1200 Miles West

The FedEx man stopped at the office today and delivered three boxes of Christmas presents from Michigan. While we have no idea what’s in the boxes and won’t until we open them on Christmas Eve, we recognize and appreciate the fact that we are fortunate enough to have families that love and support us.

We’re also looking forward to the kids visit as it’s been a couple of years since we’ve celebrated Christmas with them. They fly in the night of the 25th and will be with us through New Years. Cross your fingers that the weather is good while the kids are here as we’re hoping to get them out of the house so that they can explore the greater Denver area. If you have any suggestions on where we should take them, let us know as we’re open to all ideas.

I really should know better given the business that I am in but it took a subtle kick in the pants in the form of the following blog post:

http://andrewhyde.net/simple-permalink-trick/ to get the links on the blog into a nice SEO friendly format.

The one hurdle I did run into was having to figure out why my .htaccess file was being ignored. Don’t forget about the AllowOverrides Apache directive! Mine was set to None by default which results in my .htaccess file being ignored and 404’s being returned instead of a nice blog post.

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We love snowmen. The centerpiece of our holiday decorating is above the fireplace/TV area with an assortment of snowmen that we have chosen to adorn our home. They all make me smile but here are three of my favorites.

How can these three snowmen not make you smile?

In order to have the freedom to build my model train content without polluting the 1200mileswest blog beyond recognition, I have moved the train content to a new blog called Building Model Trains. The new blog can be found at http://www.buildingmodeltrains.com.

I will continue posting general interest stuff on this blog of course.

A few minutes on godaddy.com combined with Erin’s help netted me a couple of nice domains - mikesmodeltrains.com and buildingmodeltrains.com. A quick Word Press install ( It is so easy, even I can be a pro ), some DNS work by my hosting provider and friend Andrew Kerr of servershack.com and I was off and running.

Trains are running! It was nice to dust off the pieces after several months of being packed up after the big move. It took some effort to get things wired up again and the electronics were a little cranky but after 30 minutes or so the chuff of steam and ding of the bell were alive again.

The middle picture shows the current progress of track laying. Track is now laid from the sawmill site to the tip of the canyon.

The final picture is of all the tools that I use to lay and wire track. It is a very precise operation and a man can never have enough tools.

1. Solder Feeder wires to bottom of rails.
2. Drill holes for feed wires to pass through plywood to wire bus.
3. Trim and fit track together with adjacent piece using rail cutters and rail joiners.
4. Drill tiny holes in a few of the ties for spikes to attach track to roadbed.
5. Connect feeder wires to bus using suitcase connectors. Suitcase connectors are the best and deserve their own blog post.

When I work from home at night, or if I’m just surfing online, I normally sit in our big green chair with a fleece blanket and my laptop. With the dry air here in Colorado, I tend to generate an unusual amount of static electricity. What’s funny is that my electrifying touch drives Mike crazy as I never ground myself before touching him. Wait, doesn’t everything drive Mike crazy?

Due to the wonderfully snowy weather, I was able to spend some quality time in the basement with my trains. I have made some real progress on the benchwork. For the uninitiated that is the structure upon which my train layout will be built. The picture is down the long axis of the approximately 5 X 16 foot peninsula. The area in the foreground will contain a canyon and a spindly trestle bridge. The area to the left will contain a small town and sawmill area. The right side of the layout will contain a mountain logging camp.

The vertical pieces of wood in the center will support the backdrop. It is difficult to maintain the illusion of climbing hundreds of feet up in the mountains from town when you can see the town just a foot away. The backdrop will be painted with either just sky blue or if I can find a starving artist, a nice mountain landscape. I am hoping for a starving artist.

The grey stuff is a pressed paper product called Homasote that I use for sound deadening. The track is laid on top of the Homasote. Supposedly it has multiple applications but the guy at the lumber yard says that the only people that buy it are Model Railroaders.

Don’t tell Erin this is her Christmas present.

After limping along on blogger we (I) decided to get some real blog software (Word Press) and a real domain running on a real server.

Who doesn’t love a television special where a red-nosed reindeer befriends an elf that wants to be a dentist? I never wanted to be a dentist, but as a kid I always looked forward to the “animagic” classic where Rudolph visits the island of misfit toys and attempts to avoid the Abominable Snowmonster.

Here are a few facts that I found online:

• The TV special premiered on NBC December 6th, 1964 and has become the longest running, highest rated television special in history.
• The TV special was filmed in Japan.
• The original script did not have Santa coming back to pick up the misfit toys.

The next movie on my Christmas watch list is A Christmas Story. If you’re a fan, let me know and I’ll share one of the quizzes that Mike’s brothers have worked on over the past few years. If you don’t know what street Ralphie and his family live on, you might as well give up now.