Richie Kennedy | route56.com

Welcome to route56.com

Welcome to my anchor point on the web. For over 20 years, I have shared various subjects regarding highway, railways, local radio, and more.

I chose the name “route56” in honor of the green and white variant of the US Highway shield that the Kansas Department of Transportation and its predecessor agency used specifically to mark US 56 from the designation of US 56 in 1956 until KDOT elected to adopt the standard black-and-white design in the mid-1980s

Click on the links above to access the pages devoted to the history of local radio and Kansas Highways, along with other creative outlets.

You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and Flickr.

Latest Blog Posts

  • More Rain

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    As many can tell by the messages left here by the weather office, we had a thunderstorm pass through. Here at home, we had moderate wind, very little (if any) hail, and a lot of rain. I haven’t had a chance to check the rain gauge.

  • Rainfall

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    As of about 7:15 this morning, 2.6 inches of rain have fallen where I’m located.

  • Ok, I think we’ve survived this one

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    We had quite a storm head through here, prompting a severe t-storm warning. Wind wasn’t that bad here, but we did get some rain, and they just issued a Flash Flood Warning. About half an inch fell during the first storm, another 2/10s has fallen in subsequent storms

  • blog update

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    I’ve did a little messing around with using syndicated RSS feeds from the National Weather Service, and a Yahoo! email list related to Dance Teams.

  • picture count

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    As of the end of Sunday evening, the picture count stands at 22,365. 357 shots have been “counted” since I went to the new Digital Rebel — $50 worth of film and processing with 10 36-exposure rolls at $3 and $2 processing per roll — not to mention time I would have to spend scanning,…

  • Twice the speed of life

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    No sooner did I send birthday girl Nicole Lafond an e card than I got a nice thank you note back. Must be good timing to send her the card just before she cheked the email box 🙂

  • Birthday note

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    Today is Nicole Lafond‘s birthday. The baby of the three Lafond sisters is now 19!!!

  • Emporia Sub Exploits

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    I decided to give my new digital Rebel a workout with a trainwatching trip. I headed out to the Eisenhower Terrace bridge on the west side of Ottawa, on the BNSF Emporia Sub 1257: BNSF 912, 7817, and CN 2660 lead a eastbound Manifest 1307: NS 9458 leads a set of eastbound roadrailers 1317: BNSF…

  • Digital Dive taken

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    As I mentioned yesterday, my primary camera got damaged. The cost to repair would be around $120 — almost as much as I paid for her. Therefore, I decided to “total” the camera. I was approved for $2,000 in store credit at Wolfe’s, and purchased a new Canon Digital Rebel XT which, together with a…

  • damaged camera

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    On Saturday, when I tried to load film in my main Rebel camera, I accidentally stuck my thumb through the shutter. If the shutter is as damaged as I think it is (I’m planning on going to Wolfe’s in Topeka tommorow to confirm the damage), I’ll probably be appling for store credit and will be…