Scattered Thoughts . . .

F or a nice change, I had a very productive day today.  I was feeling relatively well...  just the typical quite painful spinal pain as well as some long-COVID breathing issues...  so, since I was feeling relatively well, I started my day at around 8am.   The first thing I did was to jump right into staining the backstops that I assembled last night for the new horseshoe pits.  I'm running quite low on stain so I had to mix two different colors but it looks "okay".  I would prefer a darker color like the rest of the outdoor wood on our property but it will be just fine. Sheila and I installed these backstops just before the sun set last night.  After installing them, we tossed a few horseshoes to see how the new horseshoe pits are doing.  Unfortunately, I quickly found that I'm not too happy with the quality of the horseshoe set I purchased.  The first thing I noticed is that the stakes are a bit skimpy.  Then I picked up one of the horseshoes and found that they are

I started working on the trestle bridge for the garden railroad today.  Many years ago...  hmmm...  perhaps many decades ago...  I designed and built a small N scale trestle bridge.  This trestle bridge I am building now is a little different because it is so much larger.  This garden railroad trestle bridge will be approximately eight times larger in scale alone...  and far longer..  and far taller...  and on a sweeping compound curve.  That N scale bridge was tiny, short, and only a very mild curve...  I think I only needed to make four bents (trestles) while I am now needing 14 giant large scale bents that will take up a lot of space.   I ripped a bunch of wood on the table saw and then built a jig.  The jig will make it easy to accurately replicate each bent so they will all be the same.  The height of each will be different, however, because the ground slopes downward throughout this rather long compound curve.  I plan to cut each to its finished height on the table saw.  I will

A fter deciding upon a track elevation for our garden railroad, I decided to see what the locomotive looks like on track at the specified elevation in the garden.   Here, below, is a front view.  I still need to install the marker lights.  I'm waiting on new light bulbs to arrive.  The original bulbs were only 6v bulbs (I think...  one blew out at around 9-10v) but it is easier to work with 12v bulbs.  The DCC circuit board I'm using outputs 12v for the lighting.  I could have added resistors to the 6v bulbs but preferred to keep all the bulbs in the locomotive the same.  Consequently, I have yet another delay because I'm now waiting on new bulbs to arrive. This weathering is looking pretty good now.  What used to be a shiny plastic, toy-like body with brightly molded-in color now appears to be a weathered metal locomotive.  And, I completely changed the color(s) to make this a very unique locomotive. I just noticed that the rear wheelset of the leading wheel truck is not

Y esterday, Sheila and I did a site survey for our proposed garden railroad.  Once we staked two known points (the straight-away) we were able to stake the rest of the points using basic geometry, a ruler, a level and a measuring tape.  Things are looking good for using this particular garden for this purpose. I plan to have a rather large wooden trestle bridge on one of the compound curves at one end of the garden.  This curve will be located around the tall growth shown in the photo at right.  This is the most visible curve on the layout so I figured it would be a great place for a feature such as this.  It borders the short path to the horseshoe pits and is visible from our firepit where we spend most of our time in the backyard.  As the trestle curves around to the right, the trestle gets taller in order to keep the track level over the downward sloping ground. We used some basic geometry to find specific locations of the track.  I have a scale printed plan of the layout so I took