I had a vision of the Giants train, sitting at rest on a shelf , above the wall of giants memorabilia in my living room. Something simple. No big deal. The train arrived and I built a shelf along the top edge of the "memorabilia wall" in the living room, with the train sitting on the track. Silently. Unmoving.
But as time went by, and I began wondering... wouldn't it be nice if the train moved? so I bought one of those Bachmann point-to-point auto reverse kits, so it could run back and forth. It was a nice start... but that was kind of sad, because... well, there just wasn't very far for it to go. A short trip sort of flies in the face of train mythology and imagery. Trains were built to cross continents!
So I decided to extend the track along another wall... just above my wife's desk. She wouldn't mind... I mean... I had to lower her bulletin board a few inches, but I don't think she noticed. And I had to come up with a clean and easy way to add a corner shelf with an 18 inch radius concave curve at the corner. And while I was at it... I mean, I wasn't PLANNING on adding a third wall, but I could ad a matching curved shelf in the far corner so I could, you know... if I wanted to... maybe someday... add a third shelf-run down the long living room wall, above the turtle-tank and couch, all the way to the fire place chimney...
Eventually I couldn't restrain myself. My railroad had to grow. House guests kept asking if I was going to go all the way around the room. That seemed out of reach, and like it would exceed the tolarence levels of my wife... but a shelf that ran all the way down the long wall, to the fireplace? That seemed simple enough. I had to order more shelf brackets, and piece together a few more pine shelf boards, but eventually that spurr on my railorad was complete.
During the construction of the track shelf, I found myself obsessing over various trains native to San Francisco, and I had aquired a MUNI LRV. A Boeing LRV to be precicse. Supposedly those Boeing LRV's that MUNI bought were legendary. In a bad way. But they were a piece of "San Francisco." These LRV's had been in the process of being replaced when I first moved to San Francisco in the late 90's, so I associated them with my initial years in San Francisco. Apparently, my wife did too, because she said "I like that one."
With her approval, I added a second track along the front edge of this long shelf and powered it with a Peerless Point to point DC reverse system. The new MUNI line was up and running. Additionally, a few Cal Train Bombardier style passenger careers were acquired, and they were added to the the Giants train behind the Domed passenger cars in black and orange drag.
Three walls. Two separate point to point runs. But it seemed like it was missing... It all looked pretty cool, but at night... It just wasn't dramatic enough. So I found some LED strip lighting with adhesive backing, and ran it along the front edge of the shelf. My initial try was a cool colored LED along the long run above the couch. This was okay... but I knew.. the light along the shelf with my bobble heads...That had to be orange. Fortunately, Orange LED strips are pretty common. Soon, my shelf track had some dramatic lighting effects. It was pretty cool. But something was bugging me....
(To Be Continued)
