In the beginning there was the void, and an empty room. And lo... Br. Elias brought in some used lumber from an old machine shed that had been torn down. He cut the lumber into many pieces 40 inches long and he called the pieces "legs". And he saw that they were warped, but that was all he had to work with and so he used them anyway. And he took some more of the lumber, and he made more boards 36 inches long, and he drilled holes in these boards, and he called these boards, "joists". And he saw that these too were warped, but that was all he had to work with, and so he used them anyway. And he also found some longer boards, and these he called "runners", and behold, these too were warped. So it came to pass that Br. Elias laid all of these construction materials out according to his plan, and from these he created two tables, each one three feet wide, and each one 12 feet long. And he saw that these new tables were much taller than the old ping- pong tables which he also planned to use. But this is how high he wanted them, and so he made the ping-pong tables be higher too. And then he rested, for he had created a new train table, and he saw that it would do.

Left a Bachmann signal powered with LEDs protects the mainline turnout around the corner. Top an Atlas RS-3 works the freight yard on the east side of Fornost. Righ, a tree made from found foliage graces a small park in a residential neighborhood.  Far Right, a much younger version of me, applies colored paper mache on a blastic net to creat a hillsideview block. Rocks are real, and were found in the fields behind the Abbey.