Trains, Shades and Washing the Ship.

Today we walked up to the Garden Train display at Valle del Oro to see the trains run, then we took care of the last somewhat major equipment purchase we had planed for the mothership. Just for good measure John washed the motorhome for the first time since we have been on the road.

Thursday is Country Market day here at Valle del Oro which brings a lot of people into the park so the Garden Train Club decided to run their trains this morning. The display started at 9:00AM which gave us about and hour to watch before we had to be back at the mothership, we saw four or five different trains running before we decided to leave. To start a train they put the engine and a couple cars out on the track and if it runs well they add cars to make it longer. The trains were interesting, John would have liked to return later to see how many they had running but the rest of the day was spent at the mothership.

 

A train emerges from a tunnel on the Valle del Oro layout.

 

Another train crosses a trestle.

 

The controls for this portion of the layout.

 

This engine and tender are starting a run.

 

When it runs well they add more cars to the train.

 

A train runs along the river.

 

This shows the detail of the layout (lots of work).

 

Garry and Gerri Olson of RV Sunshade Company arrived to install shades on the front and large side windows of the mothership. This was a purchase we had planned for a long time but we had decided not to have them installed until we moved in fulltime. Garry measured up the windows and Gerri cut and sewed the shades while Garry installed the snaps and fit the material. Within two hours they were packed up and off to another job.

 

The windshield faces the morning sun.

 

The large side windows let in a lot of heat.

 

 

Garry installs while Gerri sews.

 

A fitting in progress.

 

We have seen some installations that didn’t look good as the material sagged and wrinkled so when we saw a unit in Dallas that looked good we asked who had done the work and the owner recommended RV Sunshades. We spoke with Garry two weeks ago and he scheduled the job for Tuesday but when they arrived he wanted to wait for warmer weather; he told us the higher temperature was necessary to adequately stretch the fabric across the windshield so he put us off until today. We are happy with the result and it already helped lower the temperature in here today, when the left side faces the sun it should make a big difference inside.

 

The finished product, note that the door window is covered, you can’t see the drivers window but it is also covered.

 

The side windows.

 

The view looking out through the windshield shade.

 

We didn’t have any other plans for today so after lunch John washed the ship; it had gotten pretty dirty and dusty since leaving Wisconsin. We checked the Valle del Oro rules, RV washing was not prohibited and there was no extra charge to wash on site so we took care of that issue at last.