2010 has been kind of a slow year in the Saint Canard backshop so far, owing mostly to family matters (er, that would be "business" and not the Urkel show), work (that is if Kentucky's elected blowhards can pull their collective heads out of their asses), and a general feeling of malaise over the early winter months.   The overall lighting and ambiance in the new place’s basement just isn’t up to par, which makes photography a chore and general enjoyment difficult… so motivation wanes a bit.   I installed a cheap track lighting system to band-aid the situation this week; while not perfect by any means it nonetheless adds warmth and brightness, so we'll see how that pans out.  I could decide it's just the ticket, but I reserve the right to rip it out and set it on fire.

Really, what I need is a properly finished ceiling, but I promised Anna that I'd destroy and rebuild her craft room properly before I'd do that. Well, guess what I started doing last week? Sledgehammers and crowbars have always been my favorite tools!

So pull up a chair and pour out a cold one, cuz here’s a list and breakdown of some of the more interesting projects to emerge so far this year. Even though it's been a slow one, this is a long read. You know me: I can't shut up...

I just realized most of the recent updates here have been model-train related. Oops! I’m usually not so obviously one-dimensional. So, given what with the blue skies and the pollen bombs and the warmer weather come thoughts of the outdoors – and working on things we enjoy in the outdoors, like cars in my case (among other things), let me try to add a measure of cool by random updates on the auto projects front. A couple o' these have only been graced a fleeting mention before!

Consider the following picture:

Waldo is in the trunk. Also, my basement may or may not look like this at any given time.

IN addition to a proper Hippie's Springtime jaunt that involved a nice hike in some desolate wooded hillside property, and an unspoilt natural cave, I spent last weekend at the farm making more progress on the Archaeological Dig known as the "tractor crib." If you can see the car buried within, good for you!...

Is your Tyco train barely able to get out of its own way? Does it squeal like a pig, stutter like a drunkard, or just sit there and buzz like a child sticking out her tongue? Does it run for a minute or two before crashing like an office drone coming off a caffeine high? Or do you already know there's something wrong because you can see cracks, missing parts, or a small poodle sucked up into the motor?

You're not alone - Tyco's reputation was irreparably destroyed by the finicky locos they sold from the mid-70's onward. But have no fear, because it's easy to fix them! So if you just dug a box out of the attic and are wondering how to make them run, you're in luck...

In the real world, trains get DIRTY! As does anything else left exposed to the elements for decades at a time. Now, those multi-million-dollar Locomotives might be treated to a rubdown and powdering every couple years or so as maintenance schedules and workshop backlogs allow, but freight cars are all but abandoned from the time they're built until the scrapper comes calling. With service lives reaching beyond four decades and up, a typical veteran freight car becomes a rolling timeline of Mother Nature's toil and fury. Frying in the brightest sun, oxidizing in the pouring rain, festering in the deepest snow, beaten by the whims and carelessness of humans.

Back in 2006 I made the most incredible ebay find: a brand-new wireless color VGA mini-cam. It’s basically the ugly guts of a webcam fused to a 1.2 GHz transmitter; the kit includes a wireless A/V receiver, AC power supplies for both the receiver and camera/transmitter, and a DC (9v) battery harness to make the camera portable. All for $15 on a Sunday-morning snipe! Even with shipping charges from Canada, it’s still a heckuva deal you’ll never find at Best Buy or Radio Shack!

Just a few things to mention this update, but first: Announcing the fleshing out of an old page, and the creation of a new one!

First: When I was restructuring the photo stash (which is pretty much done, yay), I found...

Author's Note: this was originally published on my old LiveJournal in Dec 2005. As such, there are a few fleeting, dated references that sparked the initial writing. Rereading it now, it rings as perpetually true to me as it did then and my opinion still stands unchanged - which is why this is in the "rants" section and not the LJArchive. FWIW I recently canceled my cable TV account, and haven't bothered to hook up an OTA antenna.

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It's been a few years since I wrote the original installment for the GIC Guide to Tyco Trains, but I finally managed to dig out the camera, snap some updated pics and update the text for the Piggyback and Trucks guide.

Text has been revised and added to cover:

Author's note: On February 8, 2010, the regular contributors at Hooniverse and I posed the question "What's Your Eleanor?" to our readership. The term "Eleanor" is of course borrowed from the original Gone in 60 Seconds, where it referred to the one, singular car that taunted and teased the protagonist, for better or worse. As such it has come to represent the one car that an individual gearhead dreams about. As the day went on, we individually posted stories about our own "Eleanors"... and essentially broke the website with traffic. The results were widely varied and often surprising. What follows here is an excerpt of my own article: