Well Easter Sunday Railroad Run Day came and went…with ONLY a few glitches :). Like the military always says about a battle…you go into it with all kinds of plans. As soon as the “first shot” is fired, the “plans” are tossed. Pretty much how the day went here :). The gardeners left about 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon and I immediately started laying the track panels in the grassy area and proceeded up the front walkway. Just dropped the panels in a rough manner so I could see if I could fit the curved track according to my drawings.
Well the radius on the track was not close enough to the drawing…I wanted 25 ft. and apparently I was closer to 26-1/2-27 feet. Just enough of an error to throw off trying to fit the walkway and still meet the #5 turnout in the driveway. Bummer…:(. That pretty much shot the hell out of any more work until early Friday morning. And I’m already worn out :)! Get up bright and early at 7 a.m. Friday morning and it’s already 75 degrees! First thing I do is to disassemble a couple of curved panels and sharpen the radius a little. That procedure takes a few hours. Finally by the time the sun goes down on Friday evening, I needed to take a break. Here is a photo of the track in the grass area. Of course the CFO of the RR has placed Easter Bunnies and white picket fences (guarding the eggs) that the chief track layer NOW has to avoid.
Saturday morning rears its “ugly head” and I have an eye doctor appointment right in the middle of the day. Nothing much gets accomplished until near the time the sun sets again. All the track is layed out and it looks like it will fit. All I have to do early Sunday morning is slide the panels together with the track joiners. My daughter and son-in-law and three grandkids arrive at 9:30am. Then the “chaos” really starts :). My son-in-law helped me to slide all the track together, check the joints and try a test run, while the grandkids are running in all directions on an “Easter Egg Hunt” Finally my son-in-law and I are ready to get the engines and rolling stock out. Of course by this time, I have more neighborhood kids in the front yard and sidewalk I’ve never seen before. Ah trains…like a Pied Piper…:). Below are a few photos I managed to take during the day.
2-1/2 yr. old Christopher is already into Grandpa’s tools and has completely filled the reefer with plastic Easter Eggs!
He has also discovered the bag of new plastic wheel chocks from Accutie and starting to scatter them in fifteen different directions. I finally got him to place the wheel chocks on the track so the rolling stock would not start down the street.
The kids decided they wanted to run these cars in the first train. First time the restored caboose has run since its “rework”.
3-1/2 yr. old Jason first time at the throttle :).
He wanted the headlight on so he would be ready to run at night.
Under Dad’s watchful eye.
Carefully going through the new #5 tuirnout and doing some switching on the siding. His Dad and I came up with some switching “puzzles” for him to solve and switching cars around.
Son-in-law getting a little throttle time :).