Sneak preview of the 259E

I just finished with spray painting the Lionel 259E locomotive black glossy paint and it really shines and reflects. Great. The pink undercoat of Hamerite was much less attractive, but now it starts to look beautifull again. I could not resist to put on some shiny brass bits and to make a few pictures. The brass bits are not ready yet, they do not have the full luster yet, so I will polish them some more. Also the driving rods are too dull at the moment, but the brass brush and the polishing disc will do their work eventually.

Ebay was down

Lionel collectors like to use Ebay. Unfortunately, Ebay is down since friday morning 31 august CET. Also other American sites are apparently affected: Yahoo groups, Hotmail. Here we can still get to the welcome window, but can not pass the sign-in window. Smaller sites are still operational. This situation bears resemblance to hacker attacks of two weeks ago. Lets hope these guys find another hobby soon; for instance toy trains!
Sorry, Hackers. This was a Dutch disease. The largest Dutch internet providers (KPN related: Hetnet, Planet, etc.) have send updates to routers of their users and this caused the trouble. Sure, they deny, but when the preferred DNS number in the TCP/IP protocol is changed, suddenly it all works again. I hope that Ebay reps. will have a word with KPN about this.