It started with my wife needing surgery on her left foot. The podiatrist thought her foot did not have enough blood circulation to go through with the surgery and refferred her to a vascular surgeon. On Tuesday Feb. 2, I took her to the hospital to have an angiogram done on her left leg by a vascular surgeon. 2 hours after I dropped her off the "fun" began.
I received a call from my brother's best friend's wife telling me that he had left his trailer in Lake Havasu City, Az. to go to the grocery store. He is a widower suffering from dementia, and is diabetic. On his way back home, he got lost and drove to New Mexico where he ran out of fuel. A policeman found him trying to hitch hike on Interstate 40. He was incoherent, so the police called the fire dept, and an ambulance to take him to a hospital in Gallup.
We contacted his son who does computer generated special effects for movies in Hollywood. We were going to need 2 drivers, one to drive to New Mexico, and one to drive his truck back while the other one followed. Meanwhile, when my wife woke up from her angiogram, the dr. told her not to drive or go for any long car rides for 3 days. Oh, I forgot to mention that the hospital in Gallup wanted us to come up immediately to pick him up on the afternoon of Feb.2. We live near Long Beach, Ca and my nephew lives in Westwood, near UCLA. I don't fly and can't drive that fast!
My nephew drove immediately to Lake Havasu City to take care of the trailer and my brother's cat. Did I mention dementia? I helped him move from Oklahoma to Lake Havasu about 2 years ago, and I don't think he has cleaned anything since! He's also stubborn and determined to live on his own.
My nephew spent the time waiting for my wife and I to be able to come to Arizona cleaning his house trailer and unpacking the boxes from his move 2 years ago.
Meanwhile we are receiving 9-12 phone messages per day from the hospital asking when we will get there to get him!
My wife's dr finally grudgingly permitted her to ride with me to Gallup on Friday morning, Feb 5. My wife is an RN, so she wanted to go to try to set up some in home help for him once we got him back to Az.
We got to Lake Havasu Friday evening and called my nephew to make arrangements to drive to Gallup on Saturday, Feb.6. Three of us got to Gallup on Saturday evening Feb. 6, and got him out of the hospital, but we could not get his pick-up out of impound until Monday morning! The 4 of us checked out of the hotel on Monday morning, picked up a gas can from a Wall Mart, and filled it with 2 gallons of diesel fuel. We got his truck "out of hock" on Monday and headed back to Arizona with my nephew driving the truck and my wife and I following in our van.
Once back in Arizona, my nephew got to work straightening out my brother's finances, and my wife got busy getting him a dr. appointment and arranging someone to come in to help with meals, and to take him to appointments, shopping, etc., once we were back in So Cal. He is now on insulin in addition to the metforman that he was supposed to be taking, but forgot about. He is still stubbornly determined to live at home My wife also made up 2 instruction sheets that I had printed and laminated at a nearby Staples. One form is how to test for and monitor his blood sugar. The other is how to administer his insulin after he checks his blood sugar. He has 2 types of insulin, one fast acting if the insulin needs adjustment during the day, the other slow acting for use overnight. She also arranged for a visiting nurse to come in, but could only get a nurse 3 days per week, and then not all day!
My wife and nephew spent the rest of the week going over the 2 "cheat sheets" she made up to get him to take care of his insulin monitoring and injections. We came home on Sunday Feb. 14. My nephew is heading home today. My nephew also hid his car keys before leaving!
We are not real confident that he is capable of taking care of himself even with the assistance that my wife arranged. We have told him that if he has another episode and needs to go to the hospital, that he will probably end up needing to go into a nursing home! One major problem for him is that none of us live anywhere near him so we are looking at a 5 hour drive to get to him if he stays home.
I have only the one shown, but can't find a similar one on-line, or any reference to who might have offered it. It looks to me like it might be from Model Die Casting, especially since it doesn't have an extension for a coupler, like the passenger car trucks that were offered by Athearn.
If anybody has one to offer, or even several, I might be interested if the price is right.
My parents moved a few years ago, and when they did a box of old HO cars from my youth wound up my house.
Replacing wheels, couplers, and weathering are easy projects that can keep me busy when I only have 15-30 minutes here and there to model, and my workbench is crowded with other "to dos". Doesn't make much financial sense to fix the old Tycos and Bachmanns, as the parts cost more than the car is worth. But it is fun.
Here are some Athearn F7s, One of the first locomotives I bought with my own money when I was about 13 or 14. I repainted them using craft paint from wally world, bought some decals, fixed a broken step, broken truck sideframe, broken axle gears, added a close coupling kit and diaphragms, and used a kit to make the windshields more prototypical Still needs some finish work, but it runs for the first time in about 25 years.
Train Miniature HO Scale Reefers; Here are 95 or so of my TM reefers. Please see them and enjoy them. I am trying to share here in a large if all works out.
Frank
Here are the first 6 photos only 93 left to go.
A&P Atlantic and Pacific Tea. Co.
ART 22783- MPL
ART 46965 N&W MPL
ART 91660 Kansas Packing Co.
American Stores ACO MILK- AMSX 1223
American Stores ASCO MILK- AMSX 12076
I've always intended on creating a believable fictional railroad, not based to specifically on any particular towns or cities. Why? I feel if I try model an actual line, I will get caught up in rivet counting and inaccuracies will bug me enough that I won't get anything done. Plus, nobody can point out how I did something wrong. Thus, for many years I have settled on Southern Arizona mining railroads in the 1910-1930 time frame. Generic towns based on real towns and generic equipment that has the same general feel as what was really used in the area.
I haven't done a whole lot of modeling for the past few years due to family commitments, but I also feel like I am losing my "itch". Right now I feel more like just "running trains". Of course, I no longer have a permanent layout, and joining a club is not something I want to do right now. Another drawback of a fictional railroad is the custom lettering and painting of rolling stock vs just pulling something out of a box, adding a little weathering, and rolling it down the rails.
Anyone else face this crossroads where you give up on the direction you have been going for years and go a different way?
My branchline to the stamp mill needs this to complete the trackwork to it and the future logging camp.
I've never built a wooden bridge kit before. I have a Howe truss bridge further down on the branchline but I had given the kit to my Father many years ago to build as me skills weren't up to the task at the time.
Opening it, it's more like a scratchbuild with the parts supplied. Some of the lumber is cut to size, some isn't. it includes some metal castings for the hardware and water barrels as well as wire for the tension rods.
