Altivo

"And Flun is the letter I use to spell Flunnel,
A softish nice fellow who lives in a tunnel.
He only comes out of his tunnel it's said
When the right kind of softish nice music is played
On a kind of a hunting horn called the O'Grunth.
To learn how to play one takes month after month
Of practicing, practicing, isn't much funth.
And besides, it's quite heavy, weighs almost a ton-th,
So few people bother to play the O'Grunth
And the Flunnel's been out of his tunnel just one-th."

—Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra

(I hope I got that all right. No copy handy to check.)

Finally down to practicing music for the IRM picnic on Saturday. Gary and I ran over a selection of train-related songs he has picked out. Tomorrow morning we'll meet with Amy and go over some again. And possibly Thursday afternoon with Neal. Then he meets with Neal and Amy on Friday while I'm at work. And then it's Saturday and we try to fit it all together live. Ha ha. Ho ho. Hee hee.

Getting back my guitar calluses after years of slacking is rough. And that says nothing about trying to get back the actual licks. But no matter.

*licks sore finger tips* I hope.

At least the weather has been nice. Hope it holds up for the weekend. I swear I saw an Anna's hummingbird at the library. And we are swarmed with orioles and goldfinches here at home. Thought there was a baby screech owl nearby last night, but it could have been a neighbor weaning a foal. The sound is not that different.

More snow too. Or maybe sleet. It fell very lightly for a good chunk of the afternoon, without any significant accumulation as far as I can tell.

Gary wanted to go to a train exhibition at Harper College (in Palatine, not Rockford as I mistakenly thought.) So we went. It was a good show, though we have seen most of the layouts that were there. The really important points were that he got to talk to someone new about t-track modules and landscaping, which helped reduce his concerns about "doing it wrong." Actually, everything he has been doing is just fine. And he got some new ideas. We also had lunch with casey382 and got to talk about landscaping with him and get some added ideas as well as confirmation of what we already heard. That made it worth the trip. Even looking at the same layouts another time, we are learning to see more details and observe the construction tricks.

Had lunch in Crystal Lake, did some grocery shopping, and came home just in time for evening animal care.

Saw a rat in the yard, so Gary put out his traps again. After dusk, saw a big opossum out there too. Hope he doesn't get caught in a rat trap, though we'd rather he went somewhere else. Anywhere else. Not only are opossums among the ugliest of mammals, they carry a neurological parasite that can infect horses with very unpleasant consequences. If he keeps showing up, we may have to trap and remove him to somewhere far away.

It's raining fairly hard. This is definitely unusual so early in the year, even though they say it will turn to slushy snow later.

The usual long, tiresome midweek, now survived and bed beckoning to me. Tomorrow only a half day of work but I have to drive Gary to the optometrist in the afternoon because they will dilate his eyes so he can't drive himself.

Gary painted the wooden bases of the t-trak modules and last night we put the tracks back on. Now we're ready to start landscaping them.

Can't stay awake any longer. Good night.

Not originally in the forecast, but we had snow flurries at least three separate times today. Nothing stayed around though, even with the temperature right at freezing.

I now own two box cars. N-scale model ones, actually. Guess I need some track and a locomotive too.

Spent a good chunk of my work hours today trying to revive a dead computer, without success. Finally pulled a "retired" Win2000 desktop out to serve as a temporary replacement. We are due to get some new staff machines in, but the order is delayed while the trust managers come up with the funding.

Sleepy, guess I need to go to bed where it's warm.

Gary was away at a Civil War event all day, so once my chores were done I dashed over to the Illinois Railway Museum (just three miles from the farm) to meet friends for the afternoon. This was their "Showcase Weekend" when they pull as much working equipment out of the barns as they can and run it all around on the tracks so visitors can ride it.

It was an impressive display. They had two electric trains (one was a caboose train pulled by an electric switcher) and two Diesel trainsets running on the main line, as well as a borrowed replica of a Civil War steam locomotive, the Leviathan. Electric trolley buses were out of the barn and making rounds, which is a rare occasion. Regular rail trolleys were running in large numbers too, representing at least a hundred years of progress I believe. We also saw them moving some CTA subway cars and a pair from New York in and out of the CTA station, though I don't think they were carrying riders on those.

I took a lot of photos and some short video clips. Here's a teaser of the Leviathan locomotive. You'll have to wait a day or two for the rest until I have access to more bandwidth for uploading.

First things first, here's a photo of Sarah, the Polish Elkhound, early on Saturday morning when she was just waiting for us to get moving and give her and Simon their breakfast. Her priorities are usually quite clear. I'm well pleased with the little Kodak. It does very well for the price. This was taken only with dawn light coming through the north facing window, no flash, handheld camera, set to imitate a high speed ISO 1600 film.

Today Gary and I went with casey382 (Who is quickcasey on LJ) and rrwolf (see LJ also) to a show put on by the Rock River Valley Division of the National Model Railroad Association. I've been to a couple of other model railroad shows but this was the largest and most diverse I can remember. I took the opportunity to give my new camera some testing, with closeups of tiny (N gauge) trains in motion, and it did quite well in my opinion. I need to sift through the images before posting any, but I'll get some up in a day or two. N gauge models are quite small compared to the model trains of my childhood, something like 13 feet to the inch or so (160:1) which makes it possible for the models and scenery to be much better proportioned and for the trains to move at a reasonable speed in real time without seeming to move much too fast in relation to the scenery. You still need a lot of space for a realistically proportioned exhibit, but it's within attainability with one scale mile fitting into 35 feet or so of real space. Of course, even more than it was when I was a kid, this is a pretty expensive hobby. Locomotives appear to run from $60 to several hundred dollars, and you need track, control modules, and rolling stock as well. The realism you could attain, though, is amazingly close to Hollywood miniature quality. I'll be looking forward to the opportunity to photograph more of these tiny trains in appropriately scaled settings.

Afterward we had lunch in Belvidere and went back to the house where Casey gave us a demonstration of a t-trak (http://t-trak.org) modular setup of N gauge track, putting together a running loop on our dining room table top in just a few minutes. Track and scenery are assembled in interchangeable wooden modules about a foot long. I had seen these in operation before, but had not seen the assembly or dismantling processes. It's impressively fast and easy.

All said, it was a fun way to spend a day, with good company and doing something different.