A bridge arrives

An article in Saturday's Rensselaer Republican said that the parts of the bridge that will link Weston Cemetery and Bicentennial Park would be delivered today, and they were right. This afternoon a long flatbed truck with several pieces of the bridge were unloaded south of the river.

Below is the last piece being unloaded.

If the bridge reminds you of a truck trailer, that should not be a surprise because it was manufactured by Talbert, which makes truck trailers.

I hope I will be able to catch some of the assembly when it takes place.

Black Friday and railroad crossings

How did your Black Friday shopping go? I looked a bit, but did not buy anything.

The weather now feels like winter. There was ice on the fountain at SJC this morning. There was also a stiff breeze making waves in the pond, which was not reflecting much of anything.

A day or two before Thanksgiving I noticed that new railroad crossing signs were being put up. The process was a bit like the railroad work in 2009. The signs were prepositioned along the tracks, and then a crew, which I never saw, erected them. The old signs posts looked sturdy, but one of the improvement is a vertical reflective strip on the back of the sign, making it stand out more at night. This is the crossing on Jefferson Street. One of the new signs did not get put up because its post broke. You can see it next to the old sign.

Below is the view from the other sign, and you can see that only one of the signs has been replaced.

On Mattheson there were four discarded signs. I am not sure where the extra two came from.

For some reason, I am interested in these things, though I suspect that many people are not. I am not interested enough, however, to have known the answer to all of the following questions: How many rail crossings are in Rensselaer? Which of them have flashing lights? Only those without flashing lights had signs replaced, so how many crossings were having signs replaced?

Late Update: I forgot to post answers. Only three needed to be replaced: Mattheson, Jefferson, and Scott. The other crossings (Cullen, McKinley, Franklin, Webster, and Melville, have lights. I think two of them also have gates.

Remington's decorations

Remington has its Christmas decorations up in its downtown. They have variety--Christmas trees, socks, and candles. Do you prefer that, or the matching wreathes that Rensselaer puts up?

The new Remington branch of the Bank of Wolcott is now open. It sits at the intersection of US 24 and US 231. Remington now has more banks per capita than Rensselaer. They also have a branch of Regions Bank and of Lafayette Bank and Trust. The Bank of Wolcott has two other offices, in Monticello and in Wolcott.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, and may all your travels be safe and uneventful.

Leaf Vacs

The city's new leaf vacuum came by my house today. I had noticed it several time recently, and checking the city of Rensselaer web page I found this item:

The City of Rensselaer Street Department's old leaf vac has been down several times for repair this "leaf season" and then after 5 hours of use the clutch would burn out repeatedly. With Council's approval the Street Dept. purchased a new leaf vac which was just delivered this week and can be seen below picking up leaves on Emmett Ave. The City of Rensselaer asks residents to please be patient as the new "GREEN MACHINE" makes it's way around town picking up leaves. 11-9-10

A few days ago the old leaf vac was in the neighborhood, making a lot of noise and spitting out a lot of smelly exhaust. If you look carefully, you can see the exhaust in the upper left of the picture.

There are not many leaves left to pick up. Soon the workers will put away these machines and get out the snow plows.

More odds and ends

This morning the downtown light-pole Christmas wreaths were set out, ready to be installed.

For much of the morning, crews from a couple of trucks hoisted them up and affixed them to the poles.

In my last post I mentioned some business changes, and this morning I noticed a few more. The old Sears Building, now the Town Mall, has a bunch of empty offices, including one next to Cutting Edge that was most recently Heavenly Touch Message. NWIIS has moved to the Midway Electronics building on North McKinley, and the office it had in the front of the building will soon be occupied by Hearing Care Professionals, which currently has an interior office in the Town Mall. Also along Van Rensselaer Street, in a window next to Janet's Kitchen, there is a sign for Tension Tamer, which sounds like another message therapy place.

Out on Drexel Parkway, workers were finishing up an addition to the Wabash Valley Hospital Outpatient Services building.