Scattered Thoughts . . .

S ometime back about seven or eight years ago, I installed a new hardwood floor in one of our bedrooms to be used "temporarily" as a multi-purpose room until we get further along in our renovations.  This room is slated to be the "train room" when we eventually finish playing musical chairs with bedrooms and renovations.  It actually is more like playing that numbered tiles game where you slide the numbered tiles to get them in numerical order.  In order to renovate one room, we need to move a few tiles out of place to make room for the appropriate tile.  Our numbers are still quite scrambled here for a variety of reasons though so this room is still a multi-purpose room.   So about seven years ago, I built a walk-in closet, repaired the walls and ceiling, painted the room, installed a hardwood floor and baseboard trim.  After I installed the hardwood floor over the subfloor, I built some display shelves right next to the door to the room.  My pla...

Today was a rather slow day (poor health through the night) so I took a little time to shoot a photo of a tank car I picked up on eBay recently. There is some significance to this particular tanker though... it has the name "Gramps" written in large lettering across the car like it is a special production train car rather than a true model of a real train.  The moment I first saw one of these unusual freight cars, I thought of my own grandfather, whom we affectionately called "Gramps", and how he is one of the main people to get me interested in model railroading as a young child. Dear 'ole Gramps is no longer with us but he is in my thoughts often. Both he and my grandmother were responsible for providing piano lessons for me... for my sailboat... for my love of antique wood boats... he got me started in photography... he is responsible for my nautical knowledge and interest in boating... my grandmother is responsible for much of my cooking skills and ab...