Good Vibrations

An Aside...

I happened to be in my mother's town dropping off some trash at the tip, and they had a dusty old am/fm tuner (in unknown condition) in the 'just arrived' bin.

The guy didn't know if it worked or not, but said I could have it plus the dusty amp with one missing knob and three floppy selectors and the pair of KEF speakers that it was with for $10. Seemed like a deal even if only one of the items worked.

I pulled the amp apart in the trainroom and managed to secure the knobs and switches in place (helpfully it came with a full set of cables and the missing knob along with a few miscellaneous spare parts that don't seem to belong...). I carefully scraped, brushed and vacuumed a load of stuck-on fluff and hair off the boards and components, got most of the congealed fluff off the front, hooked it up and carefully switched it all on...

It works! Great sound too. I wasn't paying much attention when the pieces were covered in dust at the tip, but they are Denon components, and that used to be a respected manufacturer way back when. Had a google on the model numbers, and found this is all from the early 90s, but was highly rated then and still sounds great... and quite loud on setting 6 out of 30...

I have since added a cheap bluetooth receiver through the Aux input so I can stream podcasts or music from my phone if I get bored with the radio.

The setup has few minor scratches and chips, but most aren't too visible from the front and it's a great addition to the trainroom environment. Best ten dollars I've ever spent!

The eyes have it.

I always had great eyesight...

Until a couple of years ago when it turned out that...

I don't.



Back then, after much squinting while driving, I was encouraged to go for an eye test. Glasses for driving made reading street signs much easier, But I'm still ok reading a book or on the computer.

But not so much for working on models. And Z scale isn't exactly the easiest to work in when it comes to kitbashing and cleaning up rolling stock. Over the past few years, my really, really closeup eyesight has me struggling to focus on model rollingstock work.

If you fall into the same boat, may I suggest two visionary tools

1)   $2 glasses from a discount store. These are great for detail work. The downside is that I only find them useful when looking at things up really close, so need to keep flipping them up away from my eyes to find the knife or that paintpot - which is right in front of me but somewhere out in the fuzzy zone that extends beyond my nose when wearing the glasses.

Because of this ok-up-close but impossible-to-focus-further-out, that I've found those closeup (reading) glasses to be a bit headache inducing unless you're only doing closeup work all at once.


2) One of these I find more helpful:

Because it's easy to get closeup assistance when needed by placing items under the magnifier, but your eyes are also free and unencumbered to look at things further out with ease (now, where did I put that knife... hint: in the magnifier).

This example is a fairly cheap one from a craft store with LED lighting you can turn on and off as needed and lots of light is really important to pep up the contrast when your eyesight starts to decline.

An older example I had in the US had a hinged cover to protect the lens which this doesn't have, so some paper is placed on top when it is not in use. By the way, in the picture above taken from a distance, those UFOs are roof lightbulb reflections in the glass that are not visible when in normal use.

I love these magnifiers for painting and assembling fiddly details - if a model looks ok from this close-up then it will look superb from a normal viewing distance.

A Desk, my Kingdom for a Desk...

The spate of recent rolling stock work can largely be attributed to the purchase of an old computer workstation and office chair from the Salvation Army charity shop. A modeling desk being an item that's been missing from my wardrobe for the past two years.

The desk had a slide-out keyboard tray which was cut down and re-installed to make a second shelf where the monitor used to go. On the right are slots for a CD library that will become more shelves for small projects in time. I suppose its fairly small, but that's entirely appropriate for the current Z scale projects. And it forces me to keep things tidy...

I also like being able to whizz around the room on my chair.

A further purchase - not yet installed - is a $4 old clamp-on bed headboard light that will be attached to the top shelf or beside the window to provide additional lumens when required.

Best $30 I've ever spent.