The Hiatus - an explanation

Hello fellow hobbyists!  I've been away for awhile, right?  So I think a brief explanation is in order for my rather sudden silence on this blog for the past three months!  As some of you may have gleaned from my posts in the past year, I've decided I want to re-do the layout and try some different things (still very much in keeping with the urban theme) but I also wanted to simplify and automate a lot of the train operations.  So I have been thinking and planning and, in the interim, doing projects like the 'bookcase diorama' thing and doing various ideas in sketchup and other programs!

I have also decided that my collection was getting too large; I started to accumulate more locomotives than I really need (well, 'need' being relative!) and far more buildings that I probably wasn't going to get around to.  I discovered that I started to 'collect' things not out of just a pure enjoyment of the hobby, but out of a desire to be a completist or have more and more of something.  For me personally, this approach started to take a little of the joy and fun out of the hobby.  

So I decided to winnow down the collection; I am keeping a lot of the 'must have's but also parting with some favorite items - realizing that I must draw a line somewhere!   If you are interested in some of the items I've reviewed or accumulated and have posted about in this blog, I have many of those items up on eBay now (the auctions end around May 11th, my user id is 'joemesmero' which is silly and makes no sense, but is another story!) if you want to take a look.   If these items can find a home with one of my blog readers and friends I think that's a good thing!

And, like most of us, I have family and professional commitments that lately have taken out a lot of hobby time (a six week bathroom remodel that was supposed to be a one day project is one of those things!)!  Fear not....I do have some other ideas and projects that are in progress and I hope to share on this blog soon!

Thanks again for reading!