Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ukey and Kenzie have been dying to take a long distance trip on Amtrak for many years.  Last Christmas, we were booked to take Amtrak to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie but our train was cancelled as we were waiting for it to arrive in Waterbury.  It was cancelled due to flooding here in Vermont and, at the last minute, we decided our only option was to drive down to Manhattan instead.  That means Lukey and Kenzie missed out on a huge part of last Christmas' surprise trip.  That Amtrak travel was supposed to be the highlight of the trip but it was cancelled! They were definitely sorely disappointed but we still had a great time in Manhattan at Christmastime.  That train cancellation really put a big damper on the trip though which we were reminded of constantly during the long 12 hours in the car contending with heavy rain, traffic, and detours in a cramped car rather than a long train allowing us to get up and walk whenever we felt the need.  Having to s...

A few evenings ago, we visited the Waterbury train station with Lukey and Kenzie.  It was a day when I was not feeling all that well so I kept things simple in the hopes of an uneventful quick trip downtown.  I didn't bring a heavy camera bag.  I put some emergency medications in my pockets, I grabbed one camera body with one lens, and I grabbed a scanner so we could listen to the chatter on the radio as the Amtrak train approached and departed the station. Both Lukey and Kenzie were happy to be at the train station waiting for the train.  I think we all preferred to be getting on the train to head out-of-town but watching the train arrive and depart would be enough to create some smiling faces and some nice photos... The Amtrak Vermonter from Penn Station in Manhattan was running a little late this night so we had some down time.  There is a park across the street from the train station so the kids wanted to go over to the swings while we waited for the delaye...

T he weather was generally lousy while Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few weeks.  We didn't have many rainy days of solid rain but we had a lot of dark days with intermittent rain.  One particular day was indeed a solid rainy morning so we set up Lukey's trains in the kitchen while Gee worked from her home office.   Due to the pandemic, we converted our "train room" into Sheila's home office so we had to find another place to run Lukey's trains since Gee was working from home while Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us.   We cleared off the kitchen table and set his HO scale layout on the table.  That actually worked far better than I thought it would!  The layout hung off the end of the kitchen table but the layout itself was solid enough to handle the weight of the trains without the support of the table under the last foot of one end of the layout.  Having the train set on a table was far more comfortable than running them while the...