The Royce Files

  Really? Has a brand of frozen pizza really shaken you? Look for yourself and be shaken err shook.  Pizza to be shaken by To cut to the chase, the top 2 pizzas this article ranked were Red Baron and Tombstone. Not really brands that I would think would stand out in their collection of 17 frozen pizzas. Certainly nothing that would leave me in that state of shook. But hey, it's pizza! I'd eat it even if it did not shake me to the core. Except maybe Totino's. That pizza is awful. Lileks would have a heyday with this one and how frequently they throw around the pie term to refer to the product. Seems a bit pretentious, too.  The reason I bring this up is there seems to be a trend in some of these click baity articles to make their discoveries appear to be earth shaking with headlines that include shook.  But, it makes us click. And then we find inflation also has infected the Internet as a lot of these are just intended to be billboards for ads while you peruse a somewhat ok

 What is this a one post a year blog now?! No! At this rate it will be a 2 post a year blog. On to the sign. Grain Belt Premium was the beer of choice in the upper midwest. These signs were everywhere in small town beer joints across Minnesota and the Dakotas and even into Nebraska (Grain Belt had a brewering in Omaha at one time.) They might even still be there considering how slowly things change out in the boondocks. As a side note, there was a bar in my town called the Boondocks. I think they only served 3:2 beer. They did not have a sign like this.  I discovered this sign out at Bonanzaville in West Fargo on a cold weekend in December. The pioneer museum has numerous old buildings from the region on the property including a few bonanza farm houses. The Brass Rail was a saloon and hotel in Page, ND . It existed since ND became a state in 1889 but did not serve alcohol until prohibition was repealed in 1933. ND was a dry state until that time. Although, considering the large number

  My search for this beer first led me to Canada. There was a Northern Breweries that had a presence up in Ontario. I could find nothing about their beers beside a label for an ale. They happened to be the first employee owned brewery in North America. However, after selling to an investment group that intended to revive the brand, Northern Breweries went bankrupt somewhere around 2006 or 2007. However, this Northern Breweries was a dead end for this particular label. After a little more digging, I found the Northern Brewing Company of Superior, Wisconsin. This is the brewer that produced Northern Beer amongst other labels. Northern had been around since 1890 when it was the Klinkert Brewing Company. Through some reorganization in the years following, Klinkert became Rueping and finally Northern. It was quite the prosperous operation in Superior and NW Wisconsin. They even distributed some batches to Milwaukee. Unfortunately, their fortune would begin to diminish when a bad batch of

Spud Valley returned this year. Well, it never left during the troubling times. When October rolls around the Red River Valley- the Spud Valley show appears unlike the Great Pumpkin. This year's edition (the 44th) had a big change. It was held at the fairgrounds in West Fargo instead the the Delta Hotel in Fargo. Chatter around the show was Delta upped the rental fee. No confirmation on that but these days it would not be uncommon. The building at the Fairgrounds seemed up to the challenge to host. To me it seems about the same size as the hotel conference room. This year's show seemed heavy on diecast, toys, and traditional plastic models. Lots of toy tractors. A few more railroad collectibles than usual. There were trains but mostly outside my interested gauges or operating prerogative. A little less Lionel and O. A sliver of G. Some N and HO.  My interest in O gauge has changed- I am only looking for items I will immediately use on the layout like figures or line side shacks

I see these scenic Schmidt Beer cans so often but I do not think I have ever written about them. They look good afor me harken back to days of hunting and fishing in the North Woods someplace while listening to a Vikings or Twins game on the radio. Schmidt Scenic Cans from G. Heileman era As it goes with collecting not all of them are that collectible. The early flat top cans that you needed to use an opener on command the most interest. The cans I have pictured abovecome from the G. Heileman ownership time and thus  are not very valuable. One collector even said he has recycled quite a few of them.  This style of Schmidt can were first produced when it was still Jacob Schmidt Brewing (early 1950s.) Artist  Les Kouba produced the art on these early cans.  After 1954 the brewer changed hands a few times until Rainer was producing the beer in the early 90s and this type of can were still being produced. As the the decade progressed the label seems to have gone dormant as a dominate bran

I found some additional photos of the BNSF 1885, a SD40-2 with a snoot nose that plies the yard in Fargo and occassional pulls a train west and visits Northtown Yard. That distinctive snoot and blueboonet  freightbonnet* Santa Fe scheme makes it easy to spot. I think I took these from Great Northern Drive near the throat of the yard.  Formerly SF 5121 and then BNSF 6805 after the merge. Built in November  1979 with builder number  786223-7. On the Santa Fe this engine saw time out west in California then made its way to the Midwest in the early 2000s and then to Minnesota and North Dakota around 2010. Sometime between spring 2019 and Fall of 2021, the BNSF 1885 was repainted in what looks like the H4 scheme (see here  BNSF 1885 in Oct 2021 ). Looks like they added an air conditioning unit or two too. From the angle of the photo I cannot tell if they reduced the nose size as well. *It came to my attention that bluebonnet was a color scheme only on passenger engines of the ATSF. The live