The NJ Museum of Transportation

The New Jersey Museum of Transportation is a narrow gauge railway that operates within Allaire State Park, though the museum isn’t financially supported by the NJ State Parks Department. They operate as a 50(c)3 non-profit and rely on both donations and train ride tickets to keep the things rolling. This wasn’t my first visit to the museum, but it was the first time I had a camera with me to document the experience.

Founded in 1952, the museum operates a loop track within Allaire State Park and owns a handful of historic building that were moved to the grounds, including the former Allenwood and Freneau train stations. Their collection spans both diesel and steam locomotives, though only the diesel locomotives are operative. The workhorse of the railroad, a WWII vintage diesel locomotive, was originally used to move ordinance around an army base in Hawaii. The train I rode consisted of this locomotive, an army munitions flatcar that was converted by the museum to carry passengers, and a Central Railroad of NJ caboose.

I was lucky enough to take a behind the scenes tour of the facilities with a few of the folks who volunteer with the museum. There are two main buildings where the museum maintains and restores their historic rolling stock - the workshop and car barn. Starting my tour in the workshop, I was introduced to a restored GE 50 ton locomotive that dwarfs the GE 25 ton diesel-electric that pulled my train around the .5 mile long track. A trio of these locomotives came from a US Steel plant, with one being fully restored by the museum and the others used for spare parts. A remotely operated model of the GE 50 ton which was used to work close to the heat of the steel furnaces sits in the car barn with the other inoperative locomotive.

Though in full working order, the restored GE 50 ton only makes a public appearances for special occasions. The weight of the locomotive puts excessive wear on the rails, which means more upkeep for the volunteers to contend with. Restoration projects going on around the workshop include the refurbishment of rail car trucks and the repair of a steam engine boiler, with the hopes of eventually bringing a steam engine from the museum’s collection back to life.

The car barn is a large storage area behind the workshop which holds many pieces of railroad history just waiting for their chance at restoration. Steam locomotives, Pullman cars, and railroad maintenance equipment are housed here in varying states of disrepair. A lot of the equipment now in the barn had suffered vandalism while being stored at the museum, back when things were kept in the open air. I’d particularly love to ride the Pullman car once it’s been fully restored. Some standard gauge railcars like the tanker pictured above are stored outside the car barn.

I was drawn to the green and yellow paint job of the Pine Creek Railroad locomotive below. The Pine Creek Railroad and the NJ Museum of Transportation are one in the same, though only this locomotive (from what I saw) has this detailed paint scheme.

Of all the projects just waiting in the car barn, the steam engines in particular will be quite difficult to restore because of the boiler work and subsequent state inspections required. The railroad is subject to many of the same regulations and insurance requirements larger carriers like NJ Transit and CSX must comply with. With an all volunteer force and a severely depleted operating budget caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 was the first year that semi-typical operations were able to resume. If you live in NJ, I think it’s worth your time to take a trip to Allaire to see both the historic village and the NJ Museum of Transportation. All the volunteers I spoke to were incredibly friendly, and I have to give them a shoutout for taking me on a “behind the scenes” tour of the museum.

Fort Ticonderoga

Overlooking Lake Champlain in upstate New York is Fort Ticonderoga, constructed by France during the French and Indian War. As I looked across the area around me on the drive up to the fort, I wondered “why?” - why build a fort perched above a lake? The placement of the fort just seemed so strange, overlooking a bend in the lake where the historic La Chute river connects Lake Champlain and Lake George.

The answer to “why?” is actually pretty simple. Back in the days when overland travel was difficult and inefficient compared to boats, the waters of Lake Champlain made up a key component of the route used by natives and traders to transit between the Saint Lawrence and Hudson River Valleys via Lake Champlain and Lake George. Both Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Saint-Frédéric (later Fort Crown Point) were built by the French to control trade on the waterways. The fort fell into ruin many times over the years as its importance wained, changing from French, to British, to American hands. During the Revolutionary War, Ethan Allen of Vermont and the Green Mountain Boys captured the fort from the British and used it as a staging base to press their unsuccessful invasion of Quebec in August 1775.

The fort as it stands today is largely a reconstruction. The site was eventually abandoned and salvaged for building materials by locals after it became strategically irrelevant in 1781. Since 1908, ongoing reconstruction of the fort has restored the outer walls, powder magazine, barracks, and outlying support facilities/fortifications. The numerous artillery pieces that adorn the bastions are not original either - after the Americans captured the fort in 1775, they transported most of the artillery south to break the British siege of Boston. Various British and Spanish artillery has been acquired over the years to replace what the Americans moved elsewhere.

I had the chance to wander around the fort back in September with my Mamiya C22 and a roll of Ektachrome E100 film, the results of which you see here. While the northern redoubt was closed for renovation work, I enjoyed walking through the restored barracks and museum spaces. You can tell the foundation puts lots of work into the grounds and the gardens, which were beautifully restored. If you visit, book a ride on the Carillon - it really helps you get a sense of the lake’s scale, and it’s interesting to see via sonar what lies beneath the surface (everything from sunken Revolutionary War gunboats to railroad boxcars circa 1917). I camped a short distance away from the fort at Putnam Pond Campground, a part of the NY State Parks system.

I was happy with how the film turned out, though I did manage to overexpose 2 of the 12 frames on the roll. I don’t normally shoot color and I have no idea why I picked up a Pro Pack (5 rolls) of this film, but when slide film like Ektachrome works… it works wonders. There’s nothing like picking up your film from the lab, holding the roll up to the light, and seeing the beautiful full color images up close.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West

Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s summer design campus, began life as a patch of barren desert in Northeast Scottsdale. From 1937 until his death in 1959, Wright and his entourage of apprentices and staff escaped the harsh Wisconsin winters via the Arizona desert. Today, the site is owned and managed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation which offers audio and guided tours of the facilities. I stopped by on my way through Arizona, having flown into Phoenix before heading south to the Mexican border.

The odd glass elements installed around the property were part of an exhibit entitled “Chihuly in the Desert”, which showcased the work of Dale Chihuly. His glass sculptures were also installed at the Desert Botanical Garden I visited earlier in the day.

Wright’s first foray into the Arizona desert was as a rustic camp, dubbed Ocatilla, which was comprised of multiple wood frame cabins with canvas roofs. This first camp was established when Wright and his draftsmen were working on a handful of projects in the Phoenix area. A camp was a more economical solution than costly hotel rooms for the cash-strapped architect, and the total cost for the compound was about a season’s worth of accommodations at a Phoenix area hotel. Ultimately each cabin came out to around $200 ($3,418 in 2022). Wright abandoned the camp as his Phoenix area commissions evaporated with the stock market crash of 1928, .

Taliesin West started life in 1937 when the search began for a permanent winter home for the Wright Fellowship in the Phoenix area. Apprentices would pay $650 per year to work with Wright, but Foundation members found themselves implementing the very designs they were learning to draft. This free labor was instrumental in building everything from the winding access road to the last building completed by Wright in 1957, the Pavilion. Apprentices lived in tents away from the core buildings while construction was in progress, and dormitories weren’t completed until 1941. Even still, there were only 14 rooms in the newly completed Apprentice Court. A communal kitchen and dining room served meals at the camp.

Constructed of materials native to the desert itself, Taliesin West is anchored to the desert through foundations of desert sand, cement, and rocks acquired onsite (dubbed “desert masonry”). Buildings, paths, and spaces are oriented to complement the movement of the sun and showcase desert views. Large boulders featuring petroglyphs are installed prominently throughout the landscape and were scavenged from across the property.

The first structure on the tour, and the oldest occupied structure onsite, is Frank Lloyd Wright’s business office. A larger drafting studio, pictured below, was constructed afterwards as a space for his apprentices to work. Just a short distance from the office is a vault, built of desert masonry and designed to protect the irreplaceable drawings churned out by the Fellowship. To harness the natural lighting and breezes that swept through the desert, Wright experimented with canvas as a roofing material around Taliesin West. Tightly stretched over redwood frames, the canvas proved to have poor durability in the Arizona summers. After his death, fiberglass and acrylic panels replaced canvas to improve performance while maintaining the benefits of a retractable roof.

The audio tour I followed takes you on a loop through Taliesin West, starting in Wright’s business office and continuing to the garden room, the Kiva (a theater turned library, then back into a theater), the drafting studio, and finally the Cabaret. Like any Wright crafted building, the design element of “compression and release” is pervasive. I found myself ducking left and right just to squeeze into the Garden Room or under the portal heading to the Kiva. The tactic certainly works, making the space you’re about to enter feel bigger than it is, but I don’t think Wright designed these structures with 6’ tall people in mind. If I could take a trip back I’d do a longer guided tour, which wasn’t an option on the day I visited. I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed my tour of the Robbie House in Chicago more than Taliesin West - the audio tour just doesn’t provide the same experience as a knowledgeable guide.

The NJ Futuro House

Tucked away in a corner of Millcreek Park in Willingboro, NJ sits a decrepit bubble of fiberglass and plastic that looks like it was yanked straight out of the 1960s. Stacked boxes of laminate wood flooring block some of the windows, at least those which haven’t yet blown inwards. Taking a peek through the opaque plexiglass reveals an interior that matches the 60s space-age aesthetic of the exterior, with dingy brown-ish tan carpeting covering the floors and a drooping fan that clings to the off-white ceiling. The interior is relatively empty and mostly open inside, save for a rolling desk chair or two and a built-in bench/countertop that rings the outer wall. There are enclosed spaces carved out for a small utility closet and a bathroom, with a short staircase descending down to the boarded up front door.

This abandoned structure is a Futuro House, an invention of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. Futuro Houses first gained traction as ski cabins in Finland, where they were easy to heat and quick to construct via truck or helicopter delivery to remote mountain locations. The Willingboro Futuro House I visited started life as a “Space Bank”, which isn’t immediately evident when you look at this house today. Upon closer inspection, there are some unique features which stick out on this model: the below-average number of windows (8 vs 16 on a standard model), and an old bank-style security alarm box which remains affixed to the exterior. The “Space Bank” context helps make more sense of the conspicuous lack of bedrooms, a kitchen, or really any partitioning that would make this space livable. It was manufactured just across the Delaware River from Willingboro in Philadelphia, and moved between shopping plazas as a bank branch until it was donated to Willingboro Township in 1975.

Futuro Houses never really took off in the United States as local residents opposed how the radical architectural style clashed with the broader neighborhood aesthetic. Municipal building codes also hampered adoption as Futuro Houses were not designed with US municipal code compliance in mind. Additionally, the 1973 oil crisis shot the cost of plastic through the roof, making them prohibitively expensive to produce. New Jersey’s other Futuro House, once abandoned down the shore in Greenwich, NJ, was removed in 2021 and moved to Oxford, OH for restoration. The former “Space Bank” served for a time as the Parks Department’s headquarters, the township Recreation office, and as a headquarters for the Police Athletic League before falling into disuse.

I doubt the township of Willingboro will do anything with this historic structure until it collapses, as I’m sure it would cost less to tear down than rehabilitate. Maybe somebody like the folks who took the empty shell of a Futuro House from Greenwich will come along and save it. If it can be done in Greenwich (that Futuro House was in far worse shape than this one), then maybe it can happen in Willingboro?

William S. Seward House

At the northern end of Cayuga Lake is the city of Auburn, NY, which was home to William H. Seward and his family. If you’re like me and the name Seward doesn’t ring a bell, he was the man who facilitated the Alaska Purchase and helped Lincoln lead the United States through the Civil War. Born in 1801, Seward purchased the house 1824 and lived there until his death in 1872. The interior is largely as it was in 1872 thanks to William Seward III, who maintained the furnishings and donated the property upon his death. The site occupies a triangular slice of downtown Auburn, and one corner of the property is dedicated to a small park with a towering statue of Seward himself. The house is a New York State Historic Site and on the National Register. It actually began life as a much smaller dwelling and was progressively expanded starting in 1847.

During his storied career, Seward served as an NY State Senator, US Senator, NY Governor, and Secretary of State after loosing the Republican presidential nomination to Abraham Lincoln. His home reflects his travels and pursuits - shelves of books adorn the study and parlor, paintings and prints from around the globe hang from the walls, and artifacts collected from far-off lands sit atop shelves. At one end of the dining rooms is a giant globe, the other a stately portrait of Mrs. Seward. China cabinets filled with fine dinnerware for hosting lavish but crucial dinner parties are posted in the corners. Diplomacy and a good meal often go hand in hand, and Seward would host large dinners to convince other politicians of his positions.

Possibly my favorite collection of Seward’s is the portraits of famous world leaders he encountered that encircle the second floor atrium, often bearing the signature of the subject pictured. While not all of them are authentic (Queen Elizabeth, for example), there’s quite a number of portraits that span from the Middle East to Europe. You can take a guided tour of the entire house from the basement to the 2nd floor where the family lived. My tour guide was great and answered every question I could throw at him.

A series of unfortunate events befell Seward, starting with the assassination of Lincoln and the simultaneous botched assassination attempt on his own life. He had been injured in an accident days before when he jumped from a runaway carriage and broke his arm. The family members staying at his Washington, D.C. apartment encountered the assassin before he could reach Seward, and ultimately 5 would be stabbed including Seward himself. While no-one was killed, his wife Francis died only a short time afterward in 1865. Daughter Fanny, his pride and joy, died in 1866 from tuberculous. He commissioned a painting of her after her untimely death, and it still hangs in the parlor today. The bundle of flowers she clutches and her ghostly pale complexion indicate that the portrait was painted post-mortem. Fanny’s death was a sore subject for Seward, and it was best not to ask about the painting.

Titan II ICBM Site 571-7

Between 1963 and 1984, a complex hosting a 340,000 lb. Titan II missile with a 9 megaton nuclear warhead stood at the ready just 25 miles from Tucson, AZ. One of the six squadrons that operated the Titan II missile across the western United States, the 390th Strategic Missile Wing operated 18 silos in total. With the United State’s entrance into the SALT treaty and having outlived their projected service life, the Titan II missiles were phased out of service starting in 1982. Under an agreement with the Soviet Union, site 571-7 was deactivated and saved as the single remaining example of a 24-hour alert liquid-fueled ICMB missile launch site. The LGM-30 Minuteman III is the only land-based ICBM currently operated by the United States, and is expected to remain in-service until the 2030s.

As the Cold War raged on, the United States turned to a network of Titan II missiles stationed in hardened bunkers to ensure that the threat of nuclear attack remained under control. Mutually assured destruction relies on the Nuclear Triad, which consists of three components: the land, sea, and air based delivery of nuclear weapons. In the post-WWII era, the United States developed their first land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to effectively deliver nuclear payloads to the Soviet Union. The Titan I and SM-65 Atlas both predate the long-lived Titan II by 3 years, and both platforms had the disadvantage of using volatile liquid fuels and oxidizers. These early missiles would be fueled just before launch, leaving the missile exposed outside its silo and delaying any retaliation against a first strike by about 20 minutes.

The Titan II was the answer to the shortcomings of the Titan I and SM-65 Atlas series ICBMs. It used a stable fuel and oxidizer that could be ignited instantly and stored indefinitely at 60º F. The missile resided in an underground silo protected by a 740 ton concrete sliding hatch. The entire facility was hardened, designed to withstand a nearby nuclear strike or seismic event but not a direct hit. 4’ x 3’ thick springs suspend the multi-story launch control center and acted as shock absorbers, with similar measures installed on a smaller scale throughout the complex to protect critical components.

Despite its size and destructive power, it only took a 4 man crew to operate the launch site: 2 missile combat officers, an analyst, and a facilities technician. Crews worked 24 hour shifts, and the launch procedure could be executed in under a minute: on order of the President, a 35 character launch code would be transmitted over radio to the missile sites like 571-7. The two missile operators would write down and compare their translation of the code. If the codes matched, they’d open a locked safe to authenticate the launch order. After unlocking the missile with a separate code and inserting the launch keys into the console, the silo doors would open and allow the missile to strike a preprogrammed target. The decrease in launch procedure from 20 minutes to under 1 minute was a major advantage of the Titan II program.

Tours of site 571-7 take you through the blast lock, launch control center, cableway, and missile silo. After a short introductory video in the visitors center, we descended down the 55 steps to the blast lock. Massive 6,000 lb. blast doors guard the entrances to the underground segments of the base. The launch control center looks as it did back when the site was on alert, and you can see the safety suits worn by technicians who maintained the missile in the equipment locker. Back up on the surface, we were able to take a peak at the missile from the top down, thanks to the viewing platform that abuts the silo. Also seen at ground level are the high frequency discharge antenna, fuel and oxidizer hardstands, and TPS antennas used to detect intruders via radar. And while I thought the tour was a little rushed, I was still excited to document such a critical piece of our nation’s nuclear history during my trip through Arizona.