Scattered Thoughts . . .

Liza and the grandkids came to visit Gee yesterday. It was definitely a visit that Gee needed! It was a short but sweet visit. Although short, they managed to squeeze in a few hands of Uno, playing with some trains, opening a box full of new school clothes, and Kenzie got to see her flowergirl dress for mommy's fast-approaching wedding.  We have a day set aside for the grandkids this week... no medical appointments... just fun. If the weather cooperates (a rarity this summer) then we will take the kids on a day cruise. If not, then we'll do some fun indoor activities instead. We're looking forward to it!  

As I wrote in a previous blog entry, the grandkids spent the weekend at our house. Lukey was content with running trains and watching some Florida Gator and Dayton Flyer basketball. Kenzie enjoyed some Florida Gator gymnastics, baking with Gee, playing with her doll collection and even running one of Uncle Adam's diesel locomotives.   First, some photos of Kenzie making some rice crispy treats with Gee... As always, there was quite a bit of time playing a server at a pizza place...  this particular day, she was making and serving pizzas for Jimmz Pizza... "Niiiice locomotive..."

It is always fun playing with trains with Lukey and, as much as I enjoy playing with trains myself, it is perhaps even more fun watching Lukey play with trains! On this particular day this past weekend, I was able to shoot some photos as well as some video of Lukey as he played. The grandkids were at our house through the weekend again so that allowed me to get some nice photos of them in action (some photos of Kenzie will be added in another blog entry). Lukey will be back this weekend to run some trains again. This weekend, however, we'll be running Lukey's HO scale trains and giving some of my narrow gauge trains a run (these narrow gauge trains can run on Lukey's HO scale layout).   This past weekend, Lukey and I played with my newly upgraded O scale Hudson steam locomotive. The track was sprawled out across the living room, around the coffee table and then under the coffee table.  He seemed impressed with all the upgrades which made playing a lot more interesting

From this angle, you can see the tender marker lights and the firebox glowing in the cab. As I wrote in a previous blog entry a couple of days ago, my O scale MTH Hudson steam locomotive arrived back from the shop. I had sent it in about a month ago to have some major upgrades installed so I was pretty excited to get it back... especially to have received it in the days right after our annual train show excursion! I had the ProtoSound electronics upgraded from version 1.0 to version 3.0. This upgrade is a significant sound upgrade as well as a very significant control upgrade. Slow speed control is outstanding now... slow and steady... chuffing smoke... the sound is great and it runs silky smooth.  This upgrade also included the ability to control the rear coupler with my controller. And, naturally, this useful feature includes an uncoupling sound as it uncouples.   While it was in the shop, I had marker lights added on the front of the locomotive and the rear of the tender.

Sheila, talking with one of our newest train show fanatics... He went home with a new train set and a few other toys. Sheila and I had a great time at our annual train show extended weekend. It sounds as though everyone who joined us had a great time as well!  My spinal injuries were putting a painful crimp in our time at the show but, overall, we had a great time and are glad we ventured to the show regardless of my spinal injuries. I couldn't walk at all in the days before we left for the show so it was a bit iffy whether I would make it to the show at all. We still probably would have traveled down to see everyone but being able to walk around the show didn't look promising in the preceding days. After having problems getting around the show on my own this year... as well as some problems last year which weren't as bad as this year... and even some problems the year before that were milder (I see the pattern and it isn't a pretty pattern)... I have de

I took a much needed break from our plumbing project today for two reasons... actually, we defaulted to a short break involuntarily... 1. I needed some additional parts so the project was on hold until I could get out to pick up what is needed (which we did tonight)... and...  2. My spinal injuries needed a much needed break. My spinal pain from the little bit of work I've already done has made sleeping and getting around difficult and painful to say the least.  As you can probably imagine, it was a good time for a short break from these frustrating (and stinky) plumbing issues so, as our train show extended weekend fast approaches, I turned my attention to a set of passenger cars I found under our Christmas tree last month. This classic passenger set is a set of four New York Central 20th Century Limited passenger cars... a baggage car, a coach car, a vista dome car, and an observation car.  These are all in O scale (Lionel size) and I have to say I am quite impre

Bachmann, O scale, narrow gauge, 4-6-0 steam locomotive. I've been trying to get up to speed with Digital Command Control (DCC) for model trains for the past few months. Well... I started trying to educate myself a couple of years ago but have had difficulty grasping how to fully utilize DCC without having a locomotive to program or even a DCC controller. Over the past year or so, I've collected some DCC locomotives and a couple of different control systems. I'm learning more but it is a bit frustrating for a few reasons. First off, if you want to take a fairly easy route, you can just buy a DCC locomotive and use it in its default configuration with just about any DCC controller. This is certainly the easiest and quickest way to get up and running in DCC. That is not me though. I like to perfect things to my own preferences. I'd like to write a blog post about all the difficulties in programming... all the different DCC systems available today... compatibili