sweasel.com

Well, my birthday’s not till August, but shameless self indulgence is right in my wheelhouse, so I’m with ya.

More than half? Excellent. USA had much bigger and more varied steam engines. The UK ones are pretty, but also pretty small. So the model RRs go with what’s more interesting. Also, I don’t know if the UK ever had hobo jungles and rail riders, yard bulls and that whole scene. Or 27 million miles of tracks back in the glory years.

I hope one of these days to make it to Lamport Hall and ride the Northampton and Lamport heritage railway. My maiden name is Lamport.

I like minis, too. I make these little miniature bricks out of polymer clay that sell pretty well on Etsy, when I’m up to making them. And I love to make miniature food. I think I’d like painting miniature banjo players, if I ever had the chance to do it. Not sure what I’d do with all of them after I painted them, though. The market must be rather limited. 😜

Because it is your birthday month, I wanted to send you something. This selection is from my Cancer Collection —songs I listened to every night during the worst of my cancer, because happy or sad, the songs made me feel better. I wanted to adopt the accordion player but Husband said no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYwwOsv3Lc

Deborah: 👍🏽

Sorry, I got confused. What with the overnight FROST WARNING.

IN MAY!!

Happy birthday, sweasel, and all you other May folks too.

Also, I don’t know if the UK ever had hobo jungles and rail riders, yard bulls and that whole scene.
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In the Agatha Christie stories, someone would always bring up the possibility that the murder had been committed by a “passing tramp.” So passing tramps might have been a feature of the English countryside at some point in the ’20s and ’30s, maybe later (?). But I don’t recall ever reading or hearing about hobo jungles and the other things you mention, a la Grapes of Wrath or James M. Cain’s “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”

I used to build miniature HO layouts (with some very nice German factory buildings).

For some reason they kept being overrun, generally by Germans (probably looking for their factories), or tribesmen from the Rif, which AirFix’s ‘Le Legion Etrangere’ had to deal with (this was after a particularly sandy remodel, which was extremely disagreeable to the rail equipment).

On one occasion, Legio X and IV had to drive Boudica (with her goat cart) and the Celts out of Anyville back into the forest, which probably confused the hell out of the imaginary BNSF engineers and Plasticville townsfolk standing at the platforms.

Then again, maybe there were okay with it because they got bored on the two ovals and mainline connectors and because there was no banjo playing.