July 25, 2009
The Mustang secured air supremacy as part of the victory in World War II. I'm persuaded of the Falcon's usefulness in preventing a subsequent world war.
There were a number of other acts, military, civilian, and converted military.
The Milwaukee beaches are pleasant. The water is still cool enough that relatively few people are swimming.
The self-unloader is probably returning to a cement works someplace. It's a laker, thus not a vector for new invasive species.
Getting there meant some train rides, an idea that occurred to lots of people on the weekend.
Every seat was full on the 3.15 Hiawatha to Milwaukee on Friday. It (like many of the Metra trains) fell behind its schedule thanks to heavy passenger loadings. My return trip on the 7.45 from the airport was less heavily loaded. (I was the only boarding passenger, which might be unusual although I've seen light boardings for that run before.) The train stopped at Union Station at 8.55, against a timetabled 9.14 to provide for track work. As far as I know, the cabbage car didn't grow 84 inch drivers somewhere near A-68.
A weekend pass means an option to do more train riding if the weather is good. The Metra crew on the 10.25 Elburn announced, somewhere near Oak Park, that they had sold out of weekend passes and advised passengers to purchase one at the station rather than pay a penalty fare on the train. Nine cars, all loaded, and weekend crews now use the weekday practice of stopping with the head end nearer the platform end in order to fill the rear cars at closer-in stations.
The South Shore was also running full trains, with a goodly amount of luggage (people heading home from O'Hare, or transferring to South Bend, or just ending a weekend in Chicago?) Dune Park is a good place to turn back as the weekend trains still make the traditional meet at Sheridan, just off the end of the street running in Michigan City. The bilevel interurbans had the weekend off.
July 26, 2009.
Disney and Amtrak have been touring their "A Christmas Carol" promotional train, which called at Chicago on the weekend. The theater set is selling tickets to tour the trains. The carrier and the station managed to keep passenger traffic through the station fluid.
The increased passenger loadings on Amtrak and Metra demonstrate the limitations of even the improved passenger layout at Union Station. The Amtrak waiting area at the south end can still handle good-sized crowds (although the practice of keeping passengers out of the seats closest to the gates means more crowding) although with a special event in the waiting room, it's not available as a waiting area for some of the more popular trains. The queue to board the Milwaukee trains now extends through the much smaller north waiting area and back into the south waiting area.
The real crowding, however, is in the commuter concourses. During the weekdays, Metra sets the train into the station, generally on the same track each day, opens the doors, and the regulars go down the escalators and onto the trains. At weekends, the trains operate on a two-hour frequency, with the consist made available for boarding maybe 20 minutes before departure. Put more than a few Cub fans and a few bicycles (the weekend trains carry a lot of bicyclists who brave Loop traffic to get to the lake shore) in a very small waiting area and it gets congested.
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