Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e awoke to some snow again this morning.  There was only about six inches out there but it is supposed to warm up today with some mixed precipitation so I needed to clear the driveway and rake the roof before it got wet and heavy.  Wet and heavy isn't good for the roof nor is it good for my extensive spinal injuries.  Then it would all freeze again tonight and that would make it impossible to move so it needed to be done this morning.  While I was on the roof looking down on our little garden railroad in the backyard, I was reminded that I never did get a photo of this garden layout from the roof.   Lukey and I talked about capturing a few photos from the roof one day this summer but that day was far too hot to climb up on an asphalt roof!  As it was, we were chasing the shade with lawn chairs while we ran trains so we could stay as cool as possible.  At one point, I think our chairs were on the other side of the yard from the garden railroad si...

W hen we visited Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie back at Christmastime, we never did tour the new Grand Central Madison part of Grand Central Terminal so we were seeing this new part of Grand Central for the first time just this past weekend.  If we had the time back at Christmastime, we would have spent a little time exploring this new extension to Grand Central.  It just so happens that our Long Island Railroad train arrives in this new extension to Grand Central so we were finally able to experience this new train station ourselves. This part of the station is quite large and extends for six blocks underground...  very much  underground at about 180 feet below street level.  Consequently, we encountered numerous sets of stairs and escalators to get back up to street level.  One of these escalators is noteworthy which I will mention later in this blog entry. When we stepped out of the train, we were on a beautiful, clean and bright station platform! ...

Y esterday, we had a barbeque at our house with all the grandchildren.  Just two days earlier, I had finally completed a month of work rebuilding an old locomotive as well as building a little garden railroad around one of our gardens.   At the moment, it isn't much of a garden after trampling it for a month while building the railroad but we plan to have various plants and flowers in this garden next season.  The goal is to have enough tall flowering plants to block seeing the trackwork on the other side of the garden.   Here is a brief review of the sequence of events...   About ten years ago, I found a large scale set of trains for sale at a train show.  The guy was asking $40 for the locomotive, tender, gondola, caboose, and track.  He indicated that he had no idea whether it runs or not which usually means it does not run.  Regardless, $40 for just one part of this set was a tremendous bargain.   I told him that my pr...

M y large scale steam locomotive kitbash is still coming along.  This project is taking far longer than I anticipated but at least it is coming along nicely. Yesterday, I started the day by adding trim to the cab and then I spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon continuing the weathering that I had previously started on the backhead of the cab.  This time, I was weathering the outside of locomotive and tender rather than just inside the cab.   I'm finding that getting the weathering just right is a delicate balance of differing subtle colors...  ie, rust, white discolored corrosion, and simple weathering of varying shades.  I find that I do a bit of weathering in one color and then I need to add other subtle colors to tone down what I had previously done.   Before I started weathering yesterday, I finished all I plan to do with the cab on this project.  The ceiling is done...  the cab is painted...  I installed trim on...

I had a few relatively "good" days so I tackled a small art project over the past two days.  I decided to shoot some photos of my HO scale Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive which then, as usual, morphed into a larger project.   This distinctive steam locomotive was perhaps the most famous locomotive of the New York Central Railroad, specifically, of 20th Century Limited passenger service fame.  This was considered the fastest passenger train service between New York City and Chicago back in the 1940s.  The route ran up the Hudson River then traveled westward along the Great Lakes.  Today, this route is named the Lake Shore Limited, a route Sheila and I have traveled quite a few times.  Unfortunately, the Lake Shore Limited is not nearly as glamorous as the 20th Century Limited once was but it is nice to retrace this historic route nevertheless.  The Lake Shore Limited can be referred to as many things but glamorous is definitely not one of them. I...

S ometime last night, I realized that I had not yet captured any photographs of our Christmas tree and ornaments this year.  I figured I should jump on that since I won't have any time between now and Christmas so, if I don't do it now, then Christmas will have passed by the time I can get to it again. We (mostly "I") feel like the tree is missing something and I actually feel the same way every year with every Christmas tree even after adding a little more to it each year but I've had difficulty figuring out what still might be missing.  I'm not a fan of most types of garland and I definitely hate tinsel so I know it is not missing these things.  It is possible it needs more ornaments in the way of more styles of decorative glass ornaments.  Our Christmas tree will most definitely never have items/characters from movies so that is out.  I'm not a fan of 'crafty' or 'country' type stuff either.  Maybe I'll figure out what is missing one...