Scattered Thoughts . . .

Y esterday, Sheila and I did a site survey for our proposed garden railroad.  Once we staked two known points (the straight-away) we were able to stake the rest of the points using basic geometry, a ruler, a level and a measuring tape.  Things are looking good for using this particular garden for this purpose. I plan to have a rather large wooden trestle bridge on one of the compound curves at one end of the garden.  This curve will be located around the tall growth shown in the photo at right.  This is the most visible curve on the layout so I figured it would be a great place for a feature such as this.  It borders the short path to the horseshoe pits and is visible from our firepit where we spend most of our time in the backyard.  As the trestle curves around to the right, the trestle gets taller in order to keep the track level over the downward sloping ground. We used some basic geometry to find specific locations of the track.  I have a scale pri...

The Saratoga Spring train station.     As I've written in previous blog entries, we went to Saratoga Springs for Thanksgiving weekend to experience the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train fundraising show. The Holiday Train wasn't pulling into the Saratoga Springs train station until 7:20pm though... so we had a little extra time to check out the station in the daylight to do a quick 'site survey'.  I have to say that we both were impressed and even a bit envious of this train station. We found ourselves wishing we had train facilities like this in our own neighborhood! Although this station is relatively new, it retains some classic train station styling. Even though we were initially disappointed that this station is not located in the heart of downtown, it is very close and has quite an impressive roadway entry which we found rather nice.  There is quite a bit happening at this station... Amtrak comes and goes a few times throughout the day... the Saratoga...