Tree Work 301

It has been quite a while since the last post, it is not that I haven't accomplished anything, just that my accomplishments are more in tune with nature. I have been working out in the yard and my garden and playing a little golf. Faye and I have also made a few trips to Indy to visit and see everyone, and then typhoid Faye hit not once but twice so we have battled a little illness too. Perhaps you can tell by the title of this blog I have been perfecting my tree fabricating skills, and feel like I am getting close to them being good. I will include some pictures so you can see how I have done. I figure that I have probably built quite a few prototypes that didn't measure up, I didn't keep track of the failures but let me say they have been numerous. I owe a lot of what you see to the wonderful invention of the internet, you can find any information you desire there and I have combined several techniques I found and tweaked them to the way I wanted to build my trees. I am not sure how many trees I will need for the L & B but they are something I can work on upstairs for the most part and don't need to be exiled in the basement all of the time. I am actually pretty proud of the results of the fir trees in the pictures they are pretty realistic I think. The top picture is the wire armature that I have "painted" with a tinted mixture of plaster of paris with white glue mixed in, and the others are different views of the first three finished success stories. Let me know what your opinion is or if you have any ideas to improve on what you see. Until the next time!

Recession has hit the Railroad

Sorry if you have been financially affected by the recession, but then who hasn't when I think about it. My philosophy is to make light of serious things and perhaps they won't seem as bad. The only recession that has actually hit the railroad is a slowdown in the time I have been spending working on it. I would post some pictures but the differences are too subtle and they would not reveal much. The underlying reason for the work slow down is not a general labor strike or anything ( more humor), I have just been busy in other areas. You might ask for an accounting or you may not care but I will give one any way. First I have been obsessed with a computer that suddenly decided it was missing a registry file, I spent way too many hours trying to restore it and finally gave up and reinstalled windows. Second the weather and time of year are ganging up on me and I have had to spend quite a bit of time outside doing yard work, I am not complaining, I enjoy this labor so I am stating fact. Thirdly my loving wife finally decided on a color to paint the kitchen so we painted it which led to me painting the laundry room yesterday and that led to a general sorting out of the shelves in there and scrubbing the floor as I moved appliances. I realize that I have been wordy and if you are reading this saying to yourself I don't care but I am not twisting the proverbial arm and making you read this so if you are still reading and don't want to be shame on you for not having the will power to stop. Plus I am setting here getting a bit of a private chuckle thinking of you reading this and saying to yourself what am I wasting my time on. Then the third reason behind the work slow down getting back on the original subject is once again weather related and it is now nice enough for me to spend way too much time chasing that little white ball around the converted cow pasture. What? Playing golf is one of my vices which as I age my vices seem to become fewer and tamer, not a bad thing either because most of my vices in my earlier years were unhealthy to say the least. I have rambled on far too long, so I am going to draw to a close and get back to work on the railroad! Later Gator.