While taking a break from wiring blocks on my model railroad layout, I’ve been doing some detail work. Today I completed a mostly-scratchbuilt model of a Eureka Springs trolley bus. These rubber-tired, gas-powered trolleys convey tourists for a very nominal fee from one end of town to the other and almost anywhere within it. Taking the red route trolley around town – seeing all the great old Victorian homes and limestone buildings (some of them hanging right off cliff sides) – is one of my family’s favorite things to do. The red route takes you to the corner across from the depot of the ES&NA, the railway which I’m modeling. So I heavily modified an unpowered Bachmann replica of a San Francisco cable car to more closely resemble a Eureka Springs trolley. I chose the older, 34-passenger open model which has now been retired in favor of the new closed, fully air-conditioned 43-passenger model. I’m posting a postcard photo of the actual old trolley bus on top and my model directly beneath it. (There’s a little spherical distortion in the bottom photo from my iPhone lens.)

(You can see a photograph of the Bachmann-made cable car replica at http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXBUK4&P=F. )

Oh, and the scale of it is 1:87. It’s about four inches long, in other words. About as long as my iPhone. Working in a scale that tiny takes time.

So I apologize if I haven’t spend as much time blogging recently.

Man does not live by blog alone, you know.

Postscript: Okay, better photo …