Good Morning All. It's partly cloudy and 72°. Still about 12° above normal, and the high is expected to be 88°, which is 8° above normal. Doesn't look much different for the next ten days except for tomorrow. Had to run the A/C last night after three days of the house being closed up...at least I was able to turn it off around 0400. Looks like a lot to catch up here with after my weekend trip. I go out of town and both
Beady and
Phil show up!
Although I was not experiencing any difficulties posting pictures, I am glad to see that
Bob made some more modifications that allow others to have an easier time.
Looks like today will be spent mostly getting back into the groove so to speak. Wife commented about some of the vegetative growth when we drove into the driveway last evening. It's weedeater time here on the estate. Parts of the yard that she hasn't seen yet need to be mowed, the cover needs to come off the pool and vegetables need to be picked and processed. I found a racoon on the back porch this morning that I will have to deal with in the coming days. Pretty much destroyed the plastic bin that I left the cat food in for my neighbor's daughter to feed our cats. Chased it off twice. Time for the trap. At least I know what to use as bait.
Thank you to all who posted well wishes for my trip. It went well and was safe and there were no uneventful incidents. Traffic was a little rough coming home yesterday with a number of multiple-mile backups on IH35, but my ever knowledgeable navigator (my wife and her telephone) was able to guide us through several back roads to avoid the hours long delays. Matter of fact, we arrived home only 6 minutes later than planned. If we had stayed on IH35, the estimate from Google Maps was an additional 2.5 hours.
While in San Antonio, we paid a visit to the Texas Transportation Museum that I had heard a lot about. They have a few layouts, a garden RR, and a number of restored antique vehicles. Non-modelers had told me how impressive their HO layout was, at 100' long, the size was impressive all right, but it is still a work in process and many parts are unfinished. I had a mixed impression overall. Their garden RR covers over an acre and it also was under construction although there was an impressive amount of finished track in place. I guesstimate that there was over 5000' of operable track in place. Unfortunately there were no volunteers that showed up Friday to run the outdoor layout.
Here is a shot of two other completed layouts that they had. I don't know what scale they actually are.
They have an N scale layout as well as a number of N scale modules. Here's the layout.
I'll post some other layout pictures later in the week.
There are some very beautiful restored cars there, and Saturday was a special display of model "T"'s that members of the local club were going to bring by. They told me that it was usually a very big annual event, especially since they didn't charge admission for that showing.
This is one of the cars there, It had no identification on it and I am not old enough to id it myself.
It has a dashboard that
Chet would like!
Obviously I did nothing in the train shed for the last three days, so nothing to report.
Justin - Don't get rid of those excess hoppers just yet. Box them up and store them. You never know what you might need in the future.
Gene - Nice switcher picture.
Chet - I haven't had a chance to view the video's of Pete's layout yet, but I am looking forward to it as soon as I can. Thanks for reposting and posting the new one.
Terry - Best mousetrap is a semi-hungry cat. Mine live outdoors (not possible in all places) and patrol under the house and out into the fields and outbuildings with great success. They even bring home rats that are too large to consume. Coyotes, hawks and bobcats also work in my neighborhood, but I don't recommend them to everybody!
Ken (D&J) - So this is the big week! Remember that once you retire, there are no more vacation days, three day weekends or paid leave. And sometimes I have no clue what day of the week it is! I have to look in the lower right corner of the computer.
Beady - Don't just drop in and disappear. Come visit.
Apologies for being so long-winded this morning, I missed everyone. Everybody have a great day.
Willie