Another year...

Though 2014 started with some great spirit as far as model railroading is concerned, I was thrown out of the hobby for the whole of last quarter of the year, and continued for the whole of the first month of this year. And this time work was not the main culprit (Though I had changed my job in between), it was primarily another hobby of mine - astronomy. I just graduated from casual observer to a casual astro-photographer, and though it doesn't look like a big change - it actually is!

I managed to clean the layout in the long weekend of Jan 24-26 as I had a friend visiting us with her family, so it was a good excuse to pull up my sock, get my ass moving and get the layout clean and functioning again.

Post my last serious work in weathering in September, all I could do was set up some additional characters and port details on the layout. So tonight, I just spent some time running trains and taking snaps of things that I haven't posted yet. So here are some photos. I hope I get the momentum to start with the pending pieces and get some real progress done soon!

Mike and Andre taking a quick break from their duties as the crane operator lifted the the 2nd 20 ft container from one of the flat cars.

Juan and Jose are two brothers from a family of four brothers and two sisters (and their parents of course). Their family moved to the US from Mexico 10 years back, and unlike many Mexicans in the US, they are actually legal from day one.

At the end of the first shift it's a regular routine among Sam, 'Sully' and Steve to have a lazy, useless conversation about everything under the sun - Union Politics, Vietnam to beer comparison - nothing escaped their warm-up sessions before heading out to the nearby bar every evening.

A general scene of the dock workers in a busy day at the port. We will get introduced to each of them later. :)