Scattered Thoughts . . .

I took a much needed break from our plumbing project today for two reasons... actually, we defaulted to a short break involuntarily... 1. I needed some additional parts so the project was on hold until I could get out to pick up what is needed (which we did tonight)... and...  2. My spinal injuries needed a much needed break. My spinal pain from the little bit of work I've already done has made sleeping and getting around difficult and painful to say the least.  As you can probably imagine, it was a good time for a short break from these frustrating (and stinky) plumbing issues so, as our train show extended weekend fast approaches, I turned my attention to a set of passenger cars I found under our Christmas tree last month. This classic passenger set is a set of four New York Central 20th Century Limited passenger cars... a baggage car, a coach car, a vista dome car, and an observation car.  These are all in O scale (Lionel size) and I have to say I am quite impre

NOTE:  Lukey and Kenzie are getting older and bigger but they still cannot read my blog, therefore, I have no problems writing about Christmas gifts for both Lukey and Kenzie. For those who can read this blog, please don't mention these gifts to Lukey and Kenzie until after their Christmas. Thanks. I'm slightly early this year... I usually begin my Christmas shopping in September but I decided to start a month early this year in the hope of easing the financial burden that far too many people feel at the end of the year. Grandchildren at Christmastime will do that! Lukey has been focused on and infatuated with Amtrak for years. Actually, we plan to do an Amtrak day trip soon so he can finally say he's traveled on an Amtrak train. He's seen Sheila and me do quite a few Amtrak trips over his four short years but he is still optimistic and excited about taking an Amtrak journey for himself. Whenever Lukey plays with his freight train, he always stops at the sta

My New York Central passenger set, headed by a Dreyfuss Hudson streamlined locomotive. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I came home from the annual Amherst Railway Society's train show empty-handed this year. During our drive back home, I decided to do some model railroad shopping online when we arrived home.  Before we headed to the train show, I put together a pretty good sized list of things I might buy at the show if the price was right. From my experiences at past shows, I knew that I would not find three quarters of the stuff on my list so I made sure I had a pretty lengthy list to improve my odds of coming across something I wanted.  I had products on this wishlist from a number of different scales... N scale, HO scale, O scale (narrow gauge, 2-rail and 3-rail stuff), and even one F scale locomotive. I even had some products on my list which are not scale specific (ie, various power controllers, scenery products, etc). Even with this many products on my wishli