I did spend more than a “dime or two” there myself. VTC does some good shows, I’ve had better luck with finds there than I’ve had with the past several Greenberg shows I’ve been to. That’s the thing with train shows, you never know, do you?
The VTC train show is coming up this weekend, July 12th, at the East Rivanna Fire Hall, 3501 Steamer Dr., Keswick VA. That’s in the Charlottesville area.
So if you’re going to be in the area try and stop by. Admission $5 for adults, children under 12 free. Runs from 9:00 to 3:00. Food and drink available on site.
Refer to the video I posted to get an idea of what it’s all about!
As a matter of fact, we could stretch things a bit and say the first American aircraft carrier was the USS Fanny, a steam-powered tug modified for balloon carrying and support.
Balloons promised much in the Civil War but of course didn’t pan out. In a war of movement like the Civil War the balloon crews and their support equipment just couldn’t keep up with the army.
Well, a French Colonel, Charles Renard in the 19th century invented a system of logarithmically spaced “preferred numbers” to drastically reduce the number of rope lengths that the army needed to stock for balloons. His scheme became international standard ISO 3.
Two railroad track gauges (that I know of) satisfy ISO 3 whether measured in inches or millimeters. They are the “Irish” gauge of 63 inches or 1600 millimeters (in the R5 series of preferred numbers), and the 800-millimeter (31.5-inch) gauge used by a number of rack railroads (in the R10 series).
Renard went on to invent the Renard Road Train. It ran without rails, but had mechanisms that made the cars nevertheless follow the locomotive’s path precisely.