Author: Dave Farquhar

Marx 36000 C&O gondola

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 36000 C&O gondola

The Marx 36000 Chesapeake & Ohio gondola is a somewhat realistic-looking gondola with lettering for a midwestern railroad. It was part of their short-lived 7-inch line, though it’s easy to convert to a 3/16 car if desired. The 36000 dates from 1955 to 1957, making it somewhat more scarce than the Wabash gondola. Read more

Toilet hard to flush? Try the simple things first

Dave Farquhar DIY
Toilet hard to flush? Try the simple things first

There is a fair bit of advice out there about fixing a hard to flush toilet. Unfortunately, most of them start with the more expensive and less effective remedies first. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through troubleshooting a hard to flush toilet, starting with the cheap and easy fixes first, not last.

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Berlinger Dairy, St Louis

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
Berlinger Dairy, St Louis

Balthazar Berlinger, an immigrant from Switzerland, kept cows in his back yard where he lived on the 3400 block of Indiana Avenue in south St. Louis. In 1888, he started selling milk over a counter in his living room–fifty years before Prairie Farms.

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Amiga tank mouse

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Amiga tank mouse

The Amiga tank mouse refers to the original Amiga mouse design that shipped with the Amiga 1000 computer in 1985, and survived with a different connector into the Amiga 500 and 2000 generations. The tank nickname refers to its bigger, blockier design compared to modern, sleeker devices.

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What a rivet counter is in model railroading

Dave Farquhar model railroading
What a rivet counter is in model railroading

In model railroading, a rivet counter is someone who pays extremely close attention to small details in model trains and points out any deficiencies, often in an annoying manner. It is generally considered a pejorative. In this blog post, I’ll explain the practice of rivet counting and explore where to draw the line between fine scale modeling and rivet counting.

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Red Bird Lanes, St. Louis

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
Red Bird Lanes, St. Louis

Red Bird Lanes was a popular hangout for all ages for a total of 37 and 1/2 years. Multiple generations have fond memories of bowling there, learning to bowl there, or just hanging out. It stood at 7339 Gravois Avenue, at the busy intersection of Gravois and Hampton, just north of River Des Peres.

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Windows emergency restart

Dave Farquhar Windows

For about as long as I can remember, one of the most frequent complaints I’ve heard about Windows is that it doesn’t have an emergency restart or shutdown option, something equivalent to the Linux reboot command. It turns out Windows emergency restart existed, hiding in plain sight, all along. In this blog post, I’ll share the secret.

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Why Darryl Strawberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Dave Farquhar Baseball
Why Darryl Strawberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Darryl Strawberry was one of the most surprising 1980s stars to fall short of baseball’s Hall of Fame. Although he didn’t hit for high average, he was otherwise a five-tool player thriving in baseball’s biggest market. Here is why Darryl Strawberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame.

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Marx Happi-Time 9617 train set

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx Happi-Time 9617 train set

Marx train set 9617 was an electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1954. But you may also hear collectors refer to it as Happi-Time train set 9617, because that’s what Marx printed on the box. Collectors call this a transition set.

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Mark Twain cinema, Sunset Hills

Dave Farquhar St. Louis
Mark Twain cinema, Sunset Hills

A sleek, modernist building with sharp angles stands on Lindbergh Boulevard, one door south of Gravois Road, with a prominent glass front and distinctive limestone walls. It stares down a Ford dealer across the street, flanked by an office building on one side and a vacant lot that used to be a gas station on the other, looking a bit out of place. It begs you to ask, what was this thing? Today, 4532 S Lindbergh is a union hall, as the sign says. But in its previous life, it was the Mark Twain Cinema. A 1960s movie theater. Read more