Where the heck is the Toy of the Week?

Well after a nearly two month long hiatus I am returning to my blog.  The Toy of the Week has been conspicuously absent since the holidays and I have been avoiding getting back into it-- in fact, I am not actually getting back into it just yet.  I have not just been sitting on my hands though.  I have been busy with several projects worth mentioning so now I am going to mention them.

The Museum biz:

Coyote Point Museum was extremely busy over the holidays, with our largest attendance day cresting 1100 visitors.  We saw a 20% increase in visitors this year during the holiday week!  I like to think that this is due to my exhibition Tinkering-- however I must concede that our new baby river otters AND baby bobcats are a big draw as well.

I am currently moving forward with new prototypes for the next exhibition.

The hobby world:

I have been using my spare time to focus on many projects.  My wife surprised me with a beautiful little live steam engine as a Christmas gift this year.  This engine has required a large amount of tinkering to get running though, and it still is not operating at 100% but fiddling with these engines is part of the fun.  My efforts have been focused on building up my ride on train collection and I have recently been building a beast of a model in large 1:8 scale.  The model is of a narrow gauge railroad flat car.  I estimate the model weighing in between 35-40 pounds.  It is built EXACTLY like a full sized railroad car with wood and metal parts and functional scale hardware.  You can see one of the early construction photos below, shot in my back yard.

This model is mostly complete so I will post more up to date picture as soon as they are available.

Full steam ahead.