More Progress on the CP Rail M & M Sub. (And a Confession)

Trains are running again on the M & M Sub.

Progress is being made on the M & M Sub. Slowly, but that's the way I like it. No need to rush; I've got lots of time to get'er done, as we say on the prairies. Plus, how much ballasting can a person do in one go and not lose their mind?

Speaking of ballast, I've done about a quarter of what needs to be done. Can't say that it's much fun, but it is more enjoyable than painting track. Although with painting track at least it's done in one evening; ballasting takes at least two days as the glue dries, and then a third day to fix the places where it didn't stick.

(And I thought I was done with ballasting, as when I wrote about the "last ballast," as opposed to the last spike. But that was before I decided to take down part of my layout and start over.)

Anyway, we're getting there--some of the land forms are done, and the basic town layout is determined. Best of all, trains are running again on the newly-ballasted track, which is always a good thing.

Next up, the finicky stuff: I need to eyeball the track and pick off any stray ballast that is sticking to the sides of the rails. There's nothing worse than a photo of a great model railroad with pieces of ballast doing that gravity-defying thing on the side of a rail!

A Confession

This has nothing to do with model railroading, but I feel the need to note something about this blog. As the view count rises toward 450,000, I have to note that some of those views are the result of comment spam.

(Comment spam is when owners of websites use robots to send comments to blogs with their URLs embedded in the messages; the goal is to have their website link noted on as many blogs as possible so as to improve their SEO rankings.)

Some days, there are a few spam comments; some days there are more. This weekend was particularly bad, with over 100.

Since I moderate all comments, they go directly to my spam box and I delete them. But each time they hit a page that counts as a view, which drives up my count. (There can't be a lot of model railroaders in Russia, Poland, Cyprus and Turkey with an interest in Canadian model railroading--can there?)

Since the spammers change their addresses frequently, it's impossible to block them. (Or, at least, I think that's the case; if anyone knows different, let me know.)

In the end, the view count is meaningless, I know; I do this for fun, and for me. But all that spam is annoying and bothersome--another glimpse into the dark side of the Internet.