Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and 70° greets us this morning. Thunderstorms are still in the imaginary forecast for tomorrow and the weekend. Even though it will make the grass grow (if it actually happens), we need some rain. We're behind on our annual total right now. I topped off the pool yesterday, so that should increase our chances.
Despite having no plan to use it, I overdid it a bit with the weedeater yesterday, the lower back aches are still with me this morning; might have to do the rare Tylenol before heading out on the weekly grocery trek. Added stops on this week's trip are at HD for more pool chemicals, a stop at the expensive pool supply place to get the water tested by a professional...left water at home last week! Drugstore stop as we head closer to home and who knows where my wife might want to stop.
On the subject of the pool, I found standing water all over on one trip by yesterday and discovered that one of the filter hoses had split. Since it was between the skimmer and the pump, it was sucking more air in than leaking water out, but I had to replace it immediately. I keep a couple of backups and had one ready to go. That's part of the reason that the water level had gotten low.
Granddog found a rabbit nest yesterday and brought me two headless bunnies; they were small enough to have fit into a teacup but appeared to be previously fully functional.
Regarding the obscured license plates in Texas. When the law first passed, many warnings were given out, but that went away soon. They still look for the plastic covers on the tollways. But most State Troopers are no longer doing traffic enforcement in our state. Instead they are almost all part of the statewide taskforce combating illegal immigration in South Texas mainly. One of the officers that goes to our church confirmed this.
Old baseball parks - My Dad and I took the subway to Ebbetts Field a couple of times in the 50's to watch the old Brooklyn Dodgers. The only thing that I remember about the whole trip was the troughs in the restrooms. Rather intimidating for a 5-year old!
I was able to spend about 90 minutes out in the train shed yesterday, the most in over two weeks. I did mostly ground cover, tidying up on the right side of the new grade crossings. Made some street signs, including a "no Parking" for the fire hydrant and a railroad crossbucks for the grade crossing. Sorry, just didn't feel like taking a picture...I really just forgot! They'll all still be there today. I think that I'll do the parking lot around the cardstock drug store next. Still have some minor stuff to do on the north (railroadwise) side, like install that one ground throw and landscape around it.
Louis - I thought of you the other day when Amazon made a delivery to my house at 6:00 am. I had ordered at 11:00 am the previous day. Didn't know that they offered that early morning service out in my area.
Michael -
What I've never really understood about part of this hobby is why many in O-scale insist on toy-like representations of towns, industry, and everyday life in that scale. I just can't get past that for some reason. I realize no modeling is wrong, but to me it just detracts from the trains.
The 100 MPH train on a tight radius curve with the train jerking at every turn doesn't add anything for me either. Unrealistic track plans, spaghetti bowl track plans to cram every last inch of sub-roadbed with track and out of scale structures and support equipment is very detracting to me.
Like you, I don't think that any model railroading is wrong. But I also find most O scale home layouts to be distracting. My Dad had one that my brother inherited (along with his own stuff) and he runs a spaghetti bowl and tries, usually successfully, to run 8 trains at once. All at warp-speed and on O-27 curves. My other brother runs HO on a landscaped layout similar to but on a much smaller scale than mine.
Everybody have a fine Thursday.
