I hear ya John. I have started Piano four times in my life and had to quit for various reasons. We now have a Yamaha keyboard and I am trying to take it up once again. And I have a Fender acoustic 6-string guitar in my closet that I put new strings on a year ago and still haven't had it out more than half a dozen times. Can't keep callouses that way! Where does the time go? Six months after retiring, even my wife says I have no spare time, what?
Like any thing, this requires discipline and setting aside a set time. My practice is at 11:30 to 12:30 on most days. I found that I can't put in more than an hour because my brains go to mush. I mentioned that to a teacher I had, and he said I shouldn't be practicing more than that anyway. After that I then Trainz for a bit, or work on other projects I might get roped into. Keeping up a routine even when retired, makes things go a lot smoother overall. What doesn't help is having others intervene in your routine.
Right now I'm working on the Wanaque Valley area in New Jersey and New York. The New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad ran from Passaic Jct. up to Sterling Forest, NY. The line served small towns and some businesses including some iron mines. The mines closed, but the other business remained and so did the tourist trade. This all came to an end in the mid-1920s and 1930s when the line was covered with a dam when the Wanaque Dam and Monksville Dam were built. There ROW was replaced on the northern side by a small highway and the area in the south below the dam is a trail or power line ROW. The dam obliterated the middle portion, but that does appear in low water. Conrail used to run a short bit of the line back in the 1970s and 80s up to a scrap dealer and some other businesses, but that's gone today.
Overall it's been a fun project, and while not a particularly long route it's been interesting. A music-friend told me about the area and I then looked into it deeply. His grandfather was a brakeman or engineer on the Erie Railroad which eventually got control of the line, and bringing this back to life will mean a lot for him. He currently resides in Greenwood Lake, NY a town located at the very top of the big lake the line was named afterwards. Where his house is today, was once a hotel with ferry connection that led back to Sterling Forest.
After I got the DEM and some topomaps into TransDEM, I took some screen captures of the area. He recognized the beach area near his house right off. I then matched up some locations with some photos he gave me of his granddad standing near an Erie locomotive. Unfortunately, I didn't have that particular locomotive so I substituted the loco with a K&L Erie J-1.
The biggest problem, however, has become finding out what existed where. In Sterling Forest, there's barely a sign of the old railroad yard and station. I can kind of make out the possible location by using Historic Aerials
www.historicaerials.com, but I can't get in close enough on the 1930s aerial. The topo maps that predate the flooding are too low resolution so they don't show details. The rail line, for example is shown as single tracks and stations as squares in various places. Grrr.
Using a ca. 1944 topographic map series, I was able to piece stuff together. I lucked out too with the dam because the older topo lines are still shown where the land was obliterated by the dam. Using some artistic license, I did some sculpting and got the riverbed back into place and the railroad grade along the route by using the topo lines to get the heights and then interpolating the slopes in between. It's not perfect, but it gets things into place that can be tweaked later when I get to that point. Once I figured out the heights, everything came together like a puzzle. The grades all smoothed out to 1 to 1.5% and the overall route just fit together.
I still have lots of trimming to do once I get things together, but this will be a great route once completed. If I can get my friend to buy Trainz, I'll even share it with him.