23 July, 2020 - Finger Lakes Live Steamers in upstate New York. The official name of the closest village is Marengo, NY. We sit between Clyde, NY and Lyons, NY, about 1 mile south of the New York Canal System (Erie Canal) if you want to look at the area on GPS. Club tracks are visible to the satellites. Had a chance to see the Neowise Comet with help from Roger Caiazza and a set of binoculars. If you want to see a great picture of the comet, check out ''Pat Bonish Photography" from Cedar Key on Facebook. The guy is a master with a camera and a good friend. I’ve been working on a new boiler for the 7.25 Clishay. Want to fire it with propane, instead of coal. With our travels and my age, coal is just too much trouble. Also working on a velocipede for the 1.5 scale tracks. This is an interesting adventure. Have been successful converting and running the Rail Buggy on 7.5, 7.25 and now 4.75 track. Little bit of a high center of balance and a little bit like riding a motorcycle. A trip around the track once is enough for my back, but fun.
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Big adventures have been operating on the Number 1 Gauge track. Have run car cards/ waybills twice here at FLLS. And twice at Roger Caiazza’s home layout, “The Leatherstocking Route”. He has a garden railroad circling his back yard with 4 stations/switching locations. Each is a complete swtching puzzle. We operated one day with car cards, stopping at every other location, one day and then operating a second day running a “milk train” with a switching list as Roger and another MR operating the way freight. On the milk train, you made a complete loop of the railroad between each switching location. Both Car card/Waybills and Switchlists proved challenging and quite enjoyable.
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Last week we took a 4 day trip south to the “World of Ken Brunts” in extreme southern Pennsylvania. Stayed in a nice KOA campground along the Brandywine. Pretty, old communities on narrow roads. Yep, getting there with the coach and getting back out was part of the adventure. Operated on Ken’s RGS railroad on Wednesday and that’s when Dave Marconni delivered “the Evil Twins”. He had some relationship with a cat, that he was developing, and didn’t stay very long.
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On that Thursday is when Ken and I made a pilgrimage to the EBT. Lots of work being done in preparation for the 60th Anniversary of Tourist Operation on the weekend of August 15th. Quite impressive. Station is being repainted, switches in the yard are being tuned and re-ballasted and ties are being replaced on the 5 miles of track between Orbisonia and the picnic wye. There are large bundles of new ties everywhere. Easily 50 bundles, with around 25 ties in each bundle. People working all over the area. This is very promising. There is a feeling of prosperity in the area, that wasn’t there in the last 20 years of our visits. New houses along the roads and a large lumber mill between Orbisonia and Mt. Union.
Jan and I have never visited this time of year, lots of vegetation blocks your view of many locations where you could see the track in March and even October during the Fall Festival. 2 organizations working with the old trackage. The East Broad Top Foundation in the Orbisonia area and the East Broad Top Preservation Association in the Mt. Union area. Lots of signage up in the Mt. Union area trackage warning of trespassing and a white rail fence between the engine house, the bank and McDonald’s parking lots. Vegetation is so thick you wouldn’t want to walk in the area anyway. We did walk around Orbisonia Yard, but stayed well clear of workers. No one challenged us and we had a nice conversation with the paint contractors at the station. They were the same business that repainted the Bed and Breakfast, this last Spring, and it looks great.
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Jon mentioned in another post about future plans. There is a real nice cabin off 522 south of Orbisonia., that Jan and I dreamed over once. This was back in the late 90’s and retirement was just a dream and a wish of what we could/would do. My dream then was to still to do the “circle route” of the Mississippi River System and the Intercoastal. That also included upper New York and the Erie Canal. Well, we explored the Erie Canal for 2 weeks in 1997 on an 18 foot sailboat and now we sit a mile off of it every Summer.
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Amazing how this World turns. Still walkin and talkin, as my friend from Long Island says. Still self-isolating and we are very blessed.
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