![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Long weekend, assorted bits thereof
Actually got to relax over the long weekend. This is kind of unique; I seem to spend a lot of Mondays saying "right, I haven't relaxed all weekend". On Saturday, I went into the city without much of a point, but wound up wandering around the South End. The three SW corridor tracks inbound from Back Bay have a three-light-over-two-light type of dwarf signal I hadn't seen before (showing yellow over flashing red, medium approach, on two tracks); this doesn't really match up with the position-light dwarves at South Station, or the two-head tower signals inbound on the Worcester tracks. Visited Filene's, where there was lots of most things at 30-50% off but notable shortages in the shoe and luggage departments.
Sunday my plan was to play my game for a bit (Heritage of Kings: The Settlers), except I realized I was in a no-win situation against the scenario; I'll actually need to play this one again, building up a much huger force before charging in. But then Thor called and told me that there was a model train show at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington. This turned out to be Northeast N-Trak, a localish group that does N-Trak modules, so they had all of their modules set up. Many of them I had seen before at the Amherst model railroad show. Being neither a 6-to-10-year-old or a parent thereof, I was also right in the middle of the age range. They noticed that I was paying attention to them running things and mentioned that I should join; I might.
Random observations: they were running through trains on all three tracks of the module system; many modules also had a fourth high track, so there was a train running back-and-forth on that that kept breaking apart. Most of their trains, except for the small commuter rail train, had knuckle rather than square couplers. They were trying to run DCC on the outside track but their engines wouldn't go, so they were running analog on all three tracks. There was a 9-track yard with three tracks coming off of each of the module tracks, such that they could run through trains unattended around the loop through the yard. Random problems included a 2V drop in one particular spot and a 3-engine, 70-car grain train breaking. Problems did not include physical breaks in the track or dirt on the track. I'm curious to know how they build big rock formations.
There was also some gaming. I rode coffee to victory in Puerto Rico! (Though I should have ended the game sooner, and not needed to be mayor to activate a large building.) There was a very close game of, erm, Inca Rails, the bizarrely communist not-actually-a-crayon-rail game (for one, the Incas didn't have trains; it also has oddnesses like the "wilderness road" card that lets two of the four players build roads that don't line up with the map). I still think it's much easier to draw east or west than north or south, since the side players can easily build to both north and south but north and south can't build to each other and there's a lot of value in the game to being connected to cities you didn't necessarily build.
So yeah, that's pretty much a weekend. I didn't do a whole lot of work on my own train (I did a little), I didn't read a whole lot of Quicksilver, but I did get to do enough sitting on my butt and enough socializing to be content with it.
Sunday my plan was to play my game for a bit (Heritage of Kings: The Settlers), except I realized I was in a no-win situation against the scenario; I'll actually need to play this one again, building up a much huger force before charging in. But then Thor called and told me that there was a model train show at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington. This turned out to be Northeast N-Trak, a localish group that does N-Trak modules, so they had all of their modules set up. Many of them I had seen before at the Amherst model railroad show. Being neither a 6-to-10-year-old or a parent thereof, I was also right in the middle of the age range. They noticed that I was paying attention to them running things and mentioned that I should join; I might.
Random observations: they were running through trains on all three tracks of the module system; many modules also had a fourth high track, so there was a train running back-and-forth on that that kept breaking apart. Most of their trains, except for the small commuter rail train, had knuckle rather than square couplers. They were trying to run DCC on the outside track but their engines wouldn't go, so they were running analog on all three tracks. There was a 9-track yard with three tracks coming off of each of the module tracks, such that they could run through trains unattended around the loop through the yard. Random problems included a 2V drop in one particular spot and a 3-engine, 70-car grain train breaking. Problems did not include physical breaks in the track or dirt on the track. I'm curious to know how they build big rock formations.
There was also some gaming. I rode coffee to victory in Puerto Rico! (Though I should have ended the game sooner, and not needed to be mayor to activate a large building.) There was a very close game of, erm, Inca Rails, the bizarrely communist not-actually-a-crayon-rail game (for one, the Incas didn't have trains; it also has oddnesses like the "wilderness road" card that lets two of the four players build roads that don't line up with the map). I still think it's much easier to draw east or west than north or south, since the side players can easily build to both north and south but north and south can't build to each other and there's a lot of value in the game to being connected to cities you didn't necessarily build.
So yeah, that's pretty much a weekend. I didn't do a whole lot of work on my own train (I did a little), I didn't read a whole lot of Quicksilver, but I did get to do enough sitting on my butt and enough socializing to be content with it.