Ain't that the coolest!
Thank you Larry! This is incredible, you made my day, clanged my tip jar (and designed a new one!) and sent me a Christmas card! That's so dang generous, and awesome!
Friday, December 26, 2025
if you know what this is, then your childhood had some cool movies. It also might be the only time a tractor has been portrayed as a movie's antagonist!
If you've got to here, without recognizing the movie, it's the Secret of NIHM - a masterpiece by Don Bluth, who was stifled by Disney, and led an exodus of animators away from a dying Disney animation studio, and they created their own, and made some really damn cool movies: Titan AE, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Anastasia, the Land Before Time
While at Disney, he worked on Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, and was the animation director for such films as The Rescuers and Pete's Dragon
Steven Spielberg teamed up with Don in the late 80s for the films An American Tail and The Land Before Time, and Disney had NOTHING that came close to comparing.
huh, interesting promo about coal, all over this license plate. Since when does coal need to be advertised?
It looks like Kentucky doesn't care what you design your vanity plate to look like or promote, they have 150 designs https://drive.ky.gov/Vehicles/Pages/License-Plates.aspx
Netflix has a documentary on car design, (lots of 90s Mopar concept cars!) focused on Ralph Gilles, head of design for Mopar/Dodge/Chrysler/FCA "Abstract: The Art Of Design" (Season 1 ep 4) and it seems you can watch it on You Tube
Of course you can watch it at home on your big screen too, on Netflix
I had no idea he was born in Montreal, whose parents were Haitian immigrants, who must have been incredible parents, he became the youngest, fastest achieving head of design of one of the major dozen car making corporations, and his brother became a doctor, was an emergency room Dr at St Joe's in Elgin Illinois, and now is a board member of Morris Hospital (both are in the Chicago area)
tough looking street sweepers!
photographer: Leo Tiede
https://www.bowers.org/index.php/collections-blog/the-fast-and-the-curious-leo-tiede-s-photographs-of-cars
Carbon fiber camshafts?
The weight savings alone might be an advantage, less rotational inertia means faster revs, quicker valve acceleration, and less parasitic loss.
That translates directly to sharper throttle response and more usable RPM, not just dyno numbers. On top of that, carbon fiber doesn’t fatigue the same way steel does, and it can be engineered to dampen harmonics instead of amplifying them. Less valvetrain vibration = more stability at high RPM, less spring pressure required, and reduced wear everywhere else in the system.
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Come for the train photo, stay to wonder about this very cool spiral staircase tower! Philadelphia’s Spiral Standpipe. I kid you not, if I hadn't started this blog on vehicles, I might have started one on history instead.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27858?size=_original#caption
130-foot spiral column that was to provide water pressure for the emerging neighborhood of Mantua with a standpipe wrapped in an ornate, circular staircase topped off with a 17-foot wide public viewing platform and, above that, a 16-foot statue of George Washington. Everything would be custom engineered, locally-manufactured, and, except for the base, in cast iron.
In the Fall of 1854, the 8-foot Gothic doorway at ground level was thrown open for the public to venture up the 172 narrow steps
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
Philadelphia’s standpipe had its models in ancient Rome’s venerable columns for Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, monuments with spiral stone steps on the inside and spiral stone friezes on the outside.
The London-published Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal profiled the standpipe. But so did Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, a popular national magazine of the day, whose editors presented an illustrated feature in the Spring of 1853.
The standpipe became obsolete after a reservoir that took more funds and time, came online in another 15 years.
The standpipe sat abandoned until the early 1880s, until, in yet another display of derring-do, engineers moved it in a single piece, to the Spring Garden Water Works.
But permanence proved fleeting and fickle; Philadelphia’s spiral column, its monument to industry, innovation, and history, was last seen somewhere at the end of the 19th century.
Its ultimate demise came without fanfare. Meanwhile, in Rome, the standpipe’s ancient progenitors remain standing—two millennia and counting.
Even more photos of the Long Beach Fire Dept 1927 Graham Paige touring 621 with the Bright Bumper and Woodlite headlight aftermarket upgrades
I posted a lot of photos of these in 2017, and all about the Bright Bumper
imagine doing the landscaping that's been put off for a 100 years, clearing out the bushes, shrubs, and hedges, and you find this... umm, wheeled thing!
I couldn't figure out what the heck it was... except steam boiler powered... but the post went on to show what the thing had been before rust took away all the small stuff
this 1930 Caterpillar Thirty tractor is the most original operating Thirty known to exist
The tractor had been owned by a farming family in California, they grew up with it and did an amazing job taking care of that machine its entire life
“He still had all the original things on it that were bought at the factory,” Walker says.
That includes components very difficult to find today, like the fan guard on the right side of the engine, the radiator cap, fuel cap. He even still had the brass key for the magneto.
US Navy Albina Engine and Machine Works ( a shipyard along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon ) Disney military patch
The Albina yard expanded its workforce and production during Portland's World War II shipbuilding boom.
It specialized in producing subchasers, vessels designed to combat German U-boats. Albina Engine & Machine Works also built Landing Craft Support vessels, cargo ships, and barges
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