Haven't had much time lately...

I haven't had much time to work on the layout due to and unfortunate turn of events.

Last Thursday was one of those days experienced on most college campuses that I heard of. It was what we call a conversion day which by administrative magic became a different day of the week. So instead of being a Thrusday, it became a Monday and I didn't ave to make to the trek to Staten Island. Instead, my wife, who was off for President's Week, and I decided to go shopping in a new store that opened up in the neighborhood. It's a food store so all we bought were the few things we needed to buy anyway. Some were bargains.

We brought the stiff home and some of it had to go in the basement, so them down and when I cam back up I went to sit on our bed in the bedroom. While sitting there, I got a strange sensation in my chest and my left arm began to tingle. I told my wife I wasn't feeling good and she called one of my sons who is a licensed EMT. He took my blood pressure which was elevated and called another EMT can told him what was happeing. To make a long story short the called the ambulance they work with and I fond myself in the hospital until about 9PM that night. I had an angiogram and it showed that I did NOT have heart attack, thank G-d. 

If you've never had an angiogram, I'll tell you what it involves. They put a tube in an artery and send wires through it to your heart and examine both the heart and the blood vessels around it. By looking at these structures they can tell if there are any blockages and how bad they are. In my case, the doctor told me that I have the heart and blood vessels of a 30 year old. I replied "That's nice to know but the rest of me is 61."

Now, the procedure isn't bad but the recover period has to be strictly observed or bad things can happen to you. First of all, you end of black and blue in the area that is used for insertion of the tubes and wires. Usually no one but your spouse will see that anyway so if you don't say anything no one will know. But that's not the bad part. You can't drive a car or truck for at least 24 hours afterwards. You also can't climb stairs or wal around your neighborhood. You are under house arrest until the warden (she who must be obeyed puts on another hat) allows you out under her strict supervision. Well for me that was on Monday. I was allowed to drive to work on Tuesday and, of course today. But i wasn't allowed to go down to the layout and I didn't have time to do it anyway since last Thursday.

So what does one do when one is confined to the main floor of your house? Well, I had my references on the New York Connectng Railroad (this is what my layout is based on in part) and soI went through them again. It seems like I had forgotten alot about the line which today hosts AMTRAK, CSX, Canadian Pacific, Providence and Worcester and the New York and Atlantic Railway traffic. I found some supplemental material on line by doing a search on New York Connecting Railroad and this led me to tons of websites to look at. I am going to have to summarize it all in a future blog entry. But it is interesting stuff even though some of it is from Wikipedia which I don't totally trust since lots of people can write stuff which may not be 100% accurate on there.

But more on that later.

In the meantime I have been think about what to do on the building I've spoken about before. Here is a photo of the box it came it:

I am note going to make it into a building with a meat market in it as I have said before. It will represent my wife's internet business called "Shoshana's Showplace" and I will make a sign to replace "Marty's Meatmarket" on my computer.

The specific problem is that the building is designed to have a tunnel in it with the doors giving accses to the apartments above in that tunnel as shown below:

Originally I was going to convert the tunel openings in the front to a recessed doorway but on thinking about it and playing with the parts realized it wouldn't work. So I cam up with another solution. I am going tocut the cement blocks off of the eopening and thus provide a wider opening in the front of the building. I will then make a new doorway from Squadron Plastic sheet material (yeah I've got some of thatfrom years ago). This way I can opt for a nicer looking doorway that looks like it has been modernized by it's current owner. I am not sure if I want to make glass doors but I now have the option to do so. Of course if I do, I am going to make the inside look like a lobby but tha shouldn't be much of a problem.

The tunnel is supposed to go through the building so I will have to seal this opening in the back of the building. That will be done using some more squadron plastic sheets. I'll then paint to resemble the rest o the building. I don't expect it to totally blend in as would be expected of a modernized structure like ths.

As you can see, I've had a busy week even though I couldln't get near anything in the basement. And yeah I still need to get the track plan translated from the one in my brain onto a sheet of paper.

Irv