Carillon Park Transportation Center

The Transportation Center was one of the sites at Carillon Park that Lukey was looking forward to seeing. In fact, Lukey was looking forward to seeing this building so much that, in the photo below, he is already inside the building as the rest of us are still approaching the building.

As the name of the building suggests, this building is home to most of Carillon Park's vehicles such as train cars, streetcars, trolleys, buses, one or two cars, horse-drawn carriages and even a horse-drawn fire truck. I think Lukey was most interested in the trains inside the Transportation Center. Honestly, I am also partial to all the railroad-related vehicles.

The "John Quincy Adams" locomotive, below, is the oldest steam locomotive still in existence today. It was built in 1835 for the B&O Railroad. This is an unusual steam locomotive in that its boiler is in a vertical orientation rather than the boiler being a long horizontal tube running from the front of the locomotive back to inside the cab lying on its side. Because of this unusual configuration providing an unusual appearance, this locomotive was referred to "the grasshopper". I thought I had captured a photo of this locomotive from the side but I can't find it. I know Lukey did capture that angle so I'll be showing his photo in a future blog entry with his other photos from Carillon Park.

This is one of the early open streetcars that used to run on the streets of Dayton...

Getting access to the interior of any historic, museum-quality train cars is unusual and a joy. Most museums do not allow visitors inside the train cars. Here, below, Lukey is walking through an old coach car...

Now we have Kenzie doing her modeling runway walk up the aisle of the same coach car...

All of these older train cars feature stained glass details...

Streetcars in Dayton were replaced with electric buses. These buses were powered similarly to the older trolleys... powered by overhead power lines but rather than a single trolley pole or pantograph, these buses had two trolley poles... one for the positive power and one for the negative return.

These types of electric buses were on the streets of Dayton when I lived here. Unfortunately, we didn't see a single electrified bus during our latest visit. We did see some propane-powered buses though so I suspect that the electric buses are a relic of the past. I prefer the more historic electrified classic buses and trolleys but that should come as no surprise of anyone. I prefer all things to have some character and newer trams, trains, and electric streetcars are molded, sleek, featureless boxes.

Below, Lukey and I are capturing photos of each other. Hmmm... I don't remember seeing a photo of me in his photos! I'll have to go back and check the folder containing his photos from Carillon Park. I'm always looking for photos of myself... very few exist because I am almost always the one and only one with the camera!

The next four photos are of the inside of a caboose. I purposely shot these caboose interior photos in case I wanted some reference photos for detailing the inside of some model cabooses... cabeese?... cabooses...

And again, Kenzie's model runway walk up the aisle of this historic train car...

I love the detail in these roof interiors, arched roof peak windows and lighting fixtures but I think they could do better than just sticking a bare mid-twentieth century incandescent light bulbs in these antique fixtures. . I believe a LED filament bulb would be a closer approximation of bulbs of this era as far as appearance goes. The bare frosted incandescent bulbs with the bold wattage numbers on them look ridiculous. I do love that workworking detail though!

The next three photos were captured on the inside of a Parlor Car. Honestly, I find these cars far more enjoyable and better designed that today's Amtrak Sightseer Lounge cars which serve similar purposes. The Amtrak cars are more like a combination of McDonald's restaurant design and Fisher-Price design. Of course, I am well aware that the general public today is mostly a bunch of pigs and slobs and these uncivilized people would quickly destroy a fine train car such as we see in this blog entry. It sure would be nice to travel in train cars that have more of a classic appearance such as these train cars though.