Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 11:00 p.m. in "The City", where the current temperature on my DTWS and Also according to the report from the NWS, which both show 34° under partly-cloudy skies. Unfortunately, the "Real Feel" temperature is 25° with winds out of the northwest @ 12 mph. The overnight low-temperature forecast calls for 29° before we rebound to tomorrow's high-temperature of 43°, which is 11° warmer than today. There will be sunny skies to go along with that warmer temperature forecast too.

Also unfortunately, the NWS has reissued a Small Craft Advisory beginning @ 4:00 a.m. tomorrow and continuing until 4:00 a.m. Wednesday, from South Haven to Manistee. That Small Craft Advisory will be replaced by yet another Gale Warning, also from South Haven to Manistee, from 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night until 7:00 p.m. Wednesday. That Gale Warning calls for wind-speeds of 20 - 30 knots with gusts up to 40 knots and a wave-height of up to 12 feet!!! The surf will be up on the shores of Lake Michigan. I guess this is a good place to mention that the barometric pressure being displayed on my DTWS is 29.51" of Hg and steady, while the NWS is reporting 30.17" of Hg and rising. Oh, the sine will rise tomorro morning @ 7:46 a.m. and set tomorrow evening @ 5:15 p.m. 

We did some impromptu furniture rearranging earlier today. Mary decided that her desk needed to be under the window in her office without the second tier that has sat atop her desk since the desk's arrival. It looks good there and she likes the view over the view she had of the wall in her office. 

Good news, the topper went out to the curb and didn't stay long, It lasted until someone decided that they could repurpose it and it was whisked away to a new home. A win-win as they say. In addition, I thought about using that topper on my desk, but it wouldn't fit. But, in the process of trying it on for size, I got my own desktop cleared and reorganized so another win-win. 

I always like to think that when one door closes, another opens. Such has been the case with my photography hobby lately. As you may recall, the MMRR has been refurbishing their tracks in front of the manse. I previously added some pix of track work, but today, different machines were being employed to continue the process. 

One machine, called a switch-tamper, had what appeared to a sensing device deployed ahead of a larger machine that followed and which was using automatic pneumatic hammers to push the ballast under the rails and ties for stability. 

That machine was followed by another noisy machine called a ballast regulator, that was redistributing the remaining ballast and tamping it down still further. At any rate, here are some pictures taken from the front-porch of our manse using my wide-angle lens and various focal lengths. 

In addition, here are a some videos from YouTube of those machines at work if you are interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVaGy7ETteo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAj8Y7zI93M

A sensor for the ballast-tamping machine.

The Mark IV ballast tamper that followed.

The KBR 860 ballast regulator.

Otherwise, not much was happening at the manse today. I have P/T tomorrow and I'll use the time there to get more stretching on my yak versus balancing skills. Ciao.