Author: Mr. Daps
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And Then I Became a Penguin…
Growing up I was always encouraged to use my imagination and to basically just go for things. As I have grown older, this mindset has led to the ability to dream big, be ambitions, and go for the adventure. One of these adventures came in the form of a band called the Primordial Penguins. I created…
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Welcome to the new MrDAPs.com
Welcome to the new MrDAPs.com. As we’ve continued to grow at dapsmagic.com, the photoblog that was once here was absorbed into the main website. At that point, there really wasn’t any reason to keep active with this site and I really wasn’t sure what I should do with it. Thankfully, I kept the URL with…
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Mr. DAPs Railway Expansion and White Pass Addition
June means it is my birthday which in turn means… time to add something new to Mr. DAPs’ Railway. I had been anticipating this expansion for months (if not since first building the train a year ago) and had several ideas. None of these were 100% set in stone as I just wasn’t sure what exactly…
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Mr. DAPs’ Railway – Spring Has Sprung!
Spring has arrived and with it, flowers. The garden surrounding the railway continues to grow and hopefully soon will be flourishing. The main growth has come from the roses that are now starting to create some awesome natural tunnels for the train to steam through. In the future, there will be some wire arches to…
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Goodbye Tree Over the Train
One of the struggles with having a backyard train can be nature. The very thing which makes the whole backyard train thing so beautiful and intriguing can also be the most frustrating. Queue giant Jacaranda tree in my backyard. A beautiful tree, one of the tallest in the neighborhood, with the unique ability to drop…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 3
My garden railway was starting to actually look like a railroad. It had a layout that was now embedded in lovely gravel and wound its way through my backyard. However, it was a little plain. I was given a book for my birthday that went into many different ideas for backyard trains. As I looked…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 2
The time had come to actually start building a train in my garden. I had the train. I had the track. I had the power-pack. I had a general vision or plan mapped out on my iPad. I also had figured out where everything would be going into the backyard. Now it was time to…
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The First Attempt at a Garden Railway – Part 1
A year or so ago I visited a friend’s house. It had been a few months between visits and imagine my amazement and wonder when I discovered that he had installed a train in his backyard. It was gorgeous. It wound its way around the entire yard, was embedded into the patio, and had a wireless…
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It All Started with a Train
As a kid, we moved around a lot. This led to some really interesting experiences for a growing boy but I’m going to narrow all of these down into just one story today. This is the story of where my love of trains originated (at least in my memory). Shortly after my sixth birthday, we…