April 2024

Published by Thomas Austin on April 29, 2024April 29, 2024

A lot of changes yet again this year. Moved to a new home in April 2024. We couldn’t come to agreement on the house in West Frankfort, and had to let that place finally go. I made yet another trip out west to my late brothers’ home; to help my niece and sister with the cleaning of it and selling the home to the owners of the lot it sat on.

Not much done as of yet as I am unpacking and getting ready for the next phase of life here. Life keeps getting in the way…but a lot of this I did myself. I have only myself to blame and let me tell you…it takes a LONG time for me to let myself off the hook. Anyway, I plan on resuming the engine building here very soon when I get my paint booth hooked back up and running. I have an even larger area for a layout to be built in and a separate workshop like I had in Centralia. The town is very quiet and I like that; and I live near Rend Lake now…a place I have always wanted to live near. But I can’t help but think about what has been lost regarding modeling time. But I have to move on. I can’t dwell on the past or I will again succumb to paralysis by analysis syndrome…and downright procrastination.

I have a few more trips planned this month to take care of a few things as I get settled in here in Sesser. The BNSF runs daily coal trains through here to Metropolis still; and a local from Centralia to Paducah three times a week ( I think ); but back in the day Sesser had tons (pun intended) of traffic coming off the wye in the middle of town from three coal mines in the area. As it is, I’ll stick with MoPac and my area regardless; as I don’t think I can now afford to replace my coal hopper fleet with BN stuff with costs going up and up. And, I think downsizing once more is definitely in order. I have learned that I have accumulated WAY TOO MUCH stuff in the various moves and with moving out my late brothers’ stuff at his place this past month. So, I’ll mull that over as well.

Looking forward to May and the warmer weather. I plan on some module construction as I put a portion of the layout back together while I decide if this is going to be home for a while.