File:Arthur and Friends at Railroad Crossing in Felton, California.PNG



This is a pictutre of Arthur Read, his sister D.W. Read, and his friends Buster Baxter, Francine Frensky, Muffy Crosswire, Brain Powers, and Binky Barnes posing near a railroad crossing  on River Street in Fellton, California. Just another one of my passions and burning desires for having Arthur characters and a railroad crossing, but not just any railroad crossing, one with lights and gates. And I decided to use old style cantilever crossing signals, which have 8" lights, and old style red and white crossing gates, which look to be hexagonial shaped gates, when most gates we see in the U.S. are rectangular. Plus these gates are what railfans like myself call triangle gates because of the unusual looking crossing gate arm supports that come from a manufacturing company called W.A.B.C.O, at least I believe that's who manufactured them.

How did I come up with the idea of making this picture, well in March 2009 I found this picture of Arthur and his friends on Google Images because I was trying to have dreams about the Arthur characters, which was somewhat successful, and around that same time, my friend, who took this picture and this morning gave me permission to post this picture online, sent me this picture by email. I loved the looks of these old crossing signals and gates. I think I liked that these were old style signals, which must have been built in the 60s or 70s, and I believe these are R.A.C.O style cantilever crossing signals and I like the 8" lights, which seem to be popular among many railfans. And not only do I like that there are also gates at this crossing but the gates are red and white striped, how I like crossing gates to be, and to the cherry on top, the gates each have three red lights on them, which are 4" gate lights, something I believe most gates in the U.S. have and some gates still use these kinds of gate lights while others use another style.

Of course, I could have used a whole nother crossing but I chose this one. But I like seeing Arthur and his friends at a railroad crossing like this one. And I'm still hoping there will be a future episode that will feature one (but it doesn't have to look exactly like this one. And I was also doing this for my enjoyment and to put on the internet, and so it can be found on Google Images.

How I was able to add the chracters, well I had to do two separate pictures and I pasted them both on Microsoft Paint. I also had to resize the photo and I had to resize the Arthur characters. Now since the characters were pixilated, I had to be really careful in changing the background, which was white, but not easily modifyable. I temporarily changed the background to another color, a purplish color and when I did that, some white spots were still in place. So I had to color those purple.

Another thing I had to do, I had to temporarily change all the white parts of the picture that belonged, like the eyes, white parts of the clothing and shoes, and Buster himself, changing their colors to pink. I also had to use my magnifying glass to make it easier and to reduce my chance of making mistakes and not mark in the wrong places. Then once all the whites were changed to another color, I changed the background back to white. Then I copied the characters and inserted them onto the picture, but before I could put them in their permanant place, I had to turn off the Draw Opaque to get rid of the white background. And this is why I had to change all the necessary white parts to an alternate color because if I had just left the characters and their eyes, skin and clothing white when I turned off the Draw Opaque, they would have blended right in with the background.

Once I was able to place Arthur and his sister and friends where I wanted them to be, I used the magnifying glass again and turned everything back to its white color, the eyes, clothing, and Buster's skin.

I hope you like it. And I thank my friend for granting me permission to use this picture. I like to mix cartoon characters in with real pictures and I may do something like this again.

To see the picture without the Arthur characters, visit this link: www.rxrsignals.net/California/D-H/Felton/9/This gets you to the crossing page. To get directly to the picture itself, go to www.rxrsignals.net/California/D-H/Felton/9/11.jpg

There is more than one website using that picture of Arthur and his friends so I don't know exactly where this picture of Arthur and his friends originated. The website I got it from was http://blog.chron.com/momhouston/files/legacy/arthur.gang.jpg

Also http://blog.chron.com/momhouston/2009/02/pbs-kids-arthur-contest-a-good-opportunity-to-talk-to-kids-about-disabilities/

Those are my sources. Since more than one website uses this picture, I didn't think it was a big deal, at least I hope it's not.

Since this is sort of my picture, well it's not techically it's not, these are borrowed picture put into one but since I composed these together, I am granting permission to have this picture reposted anywhere other than the Wikia, so please feel free to use this if you want to.