Grabiron: 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.