Midian Ranch Blog

This is the web log for Midian Ranch, an isolated homestead in rural Nevada. It is owned by Jason and Tina Walters, whom are also its regular posters. This blog is exclusively for the enlightenment and edification of our friends, family, and colleagues.

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Location: Gerlach, Nevada, United States

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Fly Geyser At Moonrise

If You Feel Like Donating...

...to the shockingly large number of items one needs to have a baby, you can link to our Baby's R Us account here. My personal favorite is the Bright Starts By Your Side Infant Seat, which spews forth a wealth of what sounds like French 80's sythasizer music.

I want to get my child started with that young.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Yeah, It's As Sketchy As It Looks

When You Own A Bunch Of Windmills...

...you're going to have to climb up them now and again. It's an unfortunate fact of modern life that mechanical devices require routine maintainance and occasional repair. Windmills are no exception. In this particular instance, one of the rubber gromets that hold the windmills in place on their masts had worked it way loose and tumbled to the ground. The windmill was thus held in place only by gravity and its wiring, forcing me to strap on my safety gear, attach a ladder, and climb 30 feet into the air to reattach it.

Yes, it's as sketchy and dangerous as it looks.

Monday, May 11, 2009

A Lot Bigger Than Ariel and Daphne? Check.

Wheels The Size Of A Small Car? Check.

The Last Steam Train

OK – so I wasn’t expecting much when I heard that the “last steam train” would be stopping in Gerlach for a half hour. I figured it would a cute, red, wood-burning, Old West-y looking thing that would amble into town, get some water, and wander up the tracks with a few toot-toots.

Boy was I wrong.

The “last steam train” was, well, one of the last steam trains ever manufactured: a massive, brutish, jet black contraption straight out of Atlas Shrugged. A quintessential piece of wondrous dead-tech somehow dropped into our world from the pages of a steampunk novel, it’s powered by boiling massive amounts of water using – wait for it – diesel fuel! Instead of actually burning the diesel in an internal combustion engine, it uses it to create stream in an external combustion engine in a marvelous display of over-engineering.

The wonderful thing was obsolete before it even left the factory floor.

Have a look at the pictures above to get an idea of the sheer size of the thing.