Acquired another railroad bungalow, and heading for the heart of urban decay
I managed to buy one of the larger railroad signal bungalows I've ever seen, at a surplus auction, for $470 plus fees. That's a pretty good price for an 8x10 shed, especially one that's extremely well made and bullet-resistant. It's nearly twice the size of my other RR signal bungalows, so I'm chuffed to have landed it. My trailer's hydraulic dovetail & winch made picking it up rather easy, I got it back uneventfully, and the trip expenses were covered by a couple of shipments I found heading that direction, so it all worked out well.
The interesting thing about the site where I picked it up is that the community college, Johnson County CC in Kansas City, to be exact, is built more like a typical state university campus, really nice and maybe a bit sprawling, but with a lot of skill centers such as a law enforcement academy and a BNSF railway training facility, where they send their employees to learn about signal installation & maintenance, train operation (engineers, conductors, etc.), train mechanic stuff, and maintenance of way. It appeared the large signal bungalow was probably part of their demonstration grade crossing signal setup at one time, but it had been replaced about 10 years ago with one of the modern signal closets that's about the size of a refrigerator. The large bungalow had been just sitting in the corner of the parking lot ever since. Anyway, it was a nice trip even though it didn't take me anywhere particularly glamorous.
This might not be the greatest idea, but I'm getting a run to Detroit together, started by another direct customer request to move a vintage Jeep tub up to a buyer who wants to restore it. I'm hoping the weather around the Great Lakes is as mild as it's been around where I live. We had our first "real" snowfall last week, immediately followed by extreme winds that blew most of it away, and evaporated nearly all of what was left behind. None of the nearly foot of snow was left by the afternoon.
Anyway, since my family already had our little holiday events at my parents' home, I figured I'd hit the road again one last time this year.
I might have a drop in Gary, IN. I've been in Hammond a few times, mostly buying crap at the Copart there, including my current trailer and a burned-out pickup I bought for the auxiliary fuel tank it had, but I don't think I've really gone through Gary itself.
I happened to notice a documentary about Gary in my Youtube recommendations, so I watched it. There's definitely been a lot of hysteria about how Gary is the worst city in the USA in terms of crime and decay, how dangerous it is to even drive through there, etc.. The documentary even started out by showing how Hammond had closed & barricaded its side of the main road connecting Hammond to Gary.
But then the documentary pointed out how Gary hasn't even broken the top 10 in murders or other crime in nationwide statistics in a decade or so. It covered a few other topics, such as the interesting history behind Gary's founding, Gary's decline, and Gary's potential for the future. Seems like it might be a good time to purchase commercial property there, one of the best points the documentary had is that it'd make a lot of sense for Gary's airport to be expanded into becoming the 3rd Chicago-area airport, since both others are operating beyond their capacities, and the location is pretty good too. Who knows if that could happen, it does seem like a great location from the perspective of being between two interstates and property values being low.
If Detroit can bounce back, even after inspiring a quality Onion article (https://www.theonion.com/detroit-sold-for-scrap-1819568384), then there's probably hope for Gary, too.