Trains

A park near my house has a narrow-gauge railway setup.

Check out the trains.


That's a full-size train track in the background on the other side of the chain-link fence.


The "diesel" locomotive runs off a lawnmower motor. This, however, is a live steam engine. The owner had to build a fire inside the boiler compartment and let steam pressure build for almost an hour before moving it onto the rail system at the park. Note the coal car just behind the locomotive. Sure enough, there's a pile of coal in the car and he'll stoke the fire occasionally as he takes the train around the track, which is a circuit of a little over a mile.
The steam engine is a bit short on power. He'll add two cars to the back on which to carry passengers. The most powerful train at the park can pull up to 10 cars.


These locomotives didn't come out that day. I caught them in their storage locker. The models are built pretty closely to scale in terms of power, and incredible attention is paid to accuracy in terms of the powertrain and braking systems.

Photography project

I've spotted just three fox squirrels in my home state of Florida. The Southernmost variety is an impressively large squirrel, about twice the size of a common gray squirrel and with a dark mask-like pattern on its face.

They look a bit like big ferrets, and they strongly prefer pine trees, from what I've read.

I want to get some photos.

I note that Wall Springs lists fox squirrels as one of the wildlife varieties seen at the park. I admit looking in the pine trees for nests even before reading that blurb at the park Web site.

Wall Springs

Paid a visit to Wall Springs.

The park has opened up after a very long preparation period. I saw evidence that the people trails were laid on top of causeways built up with concrete scraps (old sidewalks and whatnot).


This is a pair of fish (imported Nile perch, I think, typically used in Florida to control algae growth), feeding in the mouth of one of the springs.

Note, June 13, 2007: I think I was way off with the Nile perch guess. A variety of triploid carp is actually the variety used for plant control, and tilapia may also occur in an environment like this--but without a much better look at the Wall Springs specimens I won't hazard another guess.


This is an older photo of the main spring. Water spills from the main spring into a freshwater lagoon, and then through a spillway into a mangrove estuary. The fish in the previous photo are in the hole represented by the dark spot to the right (the one that looks a bit like a woman's head in profile).


This is a cormorant resting on the wall between the main spring and the freshwater lagoon.


This is a view of the lagoon from the south. In the lagoon I spotted mullet, needlefish, and a juvenile snook in addition to what I presume are Nile perch.



This is the lagoon from the western end, above the spillway (which runs under a sidewalk). The lagoon is very shallow, averaging maybe 2-3 feet deep. In the foreground a deeper hole is visible just in front of the spillway. The hole may itself be another spring; the outflow is clearly greater from the lagoon than from the main spring. I couldn't detect any rippling of water over this hole that would indicate a strong outflow, however.



This is the outflow from the lagoon. The pic came out better than I hoped. The turbulence is readily apparent from the outrushing fresh water.


A cormorant fishing in the lagoon (might be the same one in the other pic).


This is a red mangrove. This specimen is in the midst of an estuary south of the lagoon at Wall Springs.



Here's a little blue heron, if I'm not mistaken, foraging along the north bank of the lagoon.



Cropped & enlarged.



This is a wood stork. I took this photo from an elevated observation deck. The stork was soaring at about 200-300 feet. There was also an osprey in the area, but the batteries in my camera had gone critically low by this time.



Cropped & enlarged.

Here's the park homepage.
I note with some satisfaction that I used the same angle for my photo of the observation tower as did the photographer who supplied the photos for the official page.

Nice aerial photo at the homepage. The freshwater area is near the top at the center. The spring is flanked, in other words, by saltwater shallows lined with mangroves.

Visit to South Park

It was very nice.

I was careful not to wear a red shirt, denoting Star Trek (TOS) token victim status.

Rays' road woes persist

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays continued their poor play on the road since the All-Star break, losing for the 14th time in 15 tries.
Saturday's loss to Oakland, by a 6-3 score, extended to five the number of losses on a winless road trip.

Jonny Gomes continues to struggle at the plate (.213) as does recently promoted B. J. Upton (.205).

How about a pic?

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

An Experiment

No kidding. I'm just typing filler in order to observe font appearances. On the main blog, I've been trying to distinguish one subject from another with different font styles and colors, but the overall effect de-unitizes the appearance of the blog, and my make the blog less attractive reading for browsers (of the human sort). Given the current flow of traffic (somewhat above zero), I don't want to chase away readers ... plus I want to continue working to improve the appearance for the sake of aesthetics. My thought currently is to inflate font sizes for all entries, but keep the ones of less news importance smaller than the rest. I'll probably try to settle on three colors for main entries.

Bucs Sign Jay Fiedler

Not exactly breaking news, but I have yet to offer an opinion on the pickup.

So far as I know, the available quarterback list is pretty short at the moment. Fiedler is a good pickup for the Buccaneers, particularly if Luke McCown isn't able to make a especially speedy recovery from his ACL injury.
I look for Gradkowski to serve on the practice squad this year unless he opens some eyes during the preseason. Gradkowski might end up being the best value pick in this draft (for the Bucs). The main thing that seems to have scared off other teams is his height (listed at 6'1" IIRC), but there are a number of very successful QBs close to that height. He's got a decent arm, great accuracy, and he timed just a wee bit slower than Vince Young at the combine. Plus he's got scads of leadership attitude.
Football rules.

Whassup ...

This is the experimental backup page for the blog Sublime Bloviations.

Hopefully I can figure out how to do one or two things here without causing the Internet to go offline.