LALS (Los Angeles Live Steamers)

L.A. Live Steamers is a place where you can ride these tiny trains, and go around a huge train layout.  They have engines that look like steam, electric and diesel trains.  All of these trains are usually powered by coal and water or an electric battery.  All the train cars are either hoppers, tankers, flat cars, stock cars, cabooses or these little benches on wheels.  The cars open to the public are the benches on wheels.  They’re kind of wacky.  Some steam locomotives actually also run on diesel oil.

L.A. Live Steamers also has a Disney Barn open, to celebrate Walt Disney, because he had so many trains.  The trains in the Disney Barn used to belong to Walt Disney.

L. A. Live Steamers is one of the three railroads in Griffith Park.  The railroads are Griffith Park & Southern Railway, Travel Town Railway and L.A. Live Steamers.

Here’s a cool fact: you can also get model trains that look like ride-on trains in HO scale.  Bachmann makes them, with people riding on them.

All the L.A. Live Steamers trains have three kinds of controls.  A lever, a control car with an electrical box, or a remote.  They have three scales of track: they have the 7 1/2″ gauge trains open to the public to ride…and they also have trains for members to run that are 4 1/2″ and 3 1/2″ gauge.

My dad says he’s going to become a member of the L.A. Live Steamers, so I can go and drive the tiny trains.  Members also get to fix and build the trains.  I’ve been there something like 20 times, maybe, and I like to be there every Sunday whenever it’s possible.  I like it because it has the most trains that I’ve ever seen, and you get to ride on them!

My Favorite Memory: The Flight Path Learning Center

[Mom Sez:  Alex wrote this as a Christmas present for his dad, who requested oral histories and written memories as gifts from family members this past holiday season.  The visit recounted here was a field trip his class took last fall.]

We got in and thought, “Whoa, this is so unstable!” And I was like falling, and I fell into a couch.  For some reason, the DC3 had couches and no seatbelts.  And it was cuckoo because the whole plane was first class.  And there were chairs and a table and there were two revolving chairs and also two couches.  We went in the cab and for some reason the door was white and tufted — it looked very pretty and it was soft.  It looked much better than the junker at the Zimmer [Children’s Museum], since it was a passenger plane — it had thousands of buttons and controls.  What was strange was that the bathroom door was open and it was weird — there was still toilet paper on the roll!  And then when I got outside, I realized it had four engines even though it could hold only 26 passengers.  And I saw in the luggage it could only hold like 34 something baggages and a lot of them were round baggages like bomb packages.  And then when I got back inside the theater room of the Flight Path Learning Center, the same round luggage was in there.  It was so great, that time.

Inventions

Here are two of my inventions.  They may be wacky or trickful, but they’re still useful:

1.  Ice Cream on the Rails — This is a train car that makes ice cream cones and lets you see them being made.  First, the side doors open on the car and then there’s a hole in the wall of the car.  A scoop of ice cream falls out of the hole and onto a ramp inside the car.  Then it gets picked up by a thingy (sort of like a spoon), which flips it onto another ramp.  Then it falls a bit, and a cone shooter shoots a cone under it.  Then it goes on a conveyor belt with holes to hold the cone.  Then the sauce gets put on it and the sprinkles get put on it, and it hands it over to you. (You have to be standing next to the railroad track to get a cone.)

2.  False Rocket Boots — It’s ski boots with four heavy-duty fans attached to each one, so you can actually fly, and two burners attached to the bottom.  The burners imitate rocket flames, but they’re not real because it’s too hard to put real rockets into boots – you’d just fly right up into space.  That’s why they’re “false” rocket boots.  But they’re really nifty for getting home fast.

Crazy Cabbie

The game is a time-based game, and the goal is to get to the next level without time running out.  You drive a taxi, and can jump over cars that are in your way, or steer around them if there’s room.  You control your taxi by using the arrow keys, space bar to jump.  It’s a very simple game, so there’s not much more to write about it.  I like its simplicity and ease of use… and I don’t like that sometimes your car doesn’t jump far enough because you’re not going fast enough.   The way to win the game is not to just keep going — you have to see the pattern of cars and choose the lane with the least traffic.  Oh, and just to let you know, your taxi might tilt on two wheels when you’re turning!  You can play this game at http://www.play181.com/games/8665/crazy-cabbie.html It rates a 4 out of 10.

Train City

Facebook fans only!  Train City is a Facebook-only game, but all of you with Facebook accounts can play it. It’s like the very popular game Farmville, except you run a city. You have to collect taxes, earn money, run trains to earn money, and build your city.

It’s easy to collect the tax — all you have to do is click on some coins in a speech bubble.  They will be there in certain amounts of time, depending on what kind of business it is.  Your goal is to get the most coins possible and – don’t waste your money on this – but if you want to, you can buy Facebook coins with real money (it will just give you more things, but I don’t want to).

To make the train go, click start and hire any operator that’s available.  Click “hire” and your train will go.

What I like about this is – duh – it’s a train game (the first one I’ve posted).  What’s not so good is that some operators only run for like three minutes at a time, and then you have to repeat the whole cycle.

You can connect with your other friends who are playing by posting on Facebook. And you can visit other friends that are playing by clicking on one of their icons.

Here are all the buttons you need to know before really getting started.  The Hammer is for building, and then there are lots of categories for residential, decorations, public, commercial, etc.  These all cost coins or Facebook coins.

The next button is Trains.  You can select and buy a train.  The next button is Friends.  If you have visited a friend, you can choose one of the two modes to just visit or to help and get a reward.  This is where you claim your rewards.

The next one is Collections — if you collect enough taxes, then a collection will be full and you can trade it in for a reward.  Next is Gifts.  This will have all the things that other people have sent to you, or Train City has sent to you for leveling up and other things.

Next is Achievements.  You can see all your trophies.  The best trophy you can get is the red trophy.  I only have one.

Last but not least is Wonder Card.  A Wonder is big and expensive, you have to be at level 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. to get one.   Just click on a certain kind of wonder card to make your decorations more beautiful or more normal.

You can play this game at http://apps.facebook.com/train_city.  This game rates a 10 sextillion out of 10!CONDEMMED! this game isnt running anymore!

La Patisserie

This game is a cooking game, but the food is already cooked.  You just have to pick it up and get it to the customer.  But sometimes, there’s only 10 dishes of each dish, and then once you run out of the 10 dishes, you have to wait for a minute so it can get cooked.

What you have to do is serve as many customers as fast as possible to get bigger tips, to get to the day’s goal.  It’s simple how to play:  all you have to do is click on what you want to get, and then click on the customer to give it to them.  To get the customers to sit down, drag them to any seat.

What I like about this game is that you’re in a restaurant, and you operate it — you’re the manager, the waiter.  Here’s a tip:  when a customer orders a drink, there’s a small table in the lower right corner, where you can click on the drink they ordered (either orange juice or wine).

And what’s not so good is that the customers’ patience runs out a little too fast.  And if they get too mad, they will leave.

If you want to serve two customers at once, you can have two things on your plate at the same time.

You can play this game at http://www.freeonlinegames.com/game/le-patisserie.html .  This game rates a 7 out of 10.

Burger Jam

This game is a cooking game.  Unlike others, this is only a click-and-drag.  I like cooking, so this game is sort of a perk to me.

See all the ingredients in the picture?  Those you have to drag make the order.  French fries are the only thing that’s already ready to serve; it’s the only thing you can just drag to give the customer. Everything else you have to drag the pieces together and then drag it to the customer when it’s ready.

Orange juice is the only thing customers won’t order. When they’re sleeping, give it to them and they won’t wake up angry.  If you don’t give it to them, they’ll wake up angry and think you took too long (and they’ll leave).  But if you use the orange juice, you’ll have a five second penalty, and you’ll have to wait five seconds for the orange juice to fill up.  If you give orange juice to someone who hasn’t fallen asleep yet, they won’t fall asleep.

If you make a mistake, drag the wrong order to the recycling bin.  Once I made a wrong veggie burger and they didn’t like it because the order of the things were wrong.  So they left and I got minus $13.

See the guy on the very left in the picture?  He’s asleep.  If he wakes up and you didn’t give him orange juice, he’ll go away.  If you want to see how happy people are, check the hearts above their orders.

What I like about this game is that it’s cooking.  What I don’t like about this game is that people get angry way too fast.  Oh, try to make each order as quickly as possible.  See that little book?  That’s for help in case you forget how to do stuff.  You can play this game at http://www.gamesgames.com/game/Burger-Jam.html This game rates a 5 out of 10.

Monster Jam

Monster Jam is monster trucks.  I went to Dodger Stadium to see the Monster Jam.  It was so cool.

Did you ever know that monster trucks run on nitro?  They were very loud.  My cousin had to wear ear muffs.  The trucks were huge and I didn’t even know that you couldn’t see their exhaust pipes, but if you could see them a blue flame would be coming out of their exhaust pipes.

My favorite trucks were Grave Digger and Grave Digger The Legend. Grave Digger blew its engine, but the best part was that my friend Daniel was there.  And then Maximum Destruction blew its engine even harder and the smoke blew in Daniel’s face, but not in mine.

For some reason, everyone was booing at Maximum Destruction, even though Maximum Destruction won a trophy.  Grave Digger didn’t win anything, but everyone was cheering for Grave Digger — me, too.  But my cousin was cheering for Maximum Destruction, and then he said, “I win and you lose,” to me.  (Grrrrrrr.  I wish I had my little tiny tornado paper then – a little piece of paper with a tornado on it that I hold over my head when I’m angry.)

Time Flys almost won, but Monster Dalmatian beat Time Flys, and then Grave Digger beat Monster Dalmation, and Maximum Destruction beat Grave Digger!

The course was a double-loop track for two trucks to race.  It was a dirt track, with two school buses as bumps in the filling of the no-track part.  There was a huge hump made out of two school buses, that was the starting and winning hump.  And the jumps that the monster trucks made made it easier to see who won.

It was was pouring rain, so the dirt was turned into mud, and there was lots of mud flying everywhere.  Some even landed on someone’s seat.

There was also a monster truck that a woman drove (I think it was Time Flys).  But part of its body flew off in the races, so in the freestyles, it looked like a souped-up truck cab. And then there was in the race, a time when Time Flys crashed and blew its engine and landed on its side.  So the woman had to climb out of her monster truck and they couldn’t get it back right side up.

You should go to the next Monster Jam – I think it’s going to be at Dodger Stadium again.  (Do you know what’s cute?  They sell stuffed monster trucks!)

Transporter

Transporter is a rescue game. You use a helicopter to rescue peeps (people) from floods or from when they parachuted into a lake and they can’t swim — just emergencies.

Press left to go  left, right to go right, and down to go rapidly down.  Up to go up. If you just don’t press on the up key it will go slowly down.  There are no combination keys.  Use X or M to control your spinning, so you can go different directions.  Use Space to control the rope so you can rescue people.

What I like about this game is that you fly a helicopter – I like flying helicopters more than planes for some reason, even though I like planes better than helicopters.  What I don’t like is that the rope only stays down for about 5 seconds at a time, and then you have to press space again to put it down again.  But it goes up automatically, so you can’t make it go up.

Here’s a tip:  you start on your helipad.  You can land anywhere except on mountain peaks.  You can only land on flat spots.  But to get repaired and drop off your passengers, you have to land on the helipad.

You can play this game at  http://www.play181.com/games/5062/transporter.html.  This game I like a bit more than other helicopter games because your helicopter has two rotors – in other games, they only have one.  This helps you go up faster.  This game rates a 6 out of 10.

I Hate Traffic

I don’t hate traffic in real life, it’s just a game called “I Hate Traffic.”

“I Hate Traffic” is sort of the crashtrash type.  It means you crash as many cars and motorcycles and other vehicles as you can.  The game object is…duh — to crash!

These are the same controls as in Nordic Race (see below). There’s no combination of up and down key – these will make it just stay in one place or go one way or the other.

Always check the objects above the screen.  You need to crash a certain amount of cars, and crash with a certain hardness.

It’s so great because I love crashtrash games — you’re supposed to crash…and if you don’t crash within a certain amount of time, you lose.  I’m just going to skip saying what’s bad about this game…because there’s nothing bad!

Here’s a tip — see in the picture, that little bar with two arrows on it?  Always try hard to get as many cars crashed as possible before the arrow on the right reaches the bottom of the “Impact Timeout” bar.  You’ll score money by crashing, and sometimes the goal will be to get a certain amount of money, and that equals crashing enough.

For better crashes – more wrecks but less collisions – crash the gas tanker.  It’s a black truck with a round middle and two white stripes.  When you crash it, a white circle will appear all across the screen.  This shows that it has exploded and it wrecks all the other vehicles in the area.  And this will also affect other gas tankers, and if enough of them explode, your whole screen turns white.  Don’t worry — nothing’s wrong with your computer. It’s just a chain reaction.  If there’s enough, it may keep going on for 15 minutes!

You can play this crashtrash game at  http://www.play181.com/games/7833/i-hate-traffic.html.  This game rates at *16* out of 10 — there’s no other game that can beat it!