Hetaira's blog

I want this SO MUCH. It hasn't been delivered in N yet apparently but my LHS guy let me play with the HO model. There's nothing on my layout that absolutely places it any later than about 1960, I could TOTALLY pull it off if it can make the turns. 

http://con-cor.com/aerotrain.html

And if it can't I still want it - I could always display it, I'm probably moving this fall anyway and there's always a chance I'll get more space out of the deal.

http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/

I just spent an hour just scrolling through this livejournal community (you don't have to be a member to see it). It's entirely dedicated to photos people have taken of, obviously, abandoned places. I can't pick one to use as an example. They are AMAZING. Nobody here probably needs to weather a dilapidated Russian palace, but there are also farmhouses, schools, grain silos, entire towns...all kinds of stuff. Check it out if you're into that sort of thing.

Okay so I've accomplished almost nothing for the last couple of months - I built the basic form of my mountain/tunnel but it's just naked foam, and put in a steeper grade on the bit that's just for looks not for running...which solved a space problem. (The chain gang will be working on building that new track out of town - further infuriating the union. The WS Picket Line is out in N now hooray!) Still, it's a lot of foam and not a lot else.

Also I forgot to protect the wires, and some cat chewed through the leads to one of my turnouts. Nifty.

The long sides of the coffee table are now plexiglassed in. This does not keep the kitties far away as they can still crawl in the ends, they figured it out immediately. Faster than ME apparently - I broke a nail trying to reach through and move something...and no of COURSE this didn't happen when nobody was looking!

*Edited* Trying to figure out how to *NOT* have the photos clog up the blogs page. I guess it's a certain number of lines that show up? So if I just yap for a couple extra sentences...my new table's here, but I'll have to build it after work...Old Daisyville has been dismantled so I can use the same foam...the best part is I get to put off repairing those busted couplers while I mess around with the move...okay that did it!**

An Ikea just opened up in town and this afternoon I'm going to pick up this little beauty of a coffee table. It's cheap enough I don't have to feel bad drilling holes in it, and I can put it where the current shabby coffee table lives, getting my darling spouse off my case for hogging the living room.

I've already got a couple of blogs I forget to update but there is nobody - NOBODY - reading them that wants to hear another word about the darn trains. My little 30"x48" layout is having a crisis anyway. After a couple of unsatisfactory attempts, I've decided the grades have to be far too steep to get an over/under into so little space. Oh, it can be done but it just looks weird (I want it because it looks so COOL) and by the time I get the cliffs and landscape in there won't be any room left for buildings.