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While I’ve spent a lot of eye-straining time looking at radar sets while flying B-52s and FB-111s, my eyesight and dexterity is still good enough to tie #20 flies to one pound test leader line for fly fishing. I continue to pass the ultimate test of threading needles for my wife’s sewing while under direct supervision and provided with explicit directions. I most recently put together a loom for her with a minimum of expletives. While I don’t do jewelry, my wife makes her own glass beads and strings them into bracelets and other configurations. I get stuck with putting the clasps on – again under close supervision. I haven’t done microsurgery per se, but I recently removed several stickers from an encounter with a cactus using only a straight pin without mangling my hand. Even though I’m getting older, I am still able to determine the arrival of spring and the need to get the barbecue ready by observing the mass migration of young ladies toward skimpy outfits. I’m even able to determine that most of their clothing is two sizes too small. When that capability goes, then I’ll consider my eyesight to have deteriorated to the point where I would consider giving up pursuits that require working with small scale objects. I’ve built and detailed about 450 model airplanes and several large sailing ships with all the rigging. When my son was little we set up an N-scale system, but didn’t do much for a layout because it was too much trouble to move around on the military moves. I’ve still got about 30 pieces of rolling stock and several structures. The layout I’m planning will be standard N scale. The only part that would be narrow gauge would be about 9 inches of track along the tops of the vertical kiln structure. It’s that way in the real world and I wanted to match actual conditions. I thought if I could find a small NN3 or Z scale switcher and dump cars it would be more realistic than using regular N scale stock. The real world engine used to drive the ore cars was about ¼ the size of a small switcher engine and used a truck diesel engine and truck transmission. It only operated at the top of the kilns. There was a very steep incline track (about 45 degrees) that went from the top of the kiln to the ground. The engine was winched up and down for major maintenance problems. I can modify the Fleischmann ore cars to make them more realistic (e.g., manual dump handles), but I just haven’t seen a very small N scale switcher that could be used. I’ll probably end up just making non-operable cars and engine with a short stretch of Z scale track to emulate the narrow gauge of the real world.
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