Scattered Thoughts . . .

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... ...

A few models at the train show caught my eye especially those models that are models I plan to build and add to my new garden railroad.  I'm always looking for good ideas which is one of the reasons why I bring my camera to these shows. One of the buildings I plan to add to our garden railroad is an old coaling silo but I need to come up with a design.  Right now I'm going on rather faint memories of a coaling silo in a nearby town when I was a child.  My design doesn't need to be of a fully operational condition because I want it to be more like an old abandoned coaling silo...  I think, anyway.  I know my O scale railroad will be a model of an operational silo but the garden railroad's silo will be more of a symbolic thing from my past so it really doesn't need to be perfectly realistic nor perfectly to scale.  Actually, an F scale coaling silo would still be tremendous so I will probably scale it down to avoid it being overwhelming in my rather small ga...

A fter day one at the train show, we went to The Munich Haus for dinner with friends.  It's a nice place, the beer is decent and we always enjoy time with friends but, for the most part, I find the food to be exceptionally bland, overcooked and sort of mush which is always rather disappointing.  The one exception to the bland mush during this visit was Sheila's Hungarian Gulash...  I think they used a lot of Hot Paprika in it which made it taste like they added a tablespoon of Cheyenne Pepper to this single bowl!  Maybe they read my mind about my thoughts on all the bland food?  Unfortunately, this bowl of gulash was far too hot for Sheila...  it was probably even too hot for me!  It could hardly be called bland though. As you can see in this photo, Sheila still hasn't eaten her exceptionally spicy gulash....  she may even have pushed it aside...  (she is not a fan of even what I would call "mildly" spicy food..  slight heat is about her...

T he train show started an hour later on Sunday, day two of the show, so we got an extra hour of sleep before heading to the fairgrounds which was nice.  We stopped at The Cracker Barrel for breakfast again on this morning.  There was a roaring fire going in the fireplace which was sorely missing on the previous morning.  Breakfast was delicious though and was a nice break from cereal at home.  My spinal injuries were killing me after the previous day of standing and walking around at the show.  Actually, we were only at the show for about four hours on the first day and left early due to unbearable spinal pain.  Since my extensive spinal injuries were screaming at me on the morning of the second day, I chose to only carry a small compact camera rather than walk around with a camera bag over my shoulder holding my better, bigger and heavier camera and a few lenses.  So, all of these photos were shot with my compact Fuji X30 camera that I carried on a w...