Scattered Thoughts . . .

I made some significant progress on our newly designed and now fully built girder bridge for our garden railroad yesterday.  Hmmm...  well, I guess it is not fully built just yet because I still need to pave it with fine sand and I need to add lights.  The bridge, itself, is fully built though.   Consequently, my spinal pain last night was unbearable.  My spine was on fire with sharp pain radiating to my hips, pelvic region and kidneys.  The pain truly was brutal, take-your-breath away type of pain.  I'm feeling significantly better this morning so that is good! Yesterday's primary job was to assemble all the balusters, the top rail and the parapet bearings at each corner.   This promised to be a tedious job but it went more smoothly and more quickly than I expected.   Each baluster needed to be glued and nailed in place, one-by-one, using a nail gun so it was definitely a tedious process.   My air compressor and nail gun...

A s summer was coming to a close and the leaves turning last year, Lukey (one of our grandchildren) and I were walking around the garden railroad talking about what improvements we could make by adding various features to this relatively tiny garden railroad.   One idea was to add an automobile bridge from near the passenger station to the other side of the garden railroad near the truss bridge.  This bridge would "bridge" one side of our imaginary land to the other through the garden sort of like a worm-hole in space.  I liked the idea of adding more road-bound vehicles to this model railroad so I felt this bridge would be a good idea.   I started working on the bridge over this past weekend and, as seen in the photos below, I made some good progress. I have a long list of things that need to be done on our house too but I started with this little garden railroad project to refresh my memory on the intricacies of woodworking.  I'd rather make the inev...

T his year, it seemed like all the grandchildren were really excited to be watching the garden railroad which was nice.  It definitely held their attention for quite a long time!   Lukey enjoys running the trains so he definitely enjoyed himself with this little garden railroad.  Then again, that should come as no surprise since he has always been interested in trains.  I ran one of the trains for a bit but Lukey spent quite a bit of time running both trains. These trains run on battery packs rather than power through the rails.  I made sure both trains were fully charged the night before the barbeque and we had no problem running the trains all day long without a hiccup.  They still had power when I brought them back indoors at the end of the night.  Lukey and I control the locomotive and trolley using apps on two of my tablets so it is all wireless which makes things very easy. This year, the grandchildren got to see a few new structures around ...