Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ate at night over the past month or two, on those nights when I've felt up for it, I've been working on a painting of Cincinnati.   We're booked for a trip to Cincinnati and Dayton, via Manhattan and Washington DC, in June with Lukey and Kenzie in tow.  In preparation of this trip, I've pulled out some of my photos from past visits so I can show the kids.   We're all pretty excited about this trip but, considering what is happening with the Federal government now, I'm not too sure we'll be able to go on this trip.  So much is being cut that I worry about funding being cut to Amtrak.  I'm worried about Amtrak long distance routes being cut (as has been threatened).  I'm very concerned that my disability pay will be cut, interrupted or completely taken away.  I'm worried that my retirement pay will be eliminated, temporarily or even permanently.  And, of course, if there is a significant uptick in civil unrest in any of the cities we'll...

M y goal for yesterday was to get the cockpit seat for the new biplane built, painted and installed.   As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, this biplane is for our garden railroad.  This plane is approximately 1:24 scale which is slightly smaller than the 1:20.3 scale of the trains.  Since this biplane will be positioned over tall plants a few feet over the garden railroad I figured being slightly smaller in scale was a good idea for getting just a little bit of forced perspective.   I needed to make a seat for the cockpit mostly so the pilot could be positioned correctly and not fall into the fuselage of the plane.  This wasn't about modeling an accurate seat but more about a sturdy place for the pilot to be mounted in the cockpit since the seat is not visible with the pilot in place.  If the seat was visible, then I would have spent more time making it look like it belonged in the open cockpit of an old biplane. I had already made one seat f...

A fter our recent visit to the annual train show in Springfield, I thought it would be a cool idea to add an airplane to our backyard garden railroad.  I figured it would look good swooping down right over the tallest of plants.   I haven't fully worked out how I'm going to do this but my first thought was to have a long, tall wood stake hidden in the plants.  I'm thinking that the top 12 inches or so could be clear acrylic.  Then the acrylic could be somehow inserted into the bottom of the plane.  I know I'll come up with some way to mount this plane over the plants but, at the moment, I'm not completely certain.  My timeframe for this railroad is the early 20th century so I decided that a biplane would be ideal.  Finding a biplane in the right scale turned out to be fairly easy (I found one at Wayfair).  Once I had the biplane, I realized that, since it has an open cockpit, I should also find a pilot to purchase. I found a pilot figure on e...

T oday, my new LCD protectors arrived in the mail so I put aside some time to install one on my newest camera body. Back about a month or two ago, I stumbled upon a great sale on a Sony camera body that I have had my eye on for a couple of years.  In short, I picked up this camera at about one-third of its retail price.  This is, by far, the most professional camera body I've ever used so I definitely want to protect it as best as possible. Admittedly, I'm a bit rough on LCD screens.  I've had to replace quite a few over the years.  Grease from noses and fingers are not good for these fragile screens.  Worse yet, sunscreen can damage an LCD screen very quickly and render it useless.  The oils from the face and fingers and especially sunscreen tend to delaminate LCD screens.  For this reason alone, I am now reluctant to use any sunscreen for fear of damaging another camera and I'm always carrying a camera when we are outside. The other problem is that w...

D uring the pandemic, my oncologist was only doing televisits for her regular patients.  I'd still go the hospital for all my bloodwork and other tests but our discussions about the every six month test results would be done over the internet on streaming video as well as through messages in the hospital portal. Since the pandemic, we've been back to visits in the hospital.  This was mostly due to my insistence though.  The last time we attempted a televisit, I was sent the wrong link...  or my oncologist was given the wrong link...  which meant it was a missed appointment and a waste of an hour for me since I had logged on early enough to not miss my doctor.  Then I stayed online using the provided link for another 30 minutes after our appointment starting time.  I eventually got a notification for a missed appointment.   Needless to say, I responded to this "missed appointment" notification informing them we (Sheila and me) were indeed onli...

A lthough I haven't used this particular camera in almost two decades, it was an important camera to me back then.  The Fujifilm FinePix S5000 Zoom was my first Fujifilm camera way back in 2003 and this camera introduced me to the uniqueness and beauty of Fuji cameras.   This was not my first digital camera as I had a few different one through the 1990s.  This was definitely not my first camera as I had been using film cameras since the 1960s.  This was, however, my first Fujifilm camera and although my primary camera has been a Sony camera for the past ten years, Fujifilm has always been very special to me and perhaps my favorite cameras. This camera was the first one I found to be an affordable digital camera that had some film-like qualities so it definitely had its place in my long line of cameras through to today.  I stopped using this camera around 2007 but it was still my first Fujifilm digital camera. I had tried a few other brands of digital camer...

A ccording to the latest news I received from The Amherst Railway Society, the organizers of the annual Amherst Railway Society's Railroad Hobby Show have taken a week off but are now already working on next year's show. The photo, at right, shows the module that won "Best in Show" for this year.  It is a section of a larger layout that I highlighted previously in another blog entry (before I knew it won "Best in Show") because I felt it was exceptional.  Apparently the judges agreed with me! I just saw in the February newsletter that this year's show had the highest attendance ever!  That is saying something because this show is a very popular show every year.  This year's attendance was at 27,535.  That is a lot of people crowded into four buildings!  Of course, we are now post-pandemic and that makes a difference and the weather was good which also makes a difference for those people who are traveling more than a half hour or so.  We've been ...

W e came across this table shown below at the Walther's booth at the Amherst train show last weekend.  Walther's was showing these scenic diorama "islands" with Kato N scale track.  It took me hours of research to finally find this product and I only stumbled upon it by accident while looking for something else!   There was no information on this table indicating what we were looking at so I had to resort to my own research.  What made the searching difficult was the fact that I had no idea who made this product nor did I have a product name.  I eventually stumbled upon this product on Kato's website. These laser cut track bases are made specifically for Kato N scale track.  It is a cool idea but I don't care for Kato track because they use European tie spacing nor do I care for the color of their track.  I don't particularly care for the rail height on Kato track either.  I definitely prefer the tighter US tie spacing and I prefer more reali...

B ridges...  there are so many types and styles of bridges and each bridge is unique in its own way.  As an engineer myself, bridges have always been an interest of mine.  The key is to make the bridge not only functional and safe but also beautiful in its own way.  Of course, what is beautiful can vary greatly from person to person but traditional with details yet clean often seems to win. Viaducts, such as seen below, are interesting bridges due to their repeating archways.  Repeating archways have been a part of classic architecture for thousands of years.  These types of railroad bridges are solid bridges that hold up well to fast moving water below. In this shot below, we get a peak at a truss bridge over a river.  I'm still not completely happy with the truss bridge I built for our garden railroad so I shot photos of truss bridges whenever I saw one.  Maybe all these photos will help me figure out what is bothering me about my own bridge... ...