North Carolina Transportation Museum

Cheerwine is based right here in Salisbury NC, home of  the museum. 

We recently visited the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer NC, and had a good time checking out their collection of mostly cars and trains. The museum is on the site of a Southern Railway repair facility, and includes the largest remaining roundhouse in North America. If you're interested in trains at all, I'd say it's worth checking out the facility, which also contains some cool train cars of various types. You can walk through a few of the cars, like a restored Army medical train car, a mail car, and look into a very fancy personalized car built by the Pullman company for a rich client. 

This photo doesn't give you the feel of this railroad repair building, it's GIGANTIC. 
You could easily put a football field in here, because it's two football fields long. 

There is also a train depot that was brought in from not too far away, and the museum offers train rides when they are open. Another interesting part of the roundhouse was an active repair shop, where I think they still refurbish and maintain train cars in the museum. 

Train repair Roundhouse and turntable.

Army medical train car, as used in the Korean War.

Roundhouse repair shop. About half of the Roundhouse was open. 

Like some auto shops, the Roundhouse train tracks had pits where you could work underneath the trains. 

Automobile wise, there is one building that has some interesting cars on display, as well as a HUGE train repair building that was crammed full of trains, planes, and automobiles. I'm sure you could fit a football field or two inside this building, since it looked to have 3 train tracks running through it, where train cars could be brought inside for repairs. I'm not a train geek or expert, so it was an impressive building that gave you a bit of a feel for how much work went into all the mechanical parts of keeping trains running. 

1918 electric car! The front end with no air intake looks similar to today's electric cars. 

1955 Nash Ambassador Custom, styled by Italian firm Farina, now known as Pininfarina.
For many years the Ambassador was the top of the line model for Nash.  

Nash hubcap

Here's an Edsel, the line of Ford cars named for the son of founder Henry Ford. Pretty much considered a big failure, the Edsel line didn't last long, just 1958-1960. 

1959 Studebaker

Here's a 1961 rear engine Chevrolet Corvair Rampside.

To finish our visit to the museum, this automobile train transporter was very cool. The description said that early days rail flat cars could only carry 3-4 cars. To meet the demands of car production after WWII, the railway industry developed two level, and then three level train cars to carry more autos. The triple level train cars could carry 12 automobiles. TO make them resistant to damage and theft, these train cars were then built totally covered. 

But, this train car is even more special than that. In 1973, the Southern Railway and Greenville Steel Car Company built just TWO of these, tri-level articulated three-unit rail cars. With three-unit design, this could carry 18 cars, instead of only 12. This is the only one of these train cars in existence. 
You can tell that a third level was added onto the standard two level train above and below. 

If you need to carry a lot of cars at once!

Spring Ahead

KA------BOOOOOOIIIIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!

SPRING AHEAD! I bet you thought I was going to remind you to set your clock ahead an hour for Daylight Savings Time this weekend, huh? Wrong!

It’s always an exciting time for a homeowner when something breaks. It’s even better when the thing that breaks lets you know it immediately with an unmistakable KABOOM! That happened to our garage door spring the other day, so we called the Garage Door Doctor for a house call. Sure enough, the garage door spring was broken. This wasn't hard to conclude, and as my Army Drill Sergeants would say, "It don't take no G.E.D." to figure that one out! Luckily, the Garage Door Doctor had all the parts he needed to get us opening and closing again. 

About 95% percent of my friends advised letting a professional do this job, and sure enough, one guy said it was easy to do yourself. I concluded that being safe and not having a garage door spring let go or throw a tool through my body was kind of important, so I was happy to have the pro take care of this job. Make no mistake, there are tons of home and auto repairs that aren't that hard, and I always enjoy doing what I can to save money too! I observed that the garage guy was lubricating various parts of the door, and if you know the smell of WD-40 you can guess what product he was using. He suggested lubricating the spring and other parts about every 3 months, so I'll try to remember that tip. Hopefully this spring and door will live a long and happy life. 

Gaston County (NC) Cars and Coffee

TIP OF THE DAY: "El Camino" is Spanish for... "The Camino."

Well, I've seen a thing or two, and now I've just visited the Gaston County Cars and Coffee for the first time. There was a great mix of old and new, original and modified, everyday and exotics on display.  One thing about this monthly event is that instead of a bunch of car fans gathering in some random parking lot near a coffee place, this is TOTALLY DIFFERENT. 

Early morning at Gaston County Cars and Coffee.
By the time we left there were twice this many cars. 

Yes, this was TOTALLY DIFFERENT because it was a bunch of car fans that gathered in a nice green park, on the grass, with a food truck and a coffee truck. Actually, it was a nice change from some broken up parking lots, so Julie and I enjoyed about an hour of looking at some cars and trucks. 

I'll guess it's easy to remember your license plate #0-0000

Some of the highlights for me were what I like to call "Things You Don't See Everyday," (TYDSED) which now that I think about it would be a good name for a blog or a podcast or a hit YouTube channel that made me money. But, here we are on the NMS blog not making money, but just talking about car stuff. 

72 MG

The first TYDSED was an old Honda N600 that followed us into the park. Man, a friend of mine had one of these in high school, and from riding in it I can 100% verify that these are TINY! Actually, he had the next Honda import to the US, the first generation Honda Civic, but trust me, it was SMALL! The N600 was the first  Honda car imported to the US. 

Honda N600
Air cooled engine right up front

Honda engine bay. 
And this was too large for the Japanese domestic Kei car class!

Next up, from across the field of cars I saw what I thought was a Cobra replica pulling in. Nothing wrong with that, they're still cool cars...but wait a minute. This was NOT a Cobra in any way, it was an Allard. I overheard the owner describing it as the last model of Allard, so that would make this a 56-58 year model Mark II Allard Palm Beach. Oh man, it looked really cool. There is a later version of the Allard company making cars, but one of these originals from the British auto maker are very cool. They didn't make a lot of these, so it's definitely a TYDSED. 

Allard MkII Palm Beach

Optional Jaguar engine, cool chrome rear bumpers.

Allard interior

Two Allard badges and the big letter A will get your attention!
Or maybe the big "A" is for AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

OK, that's two old cars, how about a new one? We spotted a new Lotus Emira. They just went on sale in the US in 2024. 

Lotus Emira

Back to some old stuff!

1965 rear engine Chevrolet Corvair. What's so special?
Check out the lower right Frigidaire Air Conditioning unit!
Probably not a lot of Corvair convertibles had AC back then!

Foreground: Replica 1959 Porsche 356
2nd Car: Porsche 914

What's the word? THUNDERBIRD!

OK, you can read this one. 

Cool old hot rod. 

Early fifties Chevrolet truck reminds me of the one my grandfather used for work. 

Another nice hot rod!
PRO TIP: DO NOT mix the front wheels with the rear wheels. 
Ask me how I know this. 

1955 Plymouth Belvedere 3 row station wagon, on line is also known as the Belvedere Suburban. Tell all your Chevy friends!

1955: before my time.  I'm not that old. Really. 

The V8 Hy Fire engine is just an awesome name!
From reading about this, it was poly-spherical, with two spheres in the combustion chambers, to sort of emulate the Dodge hemispherical engines.