Categories
E-Bikes History

Spring Lake Park E-Biking

Staircase at Spring Lake. Source: TCM

Spring Lake is part of Roebling Park, which is in the Abbott Marshlands of New Jersey. The park has had many names over the years. In the early twentieth century, this was the White City Amusement Park. It was renamed Boiling Springs Park a few years before it closed in 1922.

The Casino restaurant, a c. 1820 mansion that is now privately owned, provided patrons a view of the landscape below. A grand staircase allowed them to walk down to the lake, where there were more rides. The staircase is one of the few visible remnants of its past.

Most of the trails are for walking only, but the Spring Lake loop is bikeable. This park is currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The staircase at Spring Lake. Overlook Mansion, formerly the Casino Restaurant, is visible at the top of the bluff. Source: TCM
Spring Lake in 1907 postcard. A staircase is visible in the center of the photo, but may be a precursor to the existing one.
White City Park in 1908. The top of the staircase is depicted on the left edge of the map. Source: Insurance Maps of Trenton, New Jersey. Sanborn Map Co., 1908.
Spring Lake. Source: TCM
Mural at Spring Lake
Source: TCM
Categories
Culture

Fort Couch couch fort? Vacation at home

Fort Pillow poster

Commemorate your involuntary staycation with these posters from Duke Cannon and maybe protect America from the confederates with a Fort Couch couch fort reenactment this weekend?

 Download high quality pdf posters at Duke Cannon site for free, or purchase the prints.

Marker commemorating the original Fort Couch, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Source: TCM

Categories
Culture

Flatten the Curve: Duke Cannon PSA Posters

Encourage social distancing and sanitary practices with these posters from Duke Cannon. Free high quality downloads at their site, or purchase the prints.

Also, unsolicited recommendation for their Tactical Scrubber – It’s like a force multiplier for your soap.

Categories
Music

TV Party: Black Flag

No, really, we’ve got nothing better to do. Another one of those songs I had forgotten about (until hearing it on the Friday Night Freakout). Fine, it was supposed to be ironic, but is it really?

Originally released on Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged, then re-released on their EP TV Party with the actual tv show “Fridays” switched out for “Wednesdays,” for some reason, then included on the Repo Man soundtrack (yeah, I forgot it was on there, too).

That’s Incredible!

Vega$!

Categories
History

A Bit More on Trenton’s Hog Island Cranes

Several gantry cranes in operation at the Hog Island Shipyard in Philadelphia, 1919. Source: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History. catalog no. 335550.2,
accession no. 1977.0003

Here’s a few more details on the cranes at the Marine Terminal Park. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form, the cranes were originally 15 ton oil burning, steam powered locomotive gantry cranes built by McMyler Interstate Company of Cleveland, Ohio in 1917. Twenty-eight of them were purchased by the new Hog Island shipyard in 1917. There is an excellent summary of Hog Island by John Lawrence on the also-excellent Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Detail of gantry crane from the above photo. Source: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History. catalog no. 335550.2,
accession no. 1977.0003

The steam gantry cranes have a 15 ton capacity at 15 ft. radius, mounted on tracks, with holding and closing lines and clam shell buckets of 3/4 and 1 1/2 yard capacity. Provision is made for magnets at 35 ft. radius with portable electric power. In 1952 they were overhauled and the boilers replaced. They stand on four legs, and are approximately 40 ft. tall.

TAMS 1952
Continue reading “A Bit More on Trenton’s Hog Island Cranes”
Categories
Architecture History

The Hog Island Gantry Cranes

Gantry crane
Source: TCM

The first thing to realize is that the Hog Island cranes are no longer on Hog Island. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, a massive shipyard was set up alongside the Delaware River on Hog Island in Philadelphia to build transport and cargo ships, although none of the ships were completed before the war ended in 1918.

Gantry crane detail
Source: TCM

In 1930, Philadelphia bought Hog Island and transformed it into what is now the Philadelphia International Airport. Two of the cranes were sold and moved upriver to Trenton. At the Trenton Marine Terminal, they were used to load and unload ships for several decades before being taken out of service. Only the two gantries remain; the cranes that sat on top of them are gone. The Hog Island cranes were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

For more on Hog Island, see The Necessity for Ruins.

Categories
Diversions Equipment

Hokey Smokes, it’s the Honda Hunter Cub!

Honda CT125 Hunter Cub in Matte Fresco Brown. Source: Honda Japan and rideapart.com

After re-introducing the Super Cub to the U.S., Honda is now releasing the CT125 Hunter Cub, a more off-road ready bike that’s an evolution of their 1960s-1970s era Honda Trail bikes. The Hunter Cub will be released in Japan in June and may (or may not) also come to the U.S.

Honda CT125 Hunter Cub in Glowing Red. Source: Honda Japan and rideapart.com
Categories
books

Shelter-In-Place Mood:

Star Trek GIF
Categories
academia Research

Academic Publishers Make Resources Available to Cope with COVID-19

The Penn Libraries have assembled a list of academic publishers who are making educational resources more readily available for researchers and teachers who are dealing with teaching or working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access varies by publisher but includes textbooks and some articles. Annual Reviews, for example, is making all their articles freely available, while other publishers are expanding access to their current subscribers.

Thanks to ZOOARCH-L for publicizing this!

Categories
Archaeology Passenger Pigeon

Passenger Pigeons on New Hampshire Public Radio

How many is a lot? When you’re talking passenger pigeons, that question is more controversial than you might think.

I was fortunate to be able to participate in a discussion of passenger pigeon population numbers for the Outside/In podcast, which is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Author Charles Mann was also interviewed because his book, 1491, repeated an earlier claim that passenger pigeon remains are rarely found on archaeological sites and questioned whether passenger pigeons were truly abundant before the 1800s.

Listen to the episode, Tempest in a Teacup, at the Outside/In website, or wherever you normally get your podcasts.

“Doctorates are so weird”