Ferdinand Magellan Presidential Railcar – Miami, Florida

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Ferdinand Magellan Presidential Railcar – Miami, Florida

"Today you can visit the Magellan at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum, in Miami. The train has nickel-steel armor and three-inch-thick bullet-resistant windows. The rear door alone tips the scales at 1,500 pounds (though this inconvenience is minimized by carefully balanced hinges). In total, the car weighs 142 tons—almost double the weight of the standard 80-ton Pullman car. By way of comparison, a modern M1 Abrams tank weighs 62 tons."

"When it was in service, the Magellan traveled with a fleet that included sleeping and office cars for White House staff, an Army medical car, and a communications car nicknamed “the crate.” The Presidential Limousine and Secret Service Cadillacs were brought along in a special garage car. Two locomotives were often required to drag this ensemble up steeper track grades. "

"The interior of the Magellan contains a Presidential Suite (two separate bedrooms for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), two guest rooms, a conference room and an observation lounge. The rear platform was wired with a microphone and loudspeakers that came in handy during whistle-stop campaign speeches."

August 15, 2018 Morning

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Good morning! Partly cloudy and 76 degrees in Delmar. ⛅ Calm wind. The dew point is 65 degrees.

This morning started out much cloudier than I expected. Still quite humid. But now the sun is out and things are warming up quickly. 😎 Really going to be a hot one, probably the last big blast of heat for the summer although Thursday and Friday will like be wet. The weekend though looks nice at least once Saturday rolls around although it does seem to trending cloudier but I still think I want to head out of town as summer is not long for its future.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 87 degrees at 3pm. Six degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 68 at 10am. Light west wind increasing to 6 to 11 mph in the morning. Going to be hot. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies. It was sticky. The high last year was 79 degrees. The record high of 96 was set in 1959.

The sun will set at 7:56 pm with dusk around 8:26 pm, which is one minute and 28 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly clear skies and 83 degrees. The dew point will be 69 degrees. The heat index around sunset will be 68. ⛱ There will be a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. Today will have 13 hours and 53 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 32 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy ☁, with a low of 68 degrees at 5am. Eight degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 69 at 7pm. West wind 3 to 8 mph. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 60 degrees. The record low of 41 occurred back in 1972.

In 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival Opens on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, 🎸🎤🎺much to the distaste of his neighbors and fellow community members. It was a wet summer and the hay wasn’t growing well, so Max was looking for some extra money to prop up his dairy business. 🐄 His neighbors, not unaccustomed to him slinging shit, 💩were not happy with all the hippies taking over the town, causing all kinds of traffic tie ups and leaving a mess. 🚮 Max would be out of the dairy business a few years later.

On this day in 1970, President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.💰 Gold bugs didn’t like that but honestly it needed to happen with the growing economy and limited gold reserves. Maybe it drove inflation but I think that had more to do with the oil crisis and our poor ways of pricing oil back in the day. Not too mention the hang over from all the Great Society and Vietnam War spending and the growth of state and local governments. That said, I’ve never really had much interest in owning gold – as an investment or otherwise – as gold is a pretty useless material except for jewelry and a tiny amount of electronics and electrical purposes. Electronics that use gold typically only use it as a coating for electrical contacts, its only a few atoms thick and only used when ultra low resistance is necessary on a connector. 🔌

As previously noted, next Wednesday is State Fair Opens 🎡 when the sun will be setting at 7:45 pm with dusk at 8:15 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, mist, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 89 and 68 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 80 degrees. We hit a record high of 93 back in 1916.