Train Track Finished, Starting Electrical

With the help of lot of my children who were home for Christmas and Baptism of Betty Murry we made a lot of progress on the train.  After attending some railroad shows last year, I decided to add some additional track that would allow the trains to stop while other trains passed them on the…

Visit to Fatima

During our visit to Portugal we also had the chance to visit Fatima.  It is very close where Renato’s home town.  I was surprised to see how big the area was and there were so many people.  Nana Sue has been there before and she said that the entire square was filled.  You can see…

Visit to Portugal

Nanna Sue and  I are now visiting Portugal.  There is a very special festival in Tomar, Festival of the Trays, that we will be seeing on Sunday, more on that for a later post.  We flew into Lisbon, a lovely city just in from the Western Side of Portugal.  We stayed at a small hotel in the…

Always Learning about Model Railroading

I attended the train show in Greenville SC several weeks ago.  It was a great show and I learned a lot. I attended a couple of great seminars and had some great discussions afterwards about signaling and block detection.  I realized that I did not have enough blocks and all of the turnouts needed to…

Krakow City Visit

We walked into the city on Monday night and found a great restaurant with a Polish band playing.  Mikey practiced his “clinking of the glass”.  We enjoyed some polish dishes.  We had some wine but with an earlier experience with Polish wine, we opted for some Italian and Australian wine.  Nana Sue showed us a…

The Salt Mines

Off to the salt mines to see the oldest continuous working salt mine.  The mine operates 24 hours a day and has been working for 700 years. It is mainly a place where tourist’s visit now and they have over 500 employees just supporting all of the tourists. We dropped down into the mine in…

A surprise visit with the Cardinal

We arrived at the Archbishop’s Residence in Krakow on Monday and I was surprised that we were received by Cardinal Stanistaw Dziwisz.  Cardinal Stanislaw was part of Pope John Paull II’s life throughout his involvement with the church.  He talked about Krakow, blessed us, and gave Mikey two candy bars.  Mikey was thrilled to death.…