Opening Soon! Thé Noir at its new location

Paparazzi mob Thé Noir's big location reveal

After publishing the LOL video and thinking about Michael's comments I figured I should note that Thé Noir* has a place of honour on the current layout. Instead of being on a city street, it's now located on Ocean View Lane, with a view of the ocean :-) And, it's right beside the natural history museum. Prime real estate indeed. There is a problem though: no on-street parking. Walk-in and streetcar accessible only.  Stay tuned for the Grand Re-Opening!

*Note: Improvements include straightening the sign!

Tom Daniel on his Bad Water Western layout

Over the weekend Vince contacted Tom Daniel with some questions about his Bad Water Western layout. Mr. Daniel proved once again to be a great guy and graciously answered Vince's questions about the layout. Here's an edited summary (Tom Daniel's comments are in "Courier" as is the convention here):

Tom Daniel's Bad Water Western module "won First Place" at the 1973 MRIA meet.

"At that same contest, John Olson also entered his HOn3 module which also won First Place in the 'Narrow Gauge" category. John and I became lifelong friends - and he - being an accomplished model photographer - among all his other talents - John became the official 'company' photographer for my Bad Water Western RR ..."

"There is NO actual operating BWW layout - rather, a series of modules, all still works in progress. The original Module Contest winner was unfortunately destroyed many years ago."

"Other than one or two shots in MR in years past; and the BWW images you saw via Max Models, there has been no definitive photo and text story about how the BWW came into being in 1949."

"Thanks for your interest in the Bad Water Western."

I'd like to thank Tom Daniel and Vince for giving their time to help clarify this interesting piece of model railroading history.

Scenes from a lost model railway: The Lost Ocean Line, 2011 - 2017

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." - Albert Camus

Tom Daniel's Bad Water Western at Max's Models

Vince contacted Tom Daniel about the Bad Water Western. Tom Daniel graciously replied and said there was a video about it at Max's Models. Amazing stuff!

New beginnings: Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley in S-9

An S-scale, 9mm beginning for a trolley inspired by Thaddeus Lowe's. It's built on a Kato 11-108 drive unit.

The last two months I've been working on a diorama for entry in this Loco-Revue contest. It was submitted last week and graciously accepted, so now I'm back to normal operations :-)

The thing that surprised me about the diorama project was how fast I completed it and the enthusiasm I brought to the work. I started from zero on 26 February and finished on or around 19 April - and that included a 10 day excursion to Texas in the middle where no hobby work occurred. The project involved making 3 little dioramas, designing and scratchbuilding a building, scenicking, and modifying and detailing a locomotive, as well as shooting lots of photos, two videos, and packaging them for submission. I had a great time. The best in a long while. Most of my projects take ages and drag on. There's a message or two in there for me.

I think one of the messages is that I need to park most of my existing projects for a bit and focus on fun - well, let's say getting satisfaction from building, not 'fun' as the popular media defines it. I was doing many projects out of a feeling they needed to be done. Forget that. This summer could simply be a random walk looking for hobby fun, as well as enjoying any good weather that comes along of course.

I may have finally figured out how to build a little layout inspired by the Mt. Lowe railway. First though I need a model - in this case a casualized model - of Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley that he used to scoot around his railway. I've made a start and I'll continue until the fun runs out.