Scattered Thoughts . . .

I had written a few blog entries about kitbashing this Bachmann Large Scale bobber caboose but I wanted to add a short blog entry just showing the 'before' and 'after' for a quick comparison... Here is a collage showing various angles of some of the new details on the newly rebuilt caboose...

I made a bit more progress on the caboose project for our garden railroad over the past few days.  I am definitely at a nice stopping point now.  I think I can call this little project "completed".  I'll probably change a few more things in the future but, for now, this project is done. Here is a photo, below, showing the 'before' version of this caboose when I first purchased it...  note that this caboose started life with only two axles and four wheels...  no window panes...  no lighting...  shiny molded plastic with molded-in color...   and, generally, very toy-like...  there really was nothing special nor attractive about it.  It didn't even roll well! My goal was to make it a bit more realistic-looking and I had a lot of ideas.   The first thing I wanted to do was to remove those two axles and replace them with two typical railroad trucks which would make it roll much more smooothly.  This required a lot of cutt...

B efore I mowed the lawn yesterday morning, I noticed a tiny mushroom growing on our lawn out in front of our playhouse.  Unfortunately, since I hadn't mowed the lawn yet, the grass was taller than the tiny mushroom so I wasn't all that happy with the few photos I captured.   I went ahead and took care of the lawn, trimmed bushes, cleaned up gardens, and did a little pruning.  I also sprayed the entire yard for ticks and other insects and had completely forgotten about this tiny mushroom which was now mulched with the grass.   This morning, I went outside to water the flower gardens and noticed another tiny mushroom in front of the playhouse but about a foot closer to the playhouse steps.  This mushroom was about the same size as yesterday's mushroom...  approximately just under two inches tall.  This particular species of mushroom looks like a small umbrella that is stuck into various tropical mixed drinks.  Unlike yesterday's photos, h...