Archive for the ‘Site Information’ Category

Winter Projects

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

It has been a snowy winter here in eastern Massachusetts.  A lot of snow, but unfortunately I have not had the time to go out and get more snow pictures.  After spending all the time digging out it seems the last thing on my mind is to go out again in the cold and wet and try to get some pictures of trains.  Especially since the predictability and timing is harder than ever this year.  I must be getting old.  So this winter I have concentrated more on my model railroad.

I finally built a 10 foot straight test track.  I also purchased a scale speedometer that you can get from Greenway Products or www.trainspeed.com.  It took me longer than I thought to build it.  What I thought would take a couple of hours, ended up taking up the better part of weekend.  Now that I have it, I can check out my locomotives and adjust the speed settings, via DCC so that they can run together.  I wrote an article about it for my local clubs newsletter.  I will publish here after the newsletter is out.  I also spent some time cleaning up my work area.

I am still in the midst of some projects.  My coal mine is coming along and since I moved a piece of track I had used for programming, I now have more space for the little coal mine community.  There are always things to keep me busy on my railroad.  Time to fix things here and there.  Regular maintenance.  My home layout is roughly a 10ft by 10ft layout.  It keeps me busy and it makes me wonder how some people manage to build these basement empires. 

Until next time, stay warm, stay safe.

AJ

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Updates

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Hi all.  I have been busy through the holidays both with model railroad and issues not related to railroading and model railroading.  What I have done is manage to get the test track under way.  I am about 80 percent completed with it.  I will have a new programming track, a DCC and a DC test track.  Basically it is two tracks that are 10 feet long.  The tracks are straight with no turnouts.  I am also working on putting in a  speedometer so I can balance out locomotive consists.  I will have more later.      A.J.

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Fall in New England

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

This past week the fall colors have been at their peak in eastern Massachusetts.  With that in mind I went to three different locations.  On October 10, I spent some time at Westborough, Massachusetts and was able to snag Q437.  The colors were not at peak.  A few days later, I went out to Charlton Hill and got a couple of shots of Q168 coming up Charlton Hill through the S curve at Gauthier Road.  I then headed west and spent a few hours at a classic New England railfan site, the mill at West Warren, Massachusetts.  These photos are in the New England Gallery.  I hope you enjoy.

A.J.

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More Railfan and MRR Pictures Added

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

I have slowly been going through and organizing the pictures I have taken over the years.  So I have added a lot more pictures to the New England Trains Gallery.  Some photos are as recent as August of 2008.  Others go back to the mid 90’s or earlier.

I also wanted to show some progress of my model railroad.  I have been building the New River Mine by Walthers.  I have been taking my time with it.  Sometimes I may only get a piece or too glued a night, but there is progress.  Anyway there are some shots of this progress in the Model Railroad Gallery.  You will see two interior shots of the New River Mine.

A.J.

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Gallery Update

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

I believe I have finished my Pennsylvania Gallery for now.  I added some shots from 2007 as well as some others from 2008.  These are not all the shots I took, but they are a good representative of what I took and saw on those trips.  I put the pictures in a rough geographic order.  I haven’t ruled out adding more.

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What to Expect

Friday, August 8th, 2008

What do I want to do with this website?  I have asked that a lot.  This is what I plan to do.  I plan to post some selected photos from my various railfan trips and categorize them by trip and location.  I also plan to have some pages dedicated to my model railroading and what I have learned along the way.  I will share it with you.  Eventually, I will load up some videos I have taken.  This will be down the road though.  Enjoy!

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Introductory Information

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

Welcome to my website!  I have been a rail-fan and model railroader since the early 90’s.  But truth be told I have liked trains since I was a youngster growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in southern Ohio.  In the 80’s I moved to eastern Massachusetts and to interested in trains again in the early 90’s.  The town I lived in had Conrail’s Boston Line splitting it in half.  The rest is history.

I soon discovered railroad photography, and moved on to video.  I still do both but presently I favor digital photography with a good digital SLR.  I have shot video and made a couple of DVDs that I have I have sold on eBay and at a local hobby shop.   I have plenty of video sitting, just waiting to be to be loaded up on the computer, edited and put in final form.  Alas, the motherboard on my main editing computer died and I decided to see if I can purchase a new mac sometime after Christmas 2008.  When you have a child in college, car insurance, house insurance, dental work and a major car repair bill come due at the same time, they take priority over a hobby.  In the meantime, I will upload my stills.  I will still shoot video, but for the time being it will be cataloged and archived for future use.

As for model railroading.  I have been into model railroading since the early 90’s as well.  I belonged to a club for a while, but due to lease arrangements they had to move to a place that made it impractical for me to get to on a regular basis.  But this gave me time to work on my own home layout.  I plan to share my information and some pictures here as well.   I also plan to bring over the information, that I had maintained on my MSN group site to here.  MSN was limiting my storage and my comments and photo’s outgrew that site.

Thanks for stopping by.

AJ

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