THE CHOCOLATE TRAIN

A train made entirely of chocolate has set a new Guinness World Record as the longest chocolate structure in the world. In a few pictures you can see onlookers.  That will give you an idea of the size of of the chocolate bars, er, cars.

The sculpture, on display at the busy Brussels South station, is 112-feet long and weighs over 2,755 pounds.

 Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia spent over 700 hours constructing the masterpiece.  He said he came up with the idea of the train last year after visiting the Belgian Chocolate Festival in Bruge: "I had this idea for a while, and I said what do you think if we do this realization of a long chocolate train, you know, because a train you can make it as long as you like.

Actually it was going to be much smaller than it was, but he kept on adding another wagon, and another wagon, and it's the size it is today.  Farrugia had previously built a smaller train of 12 feet for an event in Malta, which he said gave him insight about how to build this much larger version.

 There are two parts to the train. The first seven wagons are modelled after the new Belgian trains, and the rest of the train is modelled after the old train wagons, including a wagon with a bar and restaurant on board.

 Three days before the event, Farrugia transported the chocolate train by truck in 25 wooden boxes from Malta to Belgium.  Farrugia said the train incurred considerable damage during the drive and several of the train's walls had completely collapsed. Luckily, with hard work and little sleep, the chocolate artist was able to fix all the damages before presenting the train to the public on Monday.

After measuring the length of the train and confirming no material other than chocolate was used, officials from the Guinness Book of World Records added a new category to the collection of world records and declared the train to be the longest chocolate structure in the world.

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The yesterday I wrote about the Pooch Hotel. Now here is a surprise: One of my blog followers has a grandson who works at that Pooch Hotel.  Small world.

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Fun --

A pastor, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.  The
engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"  The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!"  The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper.  Let's have a word with him." [dramatic pause]

"Hi Albert. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"