> The train snakes around through both dining rooms and through covered bridges. What is it about electric trains that capture the imagination so?

Could it be childhood nostalgia? Fond memories of putting together your first train set at Christmas? Personally I think it's due to our unconscious fascination with self-powered, self-moving objects where we don't quite understand how they work, but nevertheless they seem to act as if they have minds of their own, starting and stopping on some hidden signal.

One thing that's interesting about the model trains at Glen Junction is that they're travelling on suspended tracks. The corner wall tracks are all supported by trusses and diagonal chords. Reminds me of a tiny physics game, Bridge Builder for Windows, where you could (unintentionally) design cool new ways to crash a little train animation. We'd design then drive it over the most shoddily constructed cantilever bridges that the unscrupulous imagination could contrive. I have fond memories of that kind of thing, too. ;)

Also when we were in Glen in September, there was a new beam-and-truss steel bridge being built right beside the "Covered Bridge Gift Shoppe" across the Saco River, route 302. The newer (and modern) construction is unusually close to the older (and presumably historic) wooden covered bridge. We sort of wondered what that was all about.


> It's the culture, not the taxes. The taxes are *wonderful* for businesses in New Hampshire.

Okay, but here's what I don't get. The $64,000 question: if you *don't* have income tax or sales tax in NH, just how DOES the state generate enough funding for expensive public works like highways and schools and drinking water and waste treatment, etc.? According to the 2006 U.S. census, there are only 1.3 million residents living in NH. Does this mean that your residental and business property taxes are astronomical?

Having no sales taxes is great for the tourists, but someone's got to pay for infrastructure services at some point.

In Canada, the only province that does not pay provincial sales tax (at the personal level) is Alberta. Revenue is generated by taxing natural resources like the booming oil industry and some agricultural products. But even the 3.5 million Albertans have to pay federal taxes for drearily useful projects like bridge construction and highway snow removal. The recent furor, in Quebec, over critically deteriorating bridges and structural overpasses has shown that our local municipalities generally have neither the funding, nor the know-how, to maintain certain types of complex engineering projects.

Wolf