Good Morning All. Clear and 54°, with a cold front beginning to move in. It will only be in the lower 70's today after several days of 80's. Still have rain in the forecast for Thursday and Friday; and then only into the 60's for the weekend. I've already got my dry firewood inside next to the stove.
Beautiful day yesterday and I spent a lot of time outside enjoying the sunshine and doing various tasks in the yard. I started to clean up and straighten out the firewood storage area, gathering up broken off pieces of bark and random wood chips; re-stacking kindling that had gone astray and generally readying the area for mowing without obstacles. Today I will consolidate all of the dried, aged wood into one stack so I have all of the remaining area for green wood to cure. I later mowed about an acre with the mower deck on the lowest possible setting, thus flattening out anthills and crawdad chimneys in more remote areas. I also sat back and watched the garden growing for a short while. Still haven't attacked the tree pile yet, but everything is ready.
Not a lot of visible work was done out in the train shed yesterday. I added about 40 headstones to the cemetery and made and painted some more over at the workbench. It just doesn't seem like I'm making much progress there. There's a lot more headstones needed than I expected. Since I had the paint out, I put finishing touches on some figures that just needed a few dabs here and there. I am looking at the major project list to see which one I will tackle after the cemetery.
Seems like everyone liked the review of some of Garry's pictures yesterday. Here's one of the man himself that he posted in 2022.
And here's a few more from my "inspiration" folder
Louis - You're not really an oddball for liking your "roundy-round" layout. Both of my brothers have continuous run layouts. One has a Lionel layout where he can run 7 trains at once on various interlocking loops, while the other has 2 loops of HO and an automated street trolley. However he is starting to cut in some industries for switching after seeing what I do.
Bill - I like the station in Plymouth. It's too bad that the graffiti vandals have defaced it.
Patrick - The grain elevator that I posted is not the only one in that town, there's another equally impressive there. They are the two largest ones in Texas, although neither is as big as the one that you posted the video of. They're both on the BNSF main line a couple of miles south of the Alliance Yard, and upwards of 50 trains a day pass by. I railfan north of there nearer to my house, and currently there's only 36-40 trains a day there.
Cheri - Nice looking pair of doggies.
Alan - Thanks for the info.
Mike - You posted about the modern day unit trains. Unfortunately that has made modern day railfanning rather boring for me. Since Alliance Yard with it's giant intermodal facility is just south of where I observe, nearly half of all trains are container trains. Another large group are unit grain trains headed for the ports on the Gulf, or empties headed back to the Midwest.
Get out and vote today if your state is part of the Super Tuesday marathon. Vote as often as you can!
Everyone have a great day today.