Winter 2009-2010
In spite of doing little chasing of prototype trains, I did manage to
make quite a bit of progress on the model railroad and a few other
RR-related projects. The Rock Island signal I obtained and had
disassembled at the last writing about it is now clean and freshly painted,
with new lenses and bulbs. It sits under the train table where it
is wired to an HO signal whose indications it duplicates.
The HO mainliine (3.5 scale miles) is complete and seems to run fairly reliably. The grandkids
test it out every time they visit, and are quite competent with the
Digitrax wireless controllers. I'm happy with the full-walkaround
plan I created, set out from the walls. At this writing the two
young boy cousins are right at eye level with the trains, but of course they are growing fast!
Now and then there would be a coincidental encounter with some real world RR traffic, but for the most part, the weather prevailed. We had quite a winter here in central Iowa, with snow cover for months, and some periods of ice, frost and snow where there was little to do but hunker down and wait it out.
It's April as I write, and things are green and
growing again. Susan and I took a day to visit my old school in
Tipton (50th reunion this summer) back in March, and managed to catch
an eastbound IAIS train over by Iowa City led by IAIS 500, 509 and 501.
I have a couple of weeks to go before the math classes I'm teaching for
Simpson this semester are over, but earlier this week I took a day away
and visited the BNSF in Chariton. A description follows.
That's It!