was changed from a dozen AMM-1 air-to-air missiles to something grittier. I gave the kit a pair of GBUs on the inner wing stations, which are Paveway bombs from an 1:72 Hasegawa ordnance set, but modified into optically-guided weapons since the original laser sensor with its ring-shaped stabilizer would be quite large at 1:100.

On the outer pylons the VF-1 received four streamlined pods with unguided missiles, left over from KP MiG-21s which are pretty small and slender for their 1:72 scale. Under the 1:100 VF-1 they work well.

I furthermore gave it another pair of hardpoints under the air intakes, holding an ECM and a FLIR pod (both from a Dragon 1:144 RAF Tornado GR.1, the FLIR is a reversed chaff dispenser w/o fins). That’s not canonical, but this one here is fictional, anyway.

On the legs, small chaff/flare dispensers made from styrene strips were added, and small radar warning fairings adorn the nose and the tail. Thin styrene profile strips were added on the legs and the fins, for a little more external structure, and a small laser range finder fairing was mounted under the VF-1’s nose (also from the 1:144 Tonka).

In order to emphasize this Valkyrie's updated and modified status, I modified the horribly misshaped “S” head unit, lowering and narrowing the cranium’s rear part and reducing the number of lasers from four to just two. For the in-flight pictures a pilot figure was added to the cockpit, which also had the dashboard extended downwards to the console between the pilot’s feet.

Painting and markings:

The goal was to apply an effective (and potentially) attractive paint scheme that would be appropriate for the Australian desert/outback landscape, with its distinct red sand, low, pale shrubs and occasional dark rocks and trees. I checked both RAAF schemes as well as landscape pictures, and eventually created a four-tone wraparound scheme, somewhat inspired by unique RAAF DHC-4s and Pilatus Porter transporter liveries, as well as the SAC bomber scheme that was/is used on RAAF C-130. The US Army MERCD scheme also has some influence. However, the result is not a copy of an existing scheme, the scheme rather evolved gradually – even though, once it was done, it somewhat reminds of the famous Swedish “Fields & Meadows” pattern, just with lighter colors, even though this was not intended!

Due to the model’s small size and the potentially bright Australian theatre of operation, I did not want the disruptive scheme to become too dark. Consequently, the wraparound scheme consists of four tones: splotches of Brown Yellow (Humbrol 94) and IJN Grey Green (Tamiya XF-76), two tones with similar brightness, are the basis. Next came a medium red brown (Leather, Humbrol 62) and finally some Bronze Green (Humbrol 75), the latter intended to break up the aircraft's silhouette through a strong color contrast.

For a subtle counter-shading effect against the sky, relatively more of the Sand and IJN Grey Green was used on the undersides and the dark green was not applied underneath at all. The radome, in order to set it slightly apart from the rest of the airframe, as well as some other dielectric fairings, were painted with Hemp (Humbrol 168).

The cockpit became standard medium grey (Humbrol 140) with a brown seat. The landing gear was painted in classic white, while the air intakes and some other openings were painted in dark grey (Revell 77).

In an attempt to further subdue the aircraft's overall visual profile, I avoided any flashy trim and rather went for monochrome markings in black. The low-viz U.N. Spacy “kite” roundels were created and printed at home. The eagle emblems on the fins belong, in real life, to an F-15E prototype (Italeri kit), the tactical codes were puzzled together from A-10 and T-4 decal sheets. Most characteristic VF-1 stencils come from the OOB sheet, some lines were created with generic decal material.

Due to the model’s small size, only some light, overall dry-brushing with hemp and light grey was done, and then the kit was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

A camouflaged VF-1 surely looks odd, esp. in desert colors, but there actually are several canonical aircraft painted in such a fashion, to be found in various official Macross publications - in fact, this model is the attempt to create a more plausible livery than one that I found in such a sourcebook. IMHO, the home-brew disruptive four-tone scheme for this "Valkyroo" VF-1 looks quite attractive, and thanks to the selected tones it also makes the subtle Australia connection. Those small Valkyrie kits never get boring, at least to me! :D

Streamlined LMS Princess Coronation Class 'Duchess of Hamilton' No.6229 at York Railway Museum.

Taken 25th May 2009.

The gorgeous streamlined London Midland and Scottish (LMS) 'Princess Coronation Class' 4-6-2 pacific steam locomotive number 6229 'Duchess of Hamilton' inside the Great Hall at the National Railway Museum in York (UK).

6229 was designed by Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LMS William Stanier and built at Crewe Works in 1938.

6229 was withdrawn from service as 46229 in February 1964.

www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/tags/6229/

Photograph courtesy of my regular photostream contributor David on his travels and is posted here with very kind permission.

Deutsche Reichsbahn

DRG Class SVT 137

Streamlined Diesel

Leipzig Hauptbahnhof

Leipzig, Germany

These are all my streamlined locomotives, be they diesel or steam. From left to right:

Late 1940's FA / FB diesel freight loco in classic Brick Railway Systems paint

Early 1960's F10 diesel passenger engine in Lodi Clearwater & Green River Rail-Road blue

Early 1940's 4-8-4 Daylight mixed traffic loco in Southern Pacific War-time black

Late 1930's 4-6-2 Scarlet Crusader fast passenger engine in Missouri Central red and gray

Late 1950's Aerotrain diesel prototype in Rock Island Red stripe over gray

A railwayman cycles with his child past a row of China Railways locomotives in the yard at Shenyang loco shed.

Streamlined SL7 4-6-2 751 was no longer running at this time and later became an exhibit in the Shenyang Museum collection. It was constructed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1934 for the South Manchuria Railway and was operated for the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. SL7s pulled the Asia Express & trains reached a top speed of 140 kilometres per hour (87 mph), surpassing the contemporary Chinese rail system and rivaling the United States and Europe. It served as a symbol of technology and modernism in Manchukuo and was used to demonstrate the success of Japan's imperial project.

The other two engines are 2-10-2 QJs, 557 on the left and ex-works 141 to the right.

The gloriously streamlined art-deco Duchess of Hamilton sits outside the National Railway Museum for Railfest.

Built in 1938 and one of thee Princess Coronation class, the train sports a streamlined design by Sir William Stanier and is the most powerful express passenger locomotive built in Britain.

The train was destreamlined in 1947 and only restored in 2009 after a sustained appeal.

Railfest 2012 was a nine-day celebration of all things train-related, held at the National Railway Museum in York during the period of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Famous locomotives such as Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and even the Hogwarts Express all lined up out on the tracks, with thousands of visitors taking the chance to admire them up close or even climb aboard.

Several trains were operating over the course of the festival, with steam puffing into the sky as they carried visitors up and down small stretches of track.

The National Railway Museum in York is the largest railway museum in the world and houses a collection of more than three million items, from ticket machines and platform signs to bullet trains and steam locomotives.

The museum charts the rise of the railways in the 19th century, their use in the transportation of goods and people, their role in the Industrial Revolution and their overall effect on the world, especially England.

The current museum was founded in 1975 and is housed in a former steam engine shed, an old goods depot and numerous other buildings close to York station.

The main structure, the Great Hall, holds everything from a replica of Stephenson’s Rocket, the first steam train from 1829, to the Flying Scotsman, from the Mallard to a modern-day bullet train – one of a very select group of bullet trains outside of Japan.

There is also a workshop where visitors can see museum volunteers and engineers working on trains and the station hall, where trains sit on old platforms and you can step in and out of carriages.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

Due to increasing tensions in Europe which led to World War 2, AVRO Aircraft started developing combat aircraft, and as a subsidiary of Hawker, they had access to the Hurricane plans. At the time that the Hurricane was developed, RAF Fighter Command consisted of just 13 squadrons, each equipped with either the Hawker Fury, Hawker Demon, or the Bristol Bulldog – all of them biplanes with fixed-pitch wooden propellers and non-retractable undercarriages. After the Hurricane's first flight, Avro started working on a more refined and lighter aircraft, resulting in a similar if not higher top speed and improved maneuverability.

However, by 1942, the Swallow had already reached its limited development potential and became quickly outdated in almost any aspect. Since the Supermarine Spitfire had in the meantime been successfully introduced and promised a much bigger development potential, production of the Avro Swallow already ceased in late 1942 after 435 aircraft had been built. Around the same time, the Swallows were quickly phased out from front-line service, too. Several machines were retained as trainers, messenger aircraft or instructional airframes. 20 late production Mk. IIs were sold to the Irish Air Corps, and a further 50 aircraft were sent to Canada as advanced fighter trainers, where they served until the end of the hostilities in 1945.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 28 ft 1 in (8.57 m)

Wingspan: 33 ft 7 in (10.25 m)

Height: 8 ft 6 in (2.60 m)

Wing area: 153 ft² (16.40 m²)

Empty weight: 3,722 lb (1,720 kg)

Gross weight: 5,100 lb (2,315 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Rolls-Royce Merlin III liquid-cooled V-12, rated at 1,310 hp (977 kW) at 9,000 ft (2,700 m)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 381 mph (614 km/h) at 20,000 ft (6,096 m)

Range: 360 miles (580 km)

Service ceiling: 36,000 ft (10,970 m)

Rate of climb: 2,780 ft/min (14.1 m/s)

Wing loading: 29.8 lb/ft² (121.9 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.15 hp/lb (0.25 kW/kg)

Armament:

No internal guns

2x underwing hardpoints for a pair of 19-pound (8.6 kg) photoflash bombs each

The kit and its assembly:

This is the third incarnation of a whif that I have built some time ago for a Battle of Britain Group Build at whatifmodellers.com. This fictional machine – or better: its model – is based on a profile drawing conceived by fellow forum member nighthunter: an Avia B.135, outfitted with a Merlin engine, a ventral radiator in the style of a Hawker Hurricane, and with RAF markings. It was IIRC a nameless design, so that I created my own for it: the Avro 675 Swallow, inspired by the bird's slender wing and body that somehow resonates in the clean B.35 lines (at least for me).

I’ve already built two of these fictional aircraft as early WWII RAF fighters, but there was still potential in the basic concept – primarily as a canvas for the unusual livery (see below). The basis became, once again, the vintage KP Models B.35 fighter with a fixed landing gear. It’s a sleek and pretty aircraft, but the kit’s quality is rather so-so (the molds date back to 1974). Details are quite good, though, especially on the exterior, you get a mix of engraved and raised surface details. But the kit’s fit is mediocre at best, there is lots of flash and the interior is quite bleak. But, with some effort, things can be mended.

Many donation parts for the Swallow, beyond the Merlin engine, propeller and (underwing) radiator, and pitot, were taken in this case from a Revell 1:72 Spitfire Mk. V. Inside of the cockpit I used more Spitfire donor material, namely the floor, dashboard, seat and rear bulkhead/headrest with a radio set. The blurry, single-piece canopy was cut into three pieces for optional open display on the ground, but this was not a smart move since the material turned out to be very thin and, even worse, brittle – cracks were the unfortunate result. 

New landing gear wells had to be carved out of the massive lower wing halves. Since the original drawn Swallow profile did not indicate the intended landing gear design, I went for an inward-retracting solution, using parts from the Spitfire and just mounted them these “the other way around”. Due to the oil cooler in one of the wing roots, though, the stance ended up a little wide, but it’s acceptable and I stuck to this solution as I already used it on former Swallow builds, too. But now I know why the real-world B.135 prototype had its landing gear retract outwards – it makes more sense from an engineering point of view.

The Merlin fitted very well onto the B.35 fuselage, diameter and shape are a very good match, even though there’s a small gap to bridge – but that’s nothing that could not be mended with a bit of 2C putty and PSR. A styrene tube inside of the donor engine holds a styrene pipe for a long metal axis with the propeller, so that it can spin freely. The large chin fairing for a dust filter is a transplant from an AZ Models Spitfire, it helps hide the ventral engine/fuselage intersection and adds another small twist to this fictional aircraft. From the same source came the exhaust stacks, Revell’s OOB parts are less detailed and featured sinkholes, even though the latter would later hardly be recognizable.

With the dust filter the Swallow now looks really ugly in a side view, it has something P-40E-ish about it, and the additional bulge behind the radiator for the cameras (certainly not the best place, but the PR Hurricanes had a similar arrangement) does not make the profile any better!

Further small mods include anti-glare panels above and behind the exhaust stacks (simple 0.5 mm styrene sheet), and the small underwing flash bombs were scratched from styrene profile material.

Painting and markings:

The livery was the true motivation to build this model, as a canvas to try it out: Long ago I came across a very interesting Hawker Hurricane camouflage in a dedicated book about this type, a simple all-over scheme in black blue, also known as “Bosun Blue”, together with very limited and toned-down markings. As far as I could find out this livery was used in the Middle East and later in India, too, for nighttime photo reconnaissance missions.

However, defining this color turned out to be very difficult, as I could not find any color picture of such an aircraft. I guess that it was not a defined color, but rather an individual field mix with whatever was at hand – probably roundel blue and black? Therefore, I mixed the obscure Bosun Blue myself, even though this took some sorting out and experiments. I initially considered pure Humbrol 104 (Oxford Blue) but found it to have a rather reddish hue. FS 35042 (USN Sea Blue) was rejected, too, because it was too greenish, even with some black added. I eventually settled on a mix of Humbrol 15 (Midnight Blue) and 33 (Flat Black), which appeared as a good compromise and also as a very dark variant of a cyan-heavy blue tone.

The cockpit interior and the inside of the landing gear wells were painted with RAF cockpit green (Humbrol 78), while the landing gear struts became aluminum (Humbrol 56) – pretty standard.

The decals/markings were puzzled together from various sources. Using a real-world RAF 208 Squadron MTO night photography Hurricane as benchmark I gave the aircraft a light blue individual code letter (decals taken from the Revell Spitfire Mk. V's OOB sheet, which has the letters’ Sky tone totally misprinted!). The spinner was painted in the same tone, mixed individually to match the letter.

Markings were apparently generally very limited on these machines, e. g. they did not carry any unit letter code) and the Type B roundels only on fuselage and upper wings. The latter were improvised, with wacky Type B-esque roundels from a Falkland era Sea Harrier placed on top of RAF roundels with yellow edges. The sources I consulted were uncertain whether these rings were yellow, white, or maybe even some other light color, but I went for yellow as it was the RAF's markings standard. Looks odd, but also pretty cool, esp. with the Type B roundels’ slightly off proportions.

The subdued two-color fin flash on the dark aircraft was/is unusual, too, and following real world practice on some PR Hurricanes I added a thin white edge for better contrast. The small black serial on a white background, as if it was left over from an overpainted former fuselage band, came from a Latvian Sopwith Camel (PrintScale sheet); in RAF service N8187 would have been used during the pre-WWII period and therefore a plausible match for the Swallow, even though it belongs to a batch of RN aircraft (It would probably have been a Fairey Fulmar)..

No black ink washing was applied to the model due to its dark overall color, just the cockpit and the landing gear were treated this way. Some light weathering and panel shading was done all over, and soot stains as well as light grey “heat-bleached” areas due to lean combustion around the exhausts were painted onto the fuselage. Finally, everything was sealed under a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri) and wire antennae (stretched sprue material) were added.

A simple project, realized in a couple of days – thanks to the experience gathered during former builds of this fictional aircraft. However, the Avro Swallow looked already promising in nighthunter's original profile, almost like a missing link between the sturdy Hurricane and the more glorious Spitfire. The result looks very convincing, and the all-blue livery suits the aircraft well! . At first glance, the Swallow looks like an early Spitfire, but then you notice the different wings, the low canopy and the shorter but deeper tail. You might also think that it was a travestied Yak-3 or LaGG aircraft, but again the details don’t match, it’s a quite subtle creation.

I am amazed how good this thing looks overall, with its elegant, slender wings and the sleek fuselage lines – even though the dust filter and the camera fairing strongly ruin the side profile. Maybe another one will join my RAF Swallow collection someday, this time in Irish Air Corps colors.

Macro Mondays

Challenge #40 - Metallic

www.flickr.com/groups/macromonday/

A project three years in the making is finally taking shape. The red and blue streamline trains project is coming into the station.... soon.

(Yes, that's a GG1 sitting there. The steam loco seen above is a 4-6-4 streamlined NYC-style Hudson. Oh, and there are to be two more passenger cars when this is complete!)

Restored waiting room at the Hoboken Terminal.

The Phoebe Snow was a premiere passenger train that departed daily from the station.

The Phoebe Snow, a beautiful streamlined train featuring lightweight equipment from the Budd Company, American Car & Foundry, and Pullman-Standard in a stylish livery of maroon and gray, was born in November 1949 to directly compete with the New York Central between New York City and Buffalo (although the Lackawanna’s service only went as far as its Hoboken Terminal). The personal service and charm of this train, coupled with its brilliant marking campaign of a fictional young lady dressed in white welcoming you to either ride the train or while you were aboard with photos of her showcased throughout the train made the Phoebe Snow a “down to earth,” beloved operation.

Former Lackawanna Railway & Ferry Terminal, Hoboken, New Jersey. Passengers alighted from their trains and went straight through to ferries to cross the East River to Manhattan.

Hoboken Terminal is one of the New York Metropolitan area's major transportation hubs. The commuter-oriented intermodal facility is located on the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey. It is served by nine New Jersey Transit (NJT) commuter rail lines, one Metro-North Railroad line, various NJT buses and private bus lines, the Hudson–Bergen Light Rail, the Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) rapid transit system and NY Waterway-operated ferries. More than 50,000 people use the terminal daily.

Designed by architect Kenneth M. Murchison in the Beaux-Arts style, the rail and ferry terminal buildings were constructed in 1907 by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The terminal building is listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places[6] and the National Register of Historic Places (added in 1973 as #73001102 as the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and Ferry Terminal). It has been undergoing extensive renovations which are projected for completion in 2011.

The large main waiting room, with its floral and Greek Revival motifs in tiled stained glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany set atop bands of pale cement, is generally considered one of the finest in the U.S. aesthetically. The terminal exterior extends to over four stories and has a distinguished copper-clad façade with ornate detailing. Its single-story base is constructed of rusticated Indiana limestone. A grand double stair with decorative cast-iron railings within the main waiting room provides an entrance to the upper-level ferry concourse.

A 225-foot (69 m) clock tower was originally built with the terminal over a century ago, but was dismantled in the early 1950s due to structural damage and deterioration from weather damage. A new clock tower, replicating the original, was constructed during the terminal's centennial year of 2007 and was fully erect that November. The replica tower has 4-foot-high (1.2 m) copper letters spelling out "LACKAWANNA", which are lit at night.

The original ferry slips inside the historic terminal were restored in 2011.

The terminal is considered a milestone in American transportation development, combining rail, ferry, streetcar (later, bus; even later, bus on one side and light-rail on the other), and pedestrian facilities in one of the most innovatively designed and engineered structures in the nation. Hoboken Terminal was also one of the first stations in the world to employ the Bush-type train shed, designed by and named for Lincoln Bush of the DL&W, which quickly became ubiquitous in station design.

The station is unusual for a New York City area commuter railroad terminal in that it still makes use of low-level platforms, which require passengers to make use of stairs on the train to board and disembark.

Until the opening of the North River Tunnels and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tubes around 1910 travel to Manhattan from most of the continental USA required a transfer to a ferry at the Hudson River, at the time often called the North River. The site of the terminal has been used as a landing since the colonial era, accessible via turnpike roads, and later plank roads (namely the Hackensack, the Paterson and a spur of the Newark Plank Road). John Stevens, founder of Hoboken and inventor, launched steamboat service in 1811. During the next 100 years cuts or tunnels were constructed through Bergen Hill to terminals on the west bank of the river and the Upper New York Bay. One of the Bergen Hill Tunnels under Jersey City Heights were opened in 1876 by the Morris and Essex Railroad. A parallel tunnel was added in 1908 by Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad (DL&W). Both were used by the Erie Lackawanna Railway and by New Jersey Transit today.

Hoboken Terminal was one of several terminals with ferry slips owned by competing railroad companies. Two are still standing (the other being the Central Railroad of New Jersey Communipaw Terminal); Hoboken is the only one still in use. Numerous streetcar lines (eventually owned and operated by the Public Service Railway), including the Hoboken Inclined Cable Railway, originated/terminated at the station until bustitution was completed on August 7, 1949. The Phoebe Snow was a premiere passenger train that departed daily from the station. In 1956, four years before its merger with the DL&W, the Erie Railroad began shifting its trains from its Jersey City terminal to Hoboken. Trains to Chicago and Buffalo were discontinued on January 5, 1970.

The timetable for 27 April 1952 shows 134 weekday departures including four to Buffalo, one to Binghampton and one to Scranton. None of the other trains ran beyond Washington or Branchville; 43 ran to Montclair.

In October 1965 (after the Erie trains had moved from Jersey City) five weekday trains ran to Midvale, three to Nyack, three to Waldwick via Newark, two to Essex Fells, two to Carlton Hill, and one to Newton. All those trains were dropped in 1966.

In 1967 ferry service ended; it resumed in 1989 on the South side of the historic terminal and moved back to the restored ferry slips inside the terminal December 7, 2011.

Hoboken Terminal, like Hoboken itself, is a place of "firsts". One year before his death, Thomas Edison was at the controls for the first departure, in 1930, of a regular-service electrified train from Hoboken Terminal to Montclair, New Jersey. The first installation of central air-conditioning in a public space was at Hoboken Terminal, as was the first non-experimental use of mobile phones.

The station has been used for film shoots, including Funny Girl, Three Days of the Condor, Once Upon a Time in America, The Station Agent, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Julie & Julia, Rod Stewart's Downtown Train video (1990) and Eric Clapton's video for his 1996 single "Change the World". The terminal was parodied in Grand Theft Auto IV as the "Liberty Ferry Terminal", although the waiting room and the train Terminal are non-existent.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

Due to increasing tensions in Europe which led to World War 2, AVRO Aircraft started developing combat aircraft, and as a subsidiary of Hawker, they had access to the Hurricane plans. At the time that the Hurricane was developed, RAF Fighter Command consisted of just 13 squadrons, each equipped with either the Hawker Fury, Hawker Demon, or the Bristol Bulldog – all of them biplanes with fixed-pitch wooden propellers and non-retractable undercarriages. After the Hurricane's first flight, Avro started working on a more refined and lighter aircraft, resulting in a similar if not higher top speed and improved maneuverability.

However, by 1942, the Swallow had already reached its limited development potential and became quickly outdated in almost any aspect. Since the Supermarine Spitfire had in the meantime been successfully introduced and promised a much bigger development potential, production of the Avro Swallow already ceased in late 1942 after 435 aircraft had been built. Around the same time, the Swallows were quickly phased out from front-line service, too. Several machines were retained as trainers, messenger aircraft or instructional airframes. 20 late production Mk. IIs were sold to the Irish Air Corps, and a further 50 aircraft were sent to Canada as advanced fighter trainers, where they served until the end of the hostilities in 1945.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 28 ft 1 in (8.57 m)

Wingspan: 33 ft 7 in (10.25 m)

Height: 8 ft 6 in (2.60 m)

Wing area: 153 ft² (16.40 m²)

Empty weight: 3,722 lb (1,720 kg)

Gross weight: 5,100 lb (2,315 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Rolls-Royce Merlin III liquid-cooled V-12, rated at 1,310 hp (977 kW) at 9,000 ft (2,700 m)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 381 mph (614 km/h) at 20,000 ft (6,096 m)

Range: 360 miles (580 km)

Service ceiling: 36,000 ft (10,970 m)

Rate of climb: 2,780 ft/min (14.1 m/s)

Wing loading: 29.8 lb/ft² (121.9 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.15 hp/lb (0.25 kW/kg)

Armament:

No internal guns

2x underwing hardpoints for a pair of 19-pound (8.6 kg) photoflash bombs each

The kit and its assembly:

This is the third incarnation of a whif that I have built some time ago for a Battle of Britain Group Build at whatifmodellers.com. This fictional machine – or better: its model – is based on a profile drawing conceived by fellow forum member nighthunter: an Avia B.135, outfitted with a Merlin engine, a ventral radiator in the style of a Hawker Hurricane, and with RAF markings. It was IIRC a nameless design, so that I created my own for it: the Avro 675 Swallow, inspired by the bird's slender wing and body that somehow resonates in the clean B.35 lines (at least for me).

I’ve already built two of these fictional aircraft as early WWII RAF fighters, but there was still potential in the basic concept – primarily as a canvas for the unusual livery (see below). The basis became, once again, the vintage KP Models B.35 fighter with a fixed landing gear. It’s a sleek and pretty aircraft, but the kit’s quality is rather so-so (the molds date back to 1974). Details are quite good, though, especially on the exterior, you get a mix of engraved and raised surface details. But the kit’s fit is mediocre at best, there is lots of flash and the interior is quite bleak. But, with some effort, things can be mended.

Many donation parts for the Swallow, beyond the Merlin engine, propeller and (underwing) radiator, and pitot, were taken in this case from a Revell 1:72 Spitfire Mk. V. Inside of the cockpit I used more Spitfire donor material, namely the floor, dashboard, seat and rear bulkhead/headrest with a radio set. The blurry, single-piece canopy was cut into three pieces for optional open display on the ground, but this was not a smart move since the material turned out to be very thin and, even worse, brittle – cracks were the unfortunate result. 

New landing gear wells had to be carved out of the massive lower wing halves. Since the original drawn Swallow profile did not indicate the intended landing gear design, I went for an inward-retracting solution, using parts from the Spitfire and just mounted them these “the other way around”. Due to the oil cooler in one of the wing roots, though, the stance ended up a little wide, but it’s acceptable and I stuck to this solution as I already used it on former Swallow builds, too. But now I know why the real-world B.135 prototype had its landing gear retract outwards – it makes more sense from an engineering point of view.

The Merlin fitted very well onto the B.35 fuselage, diameter and shape are a very good match, even though there’s a small gap to bridge – but that’s nothing that could not be mended with a bit of 2C putty and PSR. A styrene tube inside of the donor engine holds a styrene pipe for a long metal axis with the propeller, so that it can spin freely. The large chin fairing for a dust filter is a transplant from an AZ Models Spitfire, it helps hide the ventral engine/fuselage intersection and adds another small twist to this fictional aircraft. From the same source came the exhaust stacks, Revell’s OOB parts are less detailed and featured sinkholes, even though the latter would later hardly be recognizable.

With the dust filter the Swallow now looks really ugly in a side view, it has something P-40E-ish about it, and the additional bulge behind the radiator for the cameras (certainly not the best place, but the PR Hurricanes had a similar arrangement) does not make the profile any better!

Further small mods include anti-glare panels above and behind the exhaust stacks (simple 0.5 mm styrene sheet), and the small underwing flash bombs were scratched from styrene profile material.

Painting and markings:

The livery was the true motivation to build this model, as a canvas to try it out: Long ago I came across a very interesting Hawker Hurricane camouflage in a dedicated book about this type, a simple all-over scheme in black blue, also known as “Bosun Blue”, together with very limited and toned-down markings. As far as I could find out this livery was used in the Middle East and later in India, too, for nighttime photo reconnaissance missions.

However, defining this color turned out to be very difficult, as I could not find any color picture of such an aircraft. I guess that it was not a defined color, but rather an individual field mix with whatever was at hand – probably roundel blue and black? Therefore, I mixed the obscure Bosun Blue myself, even though this took some sorting out and experiments. I initially considered pure Humbrol 104 (Oxford Blue) but found it to have a rather reddish hue. FS 35042 (USN Sea Blue) was rejected, too, because it was too greenish, even with some black added. I eventually settled on a mix of Humbrol 15 (Midnight Blue) and 33 (Flat Black), which appeared as a good compromise and also as a very dark variant of a cyan-heavy blue tone.

The cockpit interior and the inside of the landing gear wells were painted with RAF cockpit green (Humbrol 78), while the landing gear struts became aluminum (Humbrol 56) – pretty standard.

The decals/markings were puzzled together from various sources. Using a real-world RAF 208 Squadron MTO night photography Hurricane as benchmark I gave the aircraft a light blue individual code letter (decals taken from the Revell Spitfire Mk. V's OOB sheet, which has the letters’ Sky tone totally misprinted!). The spinner was painted in the same tone, mixed individually to match the letter.

Markings were apparently generally very limited on these machines, e. g. they did not carry any unit letter code) and the Type B roundels only on fuselage and upper wings. The latter were improvised, with wacky Type B-esque roundels from a Falkland era Sea Harrier placed on top of RAF roundels with yellow edges. The sources I consulted were uncertain whether these rings were yellow, white, or maybe even some other light color, but I went for yellow as it was the RAF's markings standard. Looks odd, but also pretty cool, esp. with the Type B roundels’ slightly off proportions.

The subdued two-color fin flash on the dark aircraft was/is unusual, too, and following real world practice on some PR Hurricanes I added a thin white edge for better contrast. The small black serial on a white background, as if it was left over from an overpainted former fuselage band, came from a Latvian Sopwith Camel (PrintScale sheet); in RAF service N8187 would have been used during the pre-WWII period and therefore a plausible match for the Swallow, even though it belongs to a batch of RN aircraft (It would probably have been a Fairey Fulmar)..

No black ink washing was applied to the model due to its dark overall color, just the cockpit and the landing gear were treated this way. Some light weathering and panel shading was done all over, and soot stains as well as light grey “heat-bleached” areas due to lean combustion around the exhausts were painted onto the fuselage. Finally, everything was sealed under a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri) and wire antennae (stretched sprue material) were added.

A simple project, realized in a couple of days – thanks to the experience gathered during former builds of this fictional aircraft. However, the Avro Swallow looked already promising in nighthunter's original profile, almost like a missing link between the sturdy Hurricane and the more glorious Spitfire. The result looks very convincing, and the all-blue livery suits the aircraft well! . At first glance, the Swallow looks like an early Spitfire, but then you notice the different wings, the low canopy and the shorter but deeper tail. You might also think that it was a travestied Yak-3 or LaGG aircraft, but again the details don’t match, it’s a quite subtle creation.

I am amazed how good this thing looks overall, with its elegant, slender wings and the sleek fuselage lines – even though the dust filter and the camera fairing strongly ruin the side profile. Maybe another one will join my RAF Swallow collection someday, this time in Irish Air Corps colors.

Built in 1935-1939, this Modern house, an example of Organic Architecture, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the family of department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. to serve as a weekend retreat. The house was a catalyst for the revitalization of Frank Lloyd Wright’s career, who was in his mid-60s at the time, along with two other commissions around the same time, the Johnson Wax Headquarters and the Jacobs House I, which were critically acclaimed and explored a bold new direction of organic architecture that was heavily inspired from their natural surroundings, and were streamlined, dropping most of the ornamental pretenses of his earlier work. The house was built for department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., his wife, Liliane Kaufmann, and their only son, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., to serve as the family’s weekend retreat, with room to accommodate a small staff and guests alongside the family. The Kaufmann family became acquainted with the work of Wright through Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who read Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography in 1934, and was so impressed that he decided to intern at the Taliesin Fellowship, where Edgar, Sr. and Liliane first met Wright while visiting Edgar, Jr. The family, at the time, resided in a traditional-style mansion in Fox Chapel, near Pittsburgh, and had a small rustic cabin overlooking the waterfall at the Fallingwater site. The cabins were falling into disrepair in the mid-1930s, which prompted the Kaufmann family to contact Wright to design a replacement structure. Wright visited and surveyed the area around Bear Run in 1934, but shelved the project while pursuing other work for the next few months, thinking through the design, before being surprised by a visit from Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. in September 1935, which prompted Wright to quickly draw a concept for a house at Bear Run, producing the initial design drawings in two hours. Edgar, Sr., upon seeing the plans, was surprised to see the house soaring above the waterfall, as he had expected it to sit below the falls in order to view them from a distance, but Wright’s charisma convinced a skeptical Kaufmann to buy into the concept.

The house was designed by Wright with input from structural engineers Mendel Glickman and William Wesley Peters to feature large cantilevers, which allowed it to embrace the waterfall and topography below, while providing ample outdoor space and the desired number of bedrooms and living spaces within. A second wing was constructed above the main house, linked to it via a covered breezeway, which houses a carport, servants quarters, and a guest suite. The stone utilized in the house’s construction was quarried on the site, and it utilized reinforced concrete in its construction, a building technique with which Wright was inexperienced, but which the design would be impossible to implement without utilizing. Kaufmann was skeptical of Wright’s experience with the technique, as well as the cantilevered forms of the structure, and commissioned an engineering report, compiled by an engineering firm, which caused Wright to threaten to walk away from the incomplete project. Kaufmann relented in the face of Wright’s ultimatum, and had the documents buried. However, the contractor, feeling uneasy about the strength of Wright’s design, added extra reinforcement in secret, which was revealed during the building’s restoration. Other changes were made due to skepticism of the cantilevered design, but many of these were reversed, which proved the resiliency and strength of the design. The house came in far over budget, but despite these cost overruns and complications with the design, the Kaufmann family enjoyed it as a weekend retreat between 1937 and 1963. Liliane Kaufmann died in 1952, and Edgar Kaufmann, Sr. died in 1955, leaving the house to their son, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who continued to utilize the house as a weekend retreat, with his life partner, Paul Mayén, becoming a regular visitor to the house as well. In 1963, Edgar, Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, along with the surrounding property, which was converted into a nature reserve, and the house was opened for public tours.

The house features multiple reinforced concrete cantilevers, wrap-around windows facing the falls and Bear Run, open, transparent corners on the side of the building facing the creek, stone cladding on the more opaque portions of the facade, large terraces on the cantilevered portions of the building, open tread staircases inside and outside the building, red metal trim, a suspended concrete canopy over the breezeway connecting the guest wing and carport with the main house, a swimming pool on the terrace outside the guest wing, rocks embedded into the floors of the interior of the house, a staircase from the living room down to Bear Run below, and red concrete floors inside. A driveway, following Bear Run, crosses a bridge next to the main wing of the house before following a narrow corridor between the main wing and an adjacent stone outcropping, before turning and arriving at the upper wing, which originally housed a four-bay carport on the lower floor. The interior of the house is very open to the exterior, with low furnishings that allow for maximization of the views out of the windows, and is home to art that was collected by Liliane, books collected by Edgar, Jr. and Paul, and furnishings collected by Edgar, Sr. The house’s kitchen features yellow-painted metal cabinets and appliances, and chrome handles, the living room features a fireplace with a spherical beverage warmer that is designed to swing over to the fireplace from its storage location next to the fireplace and coffered ceilings, and horizontal bands of trim, and various portions of the house feature built-in desks, cabinets, wooden slat screens, and bookshelves, simple beds featuring wooden headboards and nightstands in the bedrooms, and bathrooms with cork tiles, sunken bathtubs, ceiling-mounted shower heads, and toilets with wall-embedded tanks. The upper wing of the house has a carport and guest suite on the lower floor, with servants quarters above, and the main house features a living room, dining room, kitchen, terraces and lounge on the first floor, a primary suite and secondary bedroom and bathroom with large terraces on the second floor, and a suite intended for Edgar, Jr. on the third floor, which was later partially converted into an office. The house is very broad in the direction parallel to Bear Run and has a living room that cantilevers over the creek, but it is very thin, being rather thin, with primary interior spaces featuring windows that look out onto Bear Run below. The house, despite its size appearing massive due to its spatial arrangement, has only a small interior square footage, but the space is efficiently designed to offer maximum utility to the occupants, and allow a close connection with nature.

The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It was designated as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, in 2019. A visitor center was constructed on the property in 1977-1979, designed by Paul Mayen. The most visible modification to the house since it was opened to the public were the enclosure of three carport bays to house a museum and presentation space for visitors. The house underwent major alterations to its structural systems in 1995-2002, involving analyzing the performance of the cantilevers over time since the house’s construction, as the bold cantilevered forms had insufficient reinforcement and had deflected substantially, nearing their failure points. Additional steel supports and post-tensioning in the form of steel cables were added to the building to support the cantilevers, which has halted the progression of the deflection of the structure, though it is monitored by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in order to detect any further movement of the structure. The house today sees over one-hundred thousand visitors annually, and is one of the most well-known works of Wright, as well as being one of the best-known houses in the United States.

Norfolk Southern operated N&W streamlined J-class 4-8-4 Northern steam locomotive # 611 leads its northbound Railfan Excursion Train into a tunnel portal on the main line route between Chattanooga and Oneida, Tennessee, October 1989. This route was formerly the property of the Southern Railway. After the train reaches Oneida and the people are feed in a park along with possible gifts being purchased, the Railfan Excursion Train will return to Chattanooga.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Vickers Type 287 was a British 1930s light bomber built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Brooklands near Weybridge, Surrey, for the Royal Air Force. The Type 287 was originally built as a private venture and designed as a single-engine monoplane with a very high aspect ratio wing, and a manually operated, retractable undercarriage. It used the same geodetic design principles for both the fuselage and wings that had been derived from that used by Barnes Wallis in the airship R100. As it was not known how the geodetic structure could cope with being disrupted by a bomb bay, the Wellesley's bomb load was carried in two streamlined panniers under the wings.

By 1943 Coastal Command finally received the recognition it needed and its operations proved decisive in the victory over the U-Boats, and when more powerful Vickers Wellington aircraft became available, the Wellesleys of Coastal Command were withdrawn or deployed to Greece, and performed various support duties during the RAF interference in the Greek Civil War. By 1944, the last aircraft had been retired.

General characteristics:

Crew: 3

Length: 39 ft 3 in (11.96 m)

Wingspan: 74 ft 7 in (22.73 m)

Height: 15 ft 3½ in (4.67 m)

Wing area: 630 ft² [11] (58.5 m²)

Empty weight: 6,760 lb (3,066 kg)

Loaded weight: 11,048 lb (5,011 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 12,500 lb (5,670 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Hercules VI, rated at 1,675 hp (1,250 kW)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 228 mph (198 kn, 369 km/h) at 19,700 ft (6,000 m)

Cruise speed: 180 mph (157 kn, 290 km/h) at 15,000 ft (4,600 m) (57% power)

Range: 1,220 mi (1,963 km)

Service ceiling: 25,500 ft (7,772 m)

Wing loading: 18 lb/ft² (86 kg/m²)

Power/mass: 0.08 hp/lb (0.14 kW/kg)

Climb to 15,000 ft (4,600 m): 17.8 min

Armament:

5× .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine guns, one fixed forward in the right wing, four in a dorsal powered turret

Up to 2.000 lb (907 kg) of bombs in underwing panniers

The kit and its assembly:

Honestly, this kit conversion was inspired by an idea from fellow users (NARSES2 and pyro-manic) at whatifmodelers.com, who suggested a Wellesley in Coastal Command service. I have always liked these aircraft's elegant livery with a dark top side, white undersides and a very high waterline - and using THIS on a Wellesley, which traditionally carried Dark Green/Dark Earth uppers and Night (Black) undersides, would certainly look cool.

But it would certainly not remain a standard Mk. I bomber for sure, and as I cooked up a story I found the idea of a re-engined, radar-equipped reconnaissance aircraft pretty convincing - the Wellesley's long range and payload (the thing could carry more than it weighed itself!) made it an excellent choice.

The basis is the vintage Matchbox kit, which actually has some nice features. The geodetic surface is fine and not over-emphasized, just the landing gear is rather poor - I decided to drill open the landing gear wells and add some interior, as the kit offers OOB offer neither a well nor any detail. Inside, I glued parts from a plastic cookie box - not intended to be realistic, I just wanted to have some depth and structure.

As further means to enhance the overall look I also lowered the flaps, which was easy to realize.

Engine conversion to a Hercules (from a Matchbox Wellington bomber) was straightforward, as the Wellesley kit not only offers the original Jupiter engine of the Mk. I. bomber, but also an alternative, streamlined engine cowling for the Type 292 Long Range Development Aircraft. This offers a nice adapter for the Hercules – and with the bigger propeller and a spinner, this changes the look of the Wellesley a lot.

In order to beef up rearward defense I decided to implant a powered gun turret - a quadruple .303 turret from a Boulton Paul Defiant. The turret was taken from a Pavla kit and consists of styrene and resin parts, plus a vacu canopy. The gunner is a personal addition, I think it comes from a Matchbox Privateer, from one of the optional dorsal turrets.

Mounting the Defiant turret in the fuselage was tricky, as the turret is relatively wide, almost the same diameter as the Wellesley’s. I placed it where the original navigator cockpit with the rearwards-facing Vicker K is located. I carefully opened up the fuselage around that opening until the turret would fit, and then added covers made from styrene strips so that the whole thing would look a bit organic and streamlined. Inside, the turret sits on a styrene axis, so that it can be inserted/taken out at will. Very handy during painting, and the construction makes the turret 360° turnable.

Otherwise, the interior was taken OOB, as there’s hardly anything to identify once the canopy is fitted. The latter would remain closed, anyway.

The radome under the fuselage was a late addition: originally I had planned to add antenna masts for an ASV Mk. II radar, but then found the ASV Mk. III radome from the aforementioned Matchbox Wellington kit. As the Wellesley did not have a bomb bay, that space between the landing gear was just perfect. And while it would not be necessary I still added some antenna masts (scratched from heated sprues) under the wings and on the fuselage flanks - it just looks cool... ;)

Painting and markings:

The interior (cockpit, turret, landing gear) was painted in classic Interior Green (Humbrol 78).

On the outside, rather simple, classic Coastal Command colors were used: Dark Sea Grey and Dark Slate Grey on the upper side, with the pattern taken from the RAF Wellesley, and white undersides with a very high waterline and white leading edges on the wings.

Painting started with the lower sides – I used spray paint from the rattle can, since the large areas are hard to paint, esp. with white. Consequently I rather used a very light grey (RAL 7047, Telegrau 4), since pure white would be too bright/ by tendency. The color pictures I consulted for reference suggest that these machines would easily tend to become dirty, much room for weathering! After basic spray painting, the “white” areas received a counter-shading and dry-brushing with Humbrol 196 (RAL 7035, Lichtgrau), which is slightly more yellow-ish and lighter than RAL 7047.

After that had dried up, waterlines and leading edges were masked with Tamiya Tape, for the upper colors. Humbrol 27 and 224 were used as basic enamel colors, as they are the darkest tones for the job. Later, these were treated with Modelmasters’ 2056 and 2059, in order to weather the upper surfaces and work out the geodetic structure – similar procedure as for the lower surfaces.

The kit received a wash with black ink and serious dry-brushing in order to work out the wonderful surface structure - basically with some Humbrol 64 (Light Sea Grey) all around - no pure white has been used on the kit at all. Dirt, soot and stains were added with grinded graphite and thinned Humbrol 224.

Decals were puzzled together from the scrap box, from various RAF aircraft. Even though I took 179th Squadron Wellingtons as benchmark, I decided to add a full three-digit code with dull red letters – it adds an eye-catcher to the aircraft’s flanks, and the letters come from a MIcroscale aftermarket sheet.

The respective Wellingtons only had scarce markings and just single-letter codes (the full squadron code, "OZ", had obviously been omitted?).

In the end, not a major conversion, but the different paint scheme and the more massive nose change the overall look of the Wellesley considerably. I am quite happy with the result.

I love this streamlined research building on Research Park Blvd. I passed it occasionally and also took the occasional shot but I thought it would be nice to see how a photo turns out when the sky is gray like today. So, I drove in the lot and took this image from the back of the building. Yes, it is tilted, but well, it is the weekend.

I assume Johnny Blood was looking at the same building.

When I looked at the image the first time, I had Annie Lennox' "Why" in my ear. Thanks to NJ Dodge I now know that it is a "boat" and not a "ship" that sinks.

The New York Central K-5b Pacific Class 4-6-2 steam locomotive #4915 with Henry Dreyfuss' streamline design. Originally manufactured in 1926 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), no. 4915 and her sister no. 4917 were streamlined in 1936 to lead The New York Central’s most luxurious experience on rails.

This project is my first MOC and has taken about a year and a half to complete with many challenges arising in trying to obtain the beautiful "streamline moderne" styling. Perseverance paid off however and through 1/2 steps, 1/3 steps and even 1/6 steps I have ended with a final version that I hope you all will enjoy.

The model is 8-wide, built to 1:48 scale and is designed to fit all standard lego track geometry. The locomotive is powered by two Power Functions M motors.

Directions to the build can be found here:

www.etsy.com/shop/ChristopherLocoWorks

BENS, a classic Streamlined Moderne restaurant in Montreal, visited by many celebrities, is being sold and is in grave danger of being demolished. Sam Benatar, president of SIDEV, the developer, has declared, "It isn't worth anything." It is very ironic that there is now an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on Streamlined Design, www.mmfa.qc.ca/en/expositions/exposition_43.html with carefully preserved examples of Streamlined Modern design but a beautiful public example of it is about to be destroyed. Surely, BENS is as important to preserve as the objects in the museum exhibit.

BENS was designed by Charles Davis Goodman (1894-1962), who was one of the architects of a number of well-known Montreal buildings, including the now demolished, and much mourned, 1948 Laurentien Hotel, the 1931 Jewish General Hospital and the 1948 Pascal Hardware. Goodman, a McGill University graduate, was elected a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 1955.

See artdecomontreal.com/pages/news.htm for full alert.

If you care, please send an email to these people in any language and forward this alert to anyone else who cares about good and historic design.

Josette Laurin, Josette.Laurin@mcc.gouv.qc.ca

Yves Laliberté, yves.laliberte@mcc.gouv.qc.ca

Caroline Dubuc, cdubuc@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Karim Boulos, karimboulos@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Benoit Labonté, benoitlabonte@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Melanie Faucher, melaniefaucher@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Catherine Sevigny, catherinesevigny@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Gerald Tremblay, geraldtremblay@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Lucienne Robillard, Robillard.L@parl.gc.ca

Beverley Oda, Oda.B@parl.gc.ca

SIDEV, info@sidev.com

Jacques Chagnon, jchagnon@assnat.qc.ca

Christine St-Pierre, ministre@mcccf.gouv.qc.ca

See artdecomontreal.com/pages/news.htm for full alert.

If you care, please send an email to these people in any language and forward this alert to anyone else who cares about good and historic design.

Josette Laurin, Josette.Laurin@mcc.gouv.qc.ca

Yves Laliberté, yves.laliberte@mcc.gouv.qc.ca

Caroline Dubuc, cdubuc@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Karim Boulos, karimboulos@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Benoit Labonté, benoitlabonte@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Melanie Faucher, melaniefaucher@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Catherine Sevigny, catherinesevigny@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Gerald Tremblay, geraldtremblay@ville.montreal.qc.ca

Lucienne Robillard, Robillard.L@parl.gc.ca

Beverley Oda, Oda.B@parl.gc.ca

SIDEV, info@sidev.com

Jacques Chagnon, jchagnon@assnat.qc.ca

Christine St-Pierre, ministre@mcccf.gouv.qc.ca

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1946 Cadillac hood ornament. This was taken at the Cadillac & LaSalle Club Grand National Convention hosted by the Kansas City Cadillac Club in Overland Park Kansas (July 2010). This an so many more beautiful cars of days gone by were there with the proud owners.

Streamlined Sundays: Cars in the Park

WHEN: July 8, 2018 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

40 classic sports cars from 1967 and earlier will line the Park Blocks outside the Museum for this month’s Streamlined Sunday, a program of The Shape of Speed. Ranging from 1930’s Alfa Romeos to competition Ferraris from the 1960s, Cars in the Park is the kickoff for Keith Martin’s Sports Car Market 30th Anniversary Tour.

Streamlined - Stewie style

The streamlines of the Class 390 Pendolino are apparent in this shot of 390119 arriving at Crewe with a train from London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street

The New York Central Hudson's were a series of 4-6-4 "Hudson" type steam locomotives built by the American Locomotive Company and the Lima Locomotive Works from 1927 to 1938 for the New York Central Railroad. Named after the Hudson River, the 4-6-4 wheel arrangement came to be known as the "Hudson" type in the United States as these locomotives were the first examples built and used in North America. Built for high-speed passenger train work, the Hudson locomotives were famously known for hauling the New York Central's crack passenger trains, such as the 20th Century Limited and the Empire State Express. With the onset of diesel locomotives in the mid 20th Century, all Hudson locomotives were retired and scrapped by the late 1950's. None of the New York Central Hudson's survived into preservation.

SSR’s T277 to Yennora lead by B75 and 4532 notches up through Auburn after swapping GM27 with the B class in Enfield

5931–37 Hollywood Blvd.,

Hollywood 28, California

"Dine with the Stars Under the Stars"

The rather old fashioned but classic lines of the MS Taiyuan contrast with the more streamlined look of the Princess of Tasmania, yet only 10 years separates their entry into service. The Taiyuan was launched in 1949 as a general cargo/passenger ship and, with her sister ship, worked a 78 day round trip generally taking in cargo and passengers at Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Manila, Hong Kong, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Shimizu, Hong Kong, Sydney and back to Melbourne with occasional forays to other ports. This trip to Devonport must have been one of those forays.

Her traditional lines, tall slender pipe funnel and upright cargo derricks belie the fact that all the public rooms in her passenger accommodation were air-conditioned and the service and accommodation were of a high standard.

Nonetheless, while both carrying cargo and passengers the Taiyuan and the Princess were light years apart in concept; the first a traditional cargo vessel (no containers or bulk cargo here) and the second a modern roll-on/roll-off ferry. By the early 1970's much larger ships were also able to offer far more in the way of facilities and entertainment to their passengers while cargo handling had changed, and by 1978 the Taiyuan had been converted to a sheep carrier. She was broken up in Taiwan in 1980.

(nonworking) neon sign and streamlined vitrolite storefront. a 1930s addition to a 1880s building. 2nd st. Hastings, Nebraska.

One of the best storefronts I have personally seen.

LMS streamlined Princess Coronation Class 4-6-2 No.6220 Coronation at Euston with the Coronation Scot. 1937

These are a few Streamlined and Semi-streamlined steam locomotives in HO scale. All are brass, except the two British LNER locomotives. Pennsylvania Railroad T-1 4-4-4-4 by Alco Models

A caspian tern looks for a fishy breakfast over Lake Michigan. Milwaukee, Wisconsin at Bradford Beach.

The modern looking streamlined Peugeot 402 series was presented at the 1935 Paris Motor Show. In the early 1930s revolutionary aerodynamic theories were applied for the first time to mass produced cars. Avant-garde cars like 1934 Tatra 77 and the 1934 Chrysler Airflow gained a lot of positive attention. The 402 was Peugeot's answer to its direct competitor the streamlined 1934 Citroën TA.

The 402 was developed by the Département Études Carrosseries, under supervision of Henri Thomas.

The Peugeot 02-series was also called Fuseau-Sochaux.

The 402 series replaced the predecessors 401 and 601 (from 1934-1935).

Many body variants were available.

The 402 B with an increased engine, followed in Summer 1938.

Besides several Art Deco details, the headlamps placed behind the grille were very remarkable.

See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_402

2142 cc L4 petrol engine.

Performance: 60 bhp.

C. 1200 kg.

Production Peugeot 402 series: Sept. 1935-July 1942.

Production Peugeot 402 B Berline this version: Oct. 1938-June 1940.

Original first reg. number: June 30, 1936 (according to RDW, but that's not correct).

New Dutch pseudo-historical reg. number: April 20, 2009.

With current owner since June 22, 2024.

Seen in car museum Visscher Classique. It's a new car museum originated from a large car collection of director Henk Visscher, mixed with a lot of passion and ambition.

The collection focuses on the French brands that fall under the Stellantis group (formerly PSA).

More info: visscherclassique.nl/museum/

Buren, Visscher Classique Car Museum, Schuilheuvelstraat, Aug. 5, 2023.

© 2023 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

This 4-8-2 Mountain type engine is numbered 6093 and is owned by the Ohio Pacific Railroad. There never was a Ohio Pacific railroad in the real world, but in my fictional universe, it never made it to the California coast, just to Denver, Colorado at it's western-most terminal with New York City being it's eastern-most point. As such, this locomotive is entirely fictional, with the paint scheme for the coaches inspired the real-world Missouri Pacific.

The train features the streamlined locomotive + tender, baggage car, three coaches and an observation car at the rear.

Norfolk and Western 611, also known as the "Spirit of Roanoke" and the "Queen of Steam", is a Norfolk and Western class J 4-8-4 "Northern" streamlined steam locomotive built in May 1950 by the N&W's East End Shops in Roanoke, Virginia. Wikipedia

Build date: May 29, 1950

Designer: H.W. Reynolds and Franklin C. Noel

Rebuild date: 1981–1982; 2014–2015

Serial number: 388

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_and_Western_611

Also see: flic.kr/p/2o8ahxn

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