We have an exciting new arrival:

A fire lookout!

Members of the Forest Service came today, bearing the tower and several complex looking sections of scaffolding.  This was the second attempt at getting us a tower.  The first went horribly awry, so we are grateful this one survived.  Having been rendered obsolete by satellites and airplanes, they're getting rare.

Our tower is currently sitting in the back of the yard, partially assembled, waiting for some concrete pads.  It should be fully set up within the next week or so,  and will then be open to the public. 

 

A plan is afoot to lay down some more tracks in the back of the yard.  As the ground back there is rather lumpy and uneven, tonnes of fill has been dumped to level it out.  The fill contains not just dirt, but also chunks of coal.  I remember reading about how the poor would dig through the mine tailings looking for stray pieces, and now we're using it as fill.  How things change.

(I have always viewed coal a little suspiciously, no doubt due to my father telling me stories about growing up in London during the 1950's.)

Anyway, since it was there, I decided to collect some of it, as one of our display buildings contains a coal scuttle.  I spent an hour out there with my bucket, humming Tennessee Ernie Ford .  It is less dirty than I thought it would be.  Later, some of us tried to light a piece, just to see what it would do.  We learned that coal is surprisingly difficult to light.  Science is occasionally anticlimactic.