A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
My 1/76th scale WWI tank on Macaw flat car got a First Place award in the small armor category
I attended the Richmond Open 2025 sponsored by the Richmond IPMS club on Feb 21, 2025. It was a big show at the Old Dominon Race Track facility with about 900 models entered and over 1,000 people attending.
Sci-fi and Gundam was one of the most popular categories. The younger people really seem to like this theme. Aircraft were also popular.
Our model figure club, The National Capital Model Soldier Society, was tasked to judge figures, which we did. There were so many entries in sci-fi and fantasy that the table was jammed with models. It was hard to fully examine them for judging with moving many of them. But we did the best we could.
I entered some models in the contest and received two first place, one second and one third awards. Note this show does first-second-third vice gold-silver-bronze.
My WWI tank on flat car was a model I built several years ago for my book on military railroads. The flat car was completely scratch built except for the trucks and wheel sets. The tank had to be modified for rail transport mode. The figure is by W^D models. They were a source for some of the best 1/76th scale model figures. Alas, the owner retired and has not sold off his masters.
Alien- Ripley's Last Battle shadow box diorama got a third place award in Dioramas
Avalynne and Orien got a second place in non-historical busts
King Konrad won a first place in 90mm and greater figures. The is a100mm flat figure, I made the shadowbox using my laser cutter to depict the Palantine Chapel in Aachen, Germany
I've been on the road for much of February so I didn't have too much time to work on the layout.
I started the month with a road trip to Nags Head and Wanchese, NC.
There I took a one day boat trip to look for pelagic birds, i.e. birds that live predominantly at sea. We journeyed about 20 miles off shore in choppy weather on a 60-ft long charter boat. The weather was too rough for good photography, but we did see quite a few birds. I got a decent photo of a puffin and a dovekie.
I also stopped by the Wright Brothers National Monument. I toured the museum. I did not realize how much research and development the Wright Brothers did . They had their own wind tunnel and developed their own engine. The whole effort was much more involved than I knew.
Replica Wright Flyer on display
Puffin about 20 miles off shore.
Florida scrub jay
I left NC and drove to my brother's house in Melbourne, FL. I spent a week there with him doing some bid watching and getting ready for JAXCON, 2025. A highlight was finding several rare and endangered Florida Scrub Jays near my niece's house near Rockledge, FL. I spent a morning at Merritt Island Wildlife Preserve. Then I met some old friends, Clark Folwer and his wife Debbie Heystek, in Titusville for lunch.
Lifeboat from Maersk Alabama at Navy UDT-Seal Museum
On Thursday we took a drive to the National Navy UDT-Seal Museum in Fort Pierce. The museum is small but has a good collection of artifacts especially small arms and scuba gear used by the UDT-Seals from WW2 to current. Outside they have a collection of small boats from various eras. I was especially intrigued by the lifeboat from the Maersk Alabama that the Seals rescued from Somlai pirates.
We attended JAXCON for one day. The show was well attended with over 600 models on display. I entered several models and picked up two gold, 5 silver and a bronze medal. There were several models that I liked. Unfortunately, there were not enough people to act as judges. I was very busy as I judged half of the armor models and almost all the figures (except for the ones I entered). I later learned that several models did not get judged, which was disappointing for the people that missed out. When I judge I like to provide feedback to the entires.
This Mustang was awarded best in show at JAXCON 2025
Light house at Ponce Inlet
I left JAXCON and met Alicia at her mom's condo in Daytona Beach. Alicia's childhood friend, Debbie, and her husband, Dave, were staying with Anne. We visited Ponce Inlet for some wildlife viewing. We saw a manta ray, several dolphins, and many birds.
Incredibly cute Borrowing Owl
On Monday we dropped Alicia's mom off at Melbourne airport and then spent an another day with Rob and Terry. We played some golf and did a little birdwatching at Viera Wildlife Preserve. On Tuesday we drove to Homestead, Fl with stops to see Alicia's friend Denise in West Palm Beach, a quick birding stop at Valley View State Park where we spotted several burrowing owls, and finally a visit with my college friend, Eric Carr, in Fort Lauderdale. It is amazing how the area has become one giant megapolis from West Palm Beach to Homestead.
We spent the next morning touring the Everglades National Park. We saw a good number of birds, though not as many as I expected, but lots of alligators and fish. The waters of the everglades are just teaming with fish. Seems like everywhere you look you see fish. It was like looking in an aquarium.
They have a whole wing of the REV Institute museum dedicated to Porsche
Next stop was Naples, Fl to visit Alicia's brother and sister-in-law. They bought a nice condo in Naples. The following day we toured the REV Institute museum in Naples. It is an excellent museum filled with rare and historic cars. If you like cars, it is well worth a stop.
We continued north to Clearwater, Florida to visit our friends Joe and Carol Post. The next morning Carol took us to Sand Key Park to do some bird watching. It was very windy and cloudy, but I did get an interesting photo of a laughing gull with a small catfish.
We headed back to Daytona with a stop at Lake Apopka to do the famous wildlife drive. The weather was cool and very cloudy. We saw over a thousand birds and even spotted some lifers.
Purple Gallinule
We played one more round of golf. Then headed home to Virginia. In all I was gone for 18 days. It was a great trip. As far as bird watching, I got a lot of photos, and picked up 8 lifers in Florida and 11 in North Carolina. Alas, we didn't visit any model railroads.
I recently had some questions about the UMSRR Dot Code. There used to be two websites with good information about them. Alas, one of the sites is now gone. However, I was able to download this file from their website before it went dark.
That site contains several quotes by Walt Mathers. Walt was an expert on Civil War telegraphy. Alas, Walt passed away a few years ago. He describes a dot code used on telegraphs on that webpage.
I did have some correspondence with him before he passed about the USMRR Dot code. Unfortunately, his answers to my questions were not very clear. Here is an excerpt from a message I received from him. Note that the 3rd, 4th and 5th paragraph describe a dot code, despite him saying that a dot code wasn't used in the first paragraph.
"To the best of my knowledge, neither the USMT or their Confederate counterpart used a two-element dot code. American Morse system, of four elements, was used on land lines. While the 1852 Berlin code, of two elements, was used on the 1858 trans-Atlantic cable, and the Bain code, of two elements, was absorbed by a successful law suit brought about by Morse, the land-line, or Morse code (actually invented by Alfred Vail but that's another story), was used.
The Union army's chief signal officer, Albert James Myer, who had been a Bain two-element operator on the NY line as a youngster, developed a simple code that could be used on an electric telegraph magnet using single blows to represent a dot, i.e. a single blow representing the numeral "one" ... and two quick blows on the sending instrument (to signify a "two".
This code, which superseded Myer's original four-element code of numerals (one through four with five being used to end a word, two for a sentence and three to finish off a message), could be used with flag and torch or as a homographic code of using one's limbs.
So, instead of using dots, dash, extended (or sustained) dashes and spaces between dots such as the letters "Oh" "Rah" or Cee" with the Morse system, a signal operator could use combinations of single or couplet blows of dots upon the sending instrument's anvil.
Neither US or CS landline telegraphers have ever been documented as using a dot code in the field. Did others, such as army signalists use it in a pinch on electric lines? We just don't know. If documentation does surface we'll let you know. Re-enactors do effectively use it to good effect to communicate over their distant event wires."
I found this document on another website, but I did not record where I found it. It contains some additional information on dot code and operating procedures used by the telegraphers.
From this message traffic it appears that using dot code on electrical telegraph was used by re-enactor telegraphers, but perhaps not very likely by actual civil war telegraphers.
You may have noticed that I have not posted on the blog for several weeks. Don't worry, I am still alive and doing well. It is just that I was on a long stretch of consecutive trips to various locations. The trips started right after MARPM.
MARPM 2024
MARPM 2024 was a success with 30 clinics, 14 layout tours and several vendors. Financially, we lost a bit of money, but not enough to break the bank. We plan to do it again in 2025. So mark your calendars for the weekend of September 13-14. 2025.
LAKE ERIE, OHIO TRIP
Put-in Bay, Ohio
Next Alicia and I drove out to Sandusky, Ohio to play a round of golf at Sawmill Creek Resort. Then we boarded a ferry to spend a week at Put-in-Bay, Ohio and other islands in Lake Erie. This was a Road Scholar Trip focused on bird watching, but we also did general touring of four of the islands in Lake Erie including a visit to the Battle of Lake Erie Memorial. I particularly enjoyed the large diorama of the naval battle at the visitors center.
We also saw a great number of birds, especially migrating warblers. We even got to participate in bird banding at two different banding sites. The Road Scholar guides were great, We plan to do more Road Scholar trips in the future.
KENTUCKY TRIP
We returned home and had a few days to recover before heading out to Kentucky to escort Alicia's mom to visit her sister in Pikeville.
We had some time in Cincinnati, so we took in the Science and History Museum in the Cincinnati Union Station. This is a great museum with a fantastic model railroad exhibit. We also like the full scale diorama of the waterfront in the basement of the museum.
In Kentucky, we had the chance to play golf on two beautiful courses built on reclaimed coal mines that used the mountain top removal technique.
Beautiful mountains of south east Kentucky and western Virginia near Pound Gap
We had a chance to visit Elkhorn City, KY. Alas, it is a shadow of its former railroad self. The railroad museum was closed, but it didn't look like it was well maintained.
After that, we managed a quick visit to see our son and his family in Lexington, KY.
SOUTH AMERICA TRIP
Ecuador
(L-R) I, Samia (Local Quito Bonsai Artist), Terry and Rob
After a brief rest at home, I flew down to Quito, Ecuador with my brother Rob and his wife Terry. Rob was invited by the Quito Bonsai Club to do presentations and workshops, While he did that, Terry and I toured Quito seeing old churches, museums of local culture, and the fantastic botanical garden.We did get to ride the brand new Metro system in Quito. We also got to visit the Mitad de Monde memorial on the equator.
I did a full day of bird watching with a local guide in the Tandayapa Valley. It was a fun adventure that reminded me of some Army exercises I have been on. It started with a pre-dawn hike on steep trails in the cloud forest and extended across the beautiful Andes west of Quito. I saw an incredible number of birds including the Andean Cock of the Rock, rare antpitas, and dozens of types hummingbirds.
Peru
The passenger station in Machu Picchu
Trackside scene on the way to Machu Picchu
We departed Quito and flew to Cusco, Peru via Lima, Peru. The next day we boarded the Perurail narrow gauge railroad to Machu Picchu Pueblo. Machu Picchu can only be reached by rail or walking. There are no vehicular roads to the town. The railroad takes at least 6 switchbacks and several horseshoe curves to climb over the hills northwest of the city to reach Machu Picchu. I can probably do a post just about the Perurail train ride.
We stayed at the fantastic Inkatrra Hotel that is situated on many acres of their own private nature preserve. We toured the ruins at Machu Picchu. It is an impressive site, especially when you consider it was a private city for Incan royalty with several religious structures. Amazingly, it only was in service for about 80 years, before the Spanish Conquistadors forced it to be abandoned.
I also did 3 guided tours of the Inkaterra nature preserve with guides from the Inkaterra Hotel. The hotel is a unique 5-star property with guests staying in private casitas among the jungle. It reminded me of the Jurassic Park Movie. It was probably the nicest hotel in which I ever stayed.
Again, We saw an amazing variety of birds. I was especially pleased to see torrent ducks, a type of duck that only lives in fast moving streams in the Andes. Perhaps my favorite bird that we saw was the Andean Motmot, which we saw several times and up close.
I was really pleased with the photo of the Gould's Inca on the left as it was quite dark when I took the photo.
I took over a thousand images on the trip and lots of video of the train ride.
Andean Motmot
We had one last morning in Cusco before we flew home. We got to tour the famous Plaza de Armas in beautiful weather.
Plaza de Armas
We ate a lot of good food on the trip including some unusual things such as goat, Kuy (guinea pig), sea food empanadas, and mate de coca. The latter is a tea made from the same leaves that are used to make cocaine. It allegedly helps with altitude sickness. I found that it was too much of a stimulant for me, so I only tried it once. Luckily, I did not have trouble with the altitude, though Rob and Terry did.
Fernando and Terry at the Galleria Latina in Quito.
We met a lot of wonderful people on this trip, especially in Quito. We hired a friend of one of the bonsai club members, to drive us around. Fernando was a wonderful person who took us to see museums, shopping, and cafes. He introduced us to several interesting people that gave us a good insight into Ecuadoran culture, history, and politics. He even gave me a gift of a book on local hummingbirds.
One of the bonsai club members introduced us to his brilliant daughter who aspires to be an astronaut. She plans to go to MIT or Caltech next year. She gave me a small gift of a small hummingbird since she learned I like birds.
The Quito Bonsai folks want to invite Rob back to do more bonsai workshops and I plan to go too, but this time I plan to visit the Amazon.
ALABAMA TRIP
I arrived home on Saturday after a brutal 8-hour layover in Lima prior to an overnight flight, but there was little time to rest. On Monday, Alicia and I flew to Alabama to babysit our granddaughter Merritt while her mom was on business to New Orleans. While we were there, we rode the little narrow-gauge railroad at the Zoo. That is Merritt's favorite part of going to the zoo.
That was great fun. Alas, we caught a nasty cold from our little one. It has taken we all this week to recover.
Wedged in between all those trips were two trips to take down the D-Day exhibit in Gettysburg and them set it up in Woodstock, VA and then another trip to the French Embassy in DC to disassemble it. I was out of country, so I did not participate in the set up at the Embassy.
Whew, I get tried just thinking about all of it. I am looking forward to catching up on projects and doing some work on the layout.
