Sunday, March 06, 2011

Sunday morning in Colliinsville

.



This first photo isn't from this morning. I took it last Saturday evening at a dance held by The Oklahoma Swing Syndicate (TOSS). They're swing dancing fans who meet each week at a church in Tulsa. I was surprised to see how many people attended that evening. And of course, watching dancers offers numerous photo opportunities. This one was taken while the pair practiced a move, meant to be a lift, but they kept missing it.

Collinsville has a 25mph speed limit on every street in town, unlike most others here in northeast Oklahoma. This is the first time I've seen a Yield to Pedestrians sign anywhere in the area. I don't know if it's in compliance with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (interesting reading if you suffer from insomnia) but it's heartening to see the signs.

One other thing - Collinsville PD is quite serious about enforcing that 25 mph speed limit. Keep a careful eye on the speedometer if you're going through town.

Many older buildings here are brick, often red brick. Towns throughout the region were constructed at roughly the same time period, so the architecture and building materials are common themes. This is the Collinsville municipal building, formerly the fire house which - in a bit of irony - burned down one night. They built a new fire house and renovated the old one for offices. It's all red brick. Many of the streets are red brick too. They're kind of wavy, but don't have potholes.

As I took these photos, a crew was installing fresh bricks on the west side of this building.

This is the town's train station, now being used as a museum. I don't know if it's open regularly. The area around it is used for storage of the bricks for sidewalks and streets. There's an active railroad track nearby, about a hundred yards east of the station, so there must have been a spur leading here at one time. It's long gone.


There will be more photos over on my Picasa web album, including color versions of those above. I used the Canon A590IS this morning and I set it up to do black and white JPEGS as well as RAW. I have to convert the RAW images over to color JPEGs later today. (The photos are posted as of 4:15 local time. I just discovered that Picasa displays RAW files, though they've been reduced in size from the originals. Still, they look good.)

But first, I need a cup of coffee.

Labels: , ,

3 Comments:

Blogger lemmiwinks said...

I wonder if the swing syndicate gets any enthusiastic couples showing up only to leave disappointed when they find out it's dancing ;-)

I'm surprised that you'd need yield to pedestrians signs. In Australia the law states that you must give way to pedestrians on crossings.

3:50 PM  
Blogger Ed W said...

Yielding to pedestrians is the law here too, Lemmiwinks, but it's probably ignored far more than it's observed. A pedestrian gambles his life by stepping into a crosswalk.

Last week, I was stopped at an intersection waiting to turn right. A car ahead of me was going through, so I couldn't turn until the light changed. But when it did, a ped was in the crosswalk. I waited for her, but the guy behind me laid on the horn, impatient that I wouldn't go.

4:35 PM  
Blogger Steve A said...

I'd bet that sign refers to the Okie equivalent of the Texas statute discussed in:

http://dfwptp.blogspot.com/2009/07/whats-rule-here.html

In the post referred to, the sign was located where a MUP crossed a road. Ignorantly, most motorists assumed it meant they had to yield to cyclists as well as pedestrians.

4:51 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home