Scattered Thoughts . . .

Y esterday, for the first time, I had the opportunity to run two trains in our garden at the same time.  I was able to run my newly upgraded trolley (reassembled yesterday morning) and my big steam locomotive with its tender and two passenger cars.  I have little to no experience running two trains at the same time, by myself, so I did everything much more slowly than usual.  I didn't want a collision! While I was running these two trains, I kept moving the camera around the garden to get a few different perspectives.  The next time I do this, however, I need to pay closer attention to the levelness of the camera.  The camera I used doesn't have an electronic level so I eyeballed it on the small LCD screen in bright daylight...  less than an ideal way to clearly see things I need to see clearly.  I also need to be more creative and careful with different angles.  That being said, this is a fairly nice first video showing two trains running at the same time in our garden.  The p

I spent much of the day yesterday finishing up wiring the large scale trolley for the new electronics, new motor block, and new battery power.   I had all sorts of room in my big steam locomotive's tender when I did this same upgrade to that locomotive but this trolley has far less room so it was a frustratingly tight fit and things are not fitting as well as I would have preferred.  That being said, even with seeing some wires inside the trolley, this was definitely a worthwhile upgrade because I would not have used the trolley otherwise.     My plan was to keep everything I added to this trolley out of sight.  I added a lot...  the battery was perhaps the largest thing, a speaker in a homemade speaker box is large too, the electronic circuit board, a charging jack, a fuse holder, an on-off-on switch, and all the wiring.  I was hoping to be able to hide everything snugly up against the underside of the roof while the jack, switch and fuse would be under the seats with access from

M ore than a week ago, I decided to put together some photos and a video that more closely show the vast upgrades I accomplished on my large scale steam locomotive.  Since I was so busy getting ready for a barbeque with the grandchidren, I completely forgot about all these photos as well as the video until I was showing Sheila a photo of something our grandson, Lukey, noticed about one of my gondolas that I had never noticed.  He noticed that it is a model of a gondola meant specifically to carry gold from mines.  I had no idea but it makes sense since these old ten-wheelers were among the first locomotives sent out to the wild west.   Since I never really finished showing better photos of these upgrades, I guess I'll try to get this blog entry completed before heading to bed tonight. _______________________________________________________ First, let me preface this with a quick update on my health since things weren't so great today.   Quite simply, today was a rather lousy he