(Source: tretyakovm, via searchofweird)

via HAMB

I’m trying to raise some lootysmack by selling off dozens of my curios.  Take a peek at my Etsy shop!

This is my friend Carey.  He is an old-school steampunk from before the nerfgunification of steampunk happened.  He has a warehouse where one floor is miniature locomotives (meaning only 18 feet long or smaller), one floor is pipe organs, one floor is pennyfarthings, and one floor is Victorian motion picture equipment.

He collected HO scale trains as a kid, and when that scene peaked, he sold his collection.  From there, he just sort of traded up, buying a Victorian house and filling it with jukeboxes, and so on until he needed a warehouse to store all his stuff.  

When all the grand old theaters and drive-ins started getting torn down, he went around asking if he could take the projection and sound systems out, and he usually got them for free.  Now he is a significant collector of vintage motion picture equipment, although he will say, “The Smithsonian has a finer collection.”  When Magnolia was being filmed, Paul Thomas Anderson insisted on using a particular vintage camera for the black and white opening scene.  Carey was the only person who had a working one.  Get this:  He had a CINERAMA.  There are three in the world:  Paul Allen’s in Seattle, the one in Dayton, Ohio, and his, now in the UK somewhere.

He is active in the Wheelmen as an Ordinary rider, crossed Canada on a railbike, drives his tiny trains for local parks, and is married to the one-time Turkish women’s pennyfarthing champion.  He opened a Museum Of Victorian Motion Picture Technology in Chicago, and people came from all over the world to see it- but not that many of them, so it closed.

We met on Critical Mass as penny riders.  The Wheelmen’s budget comes from appearing in suburban 4th of July parades as the guys on the pennyfarthings, and he has let me ride original pieces in those parades, an act of considerable trust given the value of the bikes.  I was fully prepared to break myself to save the bike but the need, thankfully, did not arise.

Image source:  Discover Live Steam

livelymorgue:

From the Mid-Week Pictorial, this experimental “Zeppelin on wheels” (or Schienenzeppelin) arrived at a station in Hanover, Germany. It went into service in 1931 and that June set a railway speed record. Safety and reliability concerns prevented it from being mass-produced, however. It was dismantled in 1939. Photo: The New York Times

(via pricklylegs)

An “air hog” or pneumatic locomotive is an air-powered locomotive used in environments where fire was a risk, such as flour mills and coal mines.  It was charged off of a stationary steam engine.  I like the Russian nickname for them, “ghost scooters”.  

http://steampunkdepot.livejournal.com/24552.html

China and India are the only countries still manufacturing steam locomotives (unless they’re doing some fancy-pants ones in Denmark or something)

t-s-k-b:

Coal India DHR 784 (via Bingley Hall)

(via supplyside)

rebekka-cordova:

The train the goes up to Schafberg.

Yup I was completely terrified while going up and even worse while going down.

(Source: bekkathyst, via airmanisr)