Hmmm, I should be getting close to some swag.

I've been supporting Lionel since about last October. I'm working my way into listening to the podcasts - I'm trying to get between 20 and 30 minutes on a treadmill in the morning (and walking to work) so I've suddenly got time to watch and listen to AML, What's New This Week, and TrainMasters TV on a regular basis. Along with an assortment of YouTube videos, such as Luke Towan and TSG Multimedia. Gotta add Kathy Millatt in there as well. 

I enjoyed listening to your interview.... I should have made it down to the Ukulele shop when I was there. 

BTW - to all, I highly recommend staying at the Pakalana Inn if you're headed to the Big Island and you don't want the full-on Kailua-Kona resort thing. Much less expensive, a bit more rustic, and centrally located in Hilo, which is a lot of fun to explore and a good way to get a head-start on exploring the west side of the Island. Which is the green side as well. 

A Modelers Life

Geez Neil, you have a life? Boy, must be nice... Always thought I should get me one of those .

AML

I’ll have to give a listen to this one. You should listen to mine on my Hitop branch and how I was able to get a Smart car in the same garage as the layout....

Laughs at the Smart car....

Laughs at the Smart car.... My son puts two of them in a one car garage...   or in a single parking space when necessary, or just when he's being a smarta&&...

Pakalana Inn

Hey Jeff Thanks! Based on the interview I need to get a modeler’s special going. Hope you can make it back. 

Life?

Rick - When you have a farm, a full time job, and a small hotel, then I assure you one has no life! It is amazing that I get any model building done at all. 

BTW, I think spikes might work IRL as well. I always hated wrapping the wire around a post. 

Hitop Fan

I subscribe to your blog as well and glad you had a listen! We have a Honda Fit and a Smart Car makes it look big! I had thought of parking but sideways in the garage with the newer HRV in the same stall - then maybe my F-150 wouldn’t have sit out in the rain. Ugh. Of course my wife would also call me a smart @$$. 

Umm,

park the smart car in the back of the truck?  Would look better than the standard ATV storage (or Snowmobile, in Canada).

Maybe I haven't had enough

Maybe I haven't had enough coffee but I am not sure what this is all about.  Feed me with a spoon please while I have another cup.

As suggested . . .

But maybe more appropriate for Neil . . . 

Thanks!

Neil, thanks for subscribing to my blog as well....

We had the Smart car, but traded it in for a mini SUV, so I also tell Lionel how I supposedly conspired to do that so I  wouldn’t have to park a car in the garage, and could take the entire garage for the layout....lol

@ Michael

Good idea for the Smart car inside the bed of the pickup, but you just need a larger truck like a Ram, then the whole car fits inside....lol

I have a photo somewhere that a friend sent me that shows a guy carrying a Smart like that

Where I live Smart Car = Death Wish

Where I live, west of Washington DC in northern Virginia, you'd have to have a death wish to drive a Smart Car.  Plenty of people get killed driving regular cars as it is.  The driving habits around here are some of the worst I've seen in the country and I've lived and driven a lot from coast to coast. 

Worst of all, police are few and far between so drivers know they have carte blanche to disregard traffic rules as a modus operandi.

- California stops haven't seen anything, here drivers barely slow down for right-hand turns at stop signs or lights. 

- Turn signals optional only if you feel like it.  Many don't.

- Passing on double yellow lines or solid over dashed a regular occurrence.

- Many drivers need to do 15-20 over the speed limit or they aren't happy.

- About 1/4 drivers don't bother to turn their lights on during steady or even hard rain.

- During dusk/sunrise, again, many driving without lights - hard to see in some darker areas.  Wakey wakey!

- Don't even get me started on distracted drivers who can't let go of their "precious" smart phone, driving erratic, weaving across the center-line etc.

- Rear-ender crashes are quite common, probably most of it related to the "precious".  My wife's car was totaled last Dec and my office-mate has had 2 new cars totaled due to rear enders.  I had a co-worker a couple years ago waiting at a stop light get rear ended - the at-fault person made up some bogus story but fortunately my co-worder had a dash cam that exonerated him from any fault.  His back was injured and he had to use a special chair at work for month while he recovered.

Very Interesting - Way Cool

Neil,

I just listened to your interview on the Patreon podcast.  It was awesome and a big wow to associate your work, home, Hawaii, career, job, and model railroad with the guy I call the "Wizard of Hawaii."  I have lawyers (daughter & son-in-law) and an architect (wife) in my family so that is familiar to me. Your inn sounds very interesting.  Now that you are a celebrity, its time for you to settle down and get back to being busy on your layout!

Getting back to the layout

Thanks Steve!

I have been gathering materials to build a couple short trestles so this morning I made a template for the vents and scrounged some styrene for a jig.  With luck these will get completed over the weekend and trains will be able to travel a little further up the line from staging. 

If you have been reading my blog then I won’t bore you with details but happy to have gotten my laptop to run trains so now adding detectors so that trains will trigger semaphore signals as they progress.  Not wizardry, yet.  

Mrs. E. is visiting family this week and won’t be back until after the holiday. Her father was an attorney and judge, two brothers and sister are all lawyers - one is on the same bench his father held for thirty years. I’m the son of an architect but my siblings were smart enough to get jobs that pay (lol). 

Glad you got a listen. 

P.S. Michael! Nearly spit out my coffee with those pics! Glad we have a trailer for the horses but now I wonder if a smart car might fit in as well ... hmmm. 

@ Jimfitch....Based on what you described..

based on what you described Are you sure your not from Phoenix??

Robin W....

California drivers are more aggressive....

I like the drivers in Texas,

I like the drivers in Texas, when they wave at you here they use all of their fingers. The stupid drivers are the ones that just moved in. The other thing that is very common is people stopping to see if they can help if you are pulled over to the side of the road. While doing that there is a good chance you will be invited to a church meeting.

Thought of the day

Well, two thoughts. 

First there was another thread was also derailed but toward the question, or definition, of the lone wolf modeler. For the record I consider myself the classic lone wolf doing the layout my way, on my terms, and completely on my own. Am I self absorbed? Yes. But to consider whether being an introvert is a requirement of the club, now that is just another label defined by Webster as “a reserved or shy person who enjoys spending time alone”. Ok, I’ll buy that. Not shy, but find model building easier alone. 

That said, in another thread Al asks about water. So today, as I make trestle bents, how to model a swampy, grassy filled waterway. For that matter, other parts of the layout will be either rice fields or wet land taro- all grown basically in water. 

So of the two thoughts, anybody want to kick the tires?

Shallow gloss medium...

clear coat mixed with glycerine

clear coat mixed with glycerine

I like Jeff's idea of paint

I like Jeff's idea of paint and very tall static grass. I would suggest a very thin layer of envirotex or similar water water medium after the paint and before the static grass. An 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch should work for the glossy surface and still look shallow. Since Neil is going in for larger scale than HO this should be very dramatic looking.

I suspect you might have

I suspect you might have trouble getting the "water" to flow around the static grass...   but then, we're talking a very shallow pour of "water" here... why not just paint the surface, let that dry, pour the "water"... and put the static grass into it while it's still wet? Just a thought,.... try a small sample first, of course...

Static grass.

Thanks guys. I guess it’s time to make an applicator and give it a try. The idea of a shallow pour might work. 

Had to take a break from modeling today and work on some home improvement projects (horse walked on the patio and crushed some boards so not only replace them but repaint the shoe sheebang). 

Here is where I left the trestle:

Now where did I store the bridge ties?  Hmmmmm.