Wednesday. Graduation Day!

 It was a cold, and wet day for graduation!  Congratulations to Altair for completing her Master's in Systems Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Start at the bottom for pics to be in order.

Lady Liberty in the distance.

RORO ship.

Lyft ride back to Hoboken.  Look at the size of that floating crane!

Despite all of the people and activities, it still felt cold.  Just like the show.

Now used as an indoor mall/workspace.  R.I.P. Bell Labs.

Wow!

Pedestrian bridges on each floor to connect to the elevators.

Wall used in Severance for projecting the Lumon founder's portrait.

Elevators.

Spare no expense in the early 1980s.

After the ceremony, we headed over to "Bell Works", site of the former Bell Labs and where they filmed the Lumon building scenes from the show "Severance".

She did it!

Fancy graduation gowns.

Empty diploma folder.

There she is!  Good luck on pronluncing that name!

That's not her!  Stevens used an AI reader that scanned each graduate and then read and displayed their name.

Faculty on stage.

We were under a roof, but still out in the damp air.  It was cold!

Walking in.

Train trip back to the hotel.

 Another 3 hours on the rails of the New Jersey Transit system.  Skyler arranged to attend a Civil Air Patrol meeting in Teetorboro that evening.  The meeting started at 19:30 and we didn't get on a train util 16:30.  It was going to be tight but he made the meeting!

You know the drill, start at the bottom.

Sunset view on NYC.  Skyler and Altair ran to the hotel as I walked so that they could make the CAP meeting.

This was the train station view in Trenton.

Sharp.

Our train from earlier in the day, heritage paint Erie and Lackawanna!

Bilevel Amfleet car.  This was the dining car.

Below deck part 2.

Start at the bottom...

Until we meet again.  Now I have a goal to see the other 3 Iowas. :)

We didn't get to go out to the bow, the JROTC Navy & Marines from Rutgers University were having a graduation celebration onboard.

Armored air intake for the boilers.

Real wood decking.

All handmade.

Incredible!

8 foot long model.

Top down view.

16" turret cutaway.

5" turret cutaway.

Montana class model.  These were never built but would succeed the Iowa class.  

Tamiya 1/350 model.  Guess what's on my model bench next?

Proposed phase 2 version of the ship.  She would have carried helicopters and AV-8B Harriers.

Museum tool storage.

5" shell elevator in one of the rooms.

Scale for packages.

Onboard Post Office.

More timbers for emergency hull repairs.  Think how old this wood is!

It was like everyone stepped off and never returned.  

Tooling drawers.

Same.  How would you like to work under a high pressure steam pipe?

I reached into an access hatch in the hallway to snap a pic of the toolroom lathe.

Even the signage was extra cool.

Tool room lathe.  This is the part of the shop the museum still uses for repairs.

So cool.

Vertical turret lathe.

Lathe.

Electric motor winder.  There are something like 2,000 motors onboard.

Looked like it did as delivered in 1942.

Machine shop!

Note the different floor colors.  Blue was enlisted if I recall correctly.

YUM!

CWIS gun aimed into Camden in the back, Tomahawk missile tubes in the foreground.

(We had to pop back up on deck to find Skyler.  He wandered off below deck and tried texting us in the metal hull.  He learned that cell signals don't go through steel.)

Wood timbers for stuffing into battle damage to the hull.