I take a whole cocktail of pills. Blood pressure, Type II diabetes, problems after prostate cancer treatment and arthritis in all major joints plus upper and lower spine. I use an electric wheelchair (US built Zinger, which is great fun which I can recommend to anyone with mobility problems).
I am just completing an Open University degree with my project as designing and building an Android app to manage freight car routing. My railroad is fully DCC and runs off a Digitrax wireless set up.
I had my railroad on top of kitchen units. I make my boards of 5mm foam core so I can lift them up and down without effort- I put lots of crossmembers in to keep it all straight. Evetually, I couldn’t even stand up at the railroad so I took it down. I took the plinths off the bottom of the units and now I can sit and work on most of it as it is only 2’ deep. I find that I can’t work for extended periods so I have adjusted my way of working to suit. I am 72 and still having lots of fun.
As an aside, I feed my slow motion DCC switch motors from the side rails of the points. Then if I have an electrical problem, I can cut around the switch, release the rail joiners, lift the switch out, fix it and then, with a few cross members to support it, pop it back into place.
Working from the recliner ain’t to bad. My HP 3500 computer has dual monitor outputs, I scrounged up a couple of 15 foot monitor cables and put my spare monitor next the recliner. My mouse is wireless and I had several keyboard extension cables so I’m in business again. I’ve been using my wife’s laptop and they leave a lot to be desired when working in a CAD program.
Mel, I see you subscribe to the “when handed lemons, make lemonade.” Your perseverance is inspiring.
Some years back while making a long term recovery from a cycling injury I began to feel sorry for myself until remembering my stash of unpainted Preiser and Roco kits, turned out to be a rewarding recuperation.
Mel (and others who posted about their health issues) … Praying your helath impoves soon.
Peter … I can relate a little to your story. Instead of a cycling accident, I was in a collision caused by a drunk driver. I, too, had a long term recovery. I built a Fine Scale Miniatures kit during that time.
Larry… I can also relate to your situation. I also have congestive heart failure, and I no longer have the energy I once had. However, I am very thankful for medical treatments which allow me to have a close to normal life.
I guess I could insert a bit of young stupidity to the old age health thing. When I was 28 years old I fell off or rather was knocked off a two-way radio tower by Ready-Kilowatt. The wind was up to about 40 MPH and I went up the tower about 30’ to free up a antenna that was being lowered with a rope. I didn’t take my safety belt because I was only going to untangle the antenna from the tower. The antenna got away from me and fell into a 7200 volt power line with me on the other end. The high voltage charged my batteries pretty good and I hit the concrete deck. That took a year and a half to recover but I’m still model railroading at 80.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
Working from the recliner ain’t to bad. My HP 3500 computer has dual monitor outputs, I scrounged up a couple of 15 foot monitor cables and put my spare monitor next the recliner. My mouse is wireless and I had several keyboard extension cables so I’m in business again. I’ve been using my wife’s laptop and they leave a lot to be desired when working in a CAD program.
It was a baddy for sure. My wife can’t believe how many times I bit the bullet over our 50 years together. If I was a cat I’d be at 8½ lives. A few years earlier I got zapped with 2100 DC working on a 2KW transmitter that put me in the hospital for a week. The power supply wasn’t switched, the final amp was biased off. No warning labels either.
The tower thing busted me up pretty bad, 8 days in they almost gave up on me. Sure glad they didn’t, I’d missed 52 years of model railroading and tons of grand & great grand kids.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
I’m not going to clog up a topic on the Forum with my scratch built, I’m working on post for my blog. I’ll post a link on the forum when it’s finished.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
Mel, I was kind of hoping you would take on the Hodson Queen Anne style house. With all the brickabrack I can under stand why you passed on it.
As far as health, at just over 75, I am lucky to still be able to work at pretty physical pursuits such a carpentry and wild rice harvesting. ALthough I suspect I will be needing another hernia surgery in the near future. The last one slowed me down about six weeks.
Both my wife and I went for the wraparound porch on the Hickory house. Both of my grand parents houses had wraparound porches.
Thanks for the good words from all of the forum members!
I ran into several problems when I took my drawing of the Hickory house to 3D format, dimension wise things wouldn’t work. The basic floor plan from the Antique Home Site has several errors that didn’t show up in my 2D drawing, my slow 80 year old brain didn’t catch the errors in 2D format.
I finished the drawings and they look doable so baring more unforeseen problems I will start laying out the drawings on some card stock tomorrow. I haven’t done any scratch building in several years so the avoid wasting the basswood I’ll start with a card stock mockup.
I’m lacking the smaller windows for the kitchen and bath but I have everything else.
My eyes are my biggest problem, that and my thyroid trouble. If it weren’t for my lighted magnifier I’d be in trouble because I model N scale and wouldn’t be able to see my work. As for my thyroid. Unless you have problems with it you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. All I can tell you is that it takes all of your energy away and you don’t feel like doing anything but laying in bed watching quiet TV.
