My steam and other things

Many, many years ago in a place far, far away, [well actually Cedar Rapids Ia.] a young boy sat looking at the Christmas catalog.  He dreamed of getting a shiny steam engine, that spewed out steam and turned a fly wheel when you heated up the boiler.  Well dreams don't always happen, or sometimes it just takes a few decades!  With the wondrous invention of E Bay, from the comfort of his living room it now became possible for this boy at heart to see if these steaming machines were still available.  Much to his surprise they were, and quite a few choices at that as to brands, sizes and accessories.  Never one to jump into anything too quickly, I spent the next few months watching the different auctions making note of styles, conditions and prices.  I decided that what I wanted was a newer Wilesco D10--it looked to be a decent size, it could run more than one accessory and the smoke came out of the chimney.  Finally one came up for sale looking like it had never been fired, and I was able to get it within my price range--after adjusting my original price range up a little.  After it came it sat on the shelf for a few weeks, I was afraid to fire it up in fear that I might do something wrong and ruin it.  But I finally decided this was stupid after all the work and time spent on getting to this point of fulfilling an old dream, so one night I fired her up.  Oh what a feeling when that engine took off and started running--it was mesmerizing just to sit and watch, blow the whistle and listen.   After a few weeks though I decided that I needed some toys to have the D10 run, so began another search and purchase mission for the Wilesco shop.  For a while I would clamp the two units on my work bench--so they wouldn't move around--, but I quickly decided I needed some more permanent means of keeping them together.  Yet I wanted the flexibility of storing them in smaller places, plus being able to hook up the D10 to other toy machines.  So I cut two boards, used a router to fancy up the edges a little, put some dowel rods in one board with matching receiving holes in the other, stained and varnished the boards, mounted the D10 and shop and there you have it!  The D10 and shop go together easily, stay together during running and can be stored separately.  One of these days I hope to add another board with other machines that will work just as easily with the D10.