[Leica] Visit to South Bay Railroad Historical Society

[kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)]

Last Saturday morning, a couple of my colleagues at the Computer History 
Museum visited this site during an open house. One of them was Steve 
Russell, famous for being the inventor of what was probably the first ever 
video game: Space War. This was at MIT, and it is now obvious that he was 
also involved with the famous MIT Model RR Club. So what I heard was that 
Steve, when visiting the tower at the Santa Clara Caltrain station, had the 
docents there with jaws agape as he explained the mechanical logic that 
would lock levers at the appropriate time to prevent sending one train on a 
track occupied by another.

I was not willing to join him that Saturday morning, because I was working 
at the Museum all that afternoon, but the next day I paid a visit to the 
location and took a few shots.

This is a view of the old control tower
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002564.jpg.html

Here is where, for unexplained reasons, I was waiting at the foot of the 
stairs.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002566.jpg.html

And also waiting, was this photogenic family
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002567.jpg.html

Finally we were called, and the explanation was that they didn't want more 
than three people at a time on the stairs. This is a few from the tower.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002569.jpg.html

The docent was this old feller.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002570.jpg.html

I was overjoyed to see this relic of times begone; it was once my favorite 
typewriter. For those too young to know what that was: a typewriter was a 
pre-historic mechanism for producing legible documents.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002570.jpg.html

I then trekked to the other building which housed a model RR layout. Here 
are two views of portions of it.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002579.jpg.html
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002587.jpg.html

And, finally, some young-uns--
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002584.jpg.html




Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.