Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Let's get started. Saturday: A great day running trains and meeting folks. The FreeMo set up was once again, very impressive and trains were running smoothly. The Proto Throttle worked great and made my small switching layout a bit more fun and prototypical. The NTrak layout was up and running as well and a lot of good times were had. Before I knew it, I was packing things up in the Jeep and headed home to pizza, a beer, a beautiful woman and two rambunctious Beagles. Sunday: The local Apple and Pork festival was going on and so Angela, her Dad and I walked the city wide show of everything apples and pork as well as many antique dealers. Breakfast was biscuits and gravy and fried apples, then a walk to the small RR museum which only peaked my interest even more. Looks like I stumbled onto some new RR archeology to study for a future date. I also scored a Mid Century liquor cabinet in really good shape for $40.00. That made my day. After a full day of eating great food and walking miles, we headed home and enjoyed the evening on the front porch with a cold beverage. All in all, a nice weekend. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know. We'll do it all over again on Friday, October 1st. Until then, have a great week, stay safe, be healthy and as always... High Greens!
Happy Monday - Y'all, Nothing to report. After we returned from our camping trip, visiting the Laws museum and spending a couple of days with my best friend and his Wife(In Nevada) They took us to Virginia City to ride the V&T. It was awesome. We relaxed this weekend. Back to work Monday -- Blah! Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Didn't accomplish much on building the model railroad table, but did get out to railfan on Saturday afternoon and invited my wife to take the wheel for a Sunday joyride in my VW GTI. Also stopped for ice cream, but the waiting lines were so long at two places that we gave up and went the DIY route at the grocery store.
Between Saturday morning and Sunday morning, I extended the subroadbed and the cork roadbed off the end of the viaduct and through the corner of the wall. Very close to the point of needing plywood sheets again as we approach the coal classification tracks. I also finished up ALCO S4 #2231, which was formerly #435. I ended up reblocking two trains in staging with it Sunday morning. Finally, I worked on improving the basement entry yesterday. This will be the primary op session entry during warmer weather months. Water has a tendency to collect by the door, so hopefully this will help address this going forward. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Did not get much done around the house. Wife felt under the weather, so I did a few inside things on Saturday. She felt better Sunday, so we headed out to a nursey and got some corn stalks and ornamental peppers. The peepers are to replace the flowers in the window boxes. When I got home, I tied the corn stalks to the pergola. I ran some trains over the weekend. I repaired a IHC steam loco that hit the floor recently. I had to glue the front trucks back together and reattach them along with a ladder. I then ran it for a good hour with no issues. I changed the couplers on an Athearn Blue Box Reading coach. I added a screw to the coupler lid which is something I am trying to do anytime I take an Athearn car out for a spin. On the layout I started to paint the pink foam brown. I only got a small section done but there is more to be done.
As I though, I put down quite a bit more ballast. I've done about 42' plus the last 2 weekends. This is mainline track so I only need to go down and put the cinder base up against the edge of the ballasted roadbed. But that usually goes quick. Did not get to actually framing the expansion to Albemarle City, but I did run some trains after cleaning railheads from the ballasting work.
Nothing I planned but lots I didn't. Negotiated, (With Step-Daughter #1) 4 to 5 hours of uninterrupted access time to the Living / Train Room so I can get the foam base down on the last two legs of the GandG. I will start that tomorrow. Objectives: * Getting all foam down and painted with primer * Getting almost all bullet train track down. This should be straight forward as it is just a matter of putting supports in place. * Getting most of the 'Main Line' down. This is going to be tricky as the 'return' is behind the bullet train. * Gettting a lot of the 'GandG' track down. Shrug. This track will go whereever there is room. If there isn't room I'll cut through the foam. The interchange with the main line is the most important. Will try to get the yard done. * Getting power to said track. Notes: See attached 'Footprint' which is a partial abstraction and part almost exact. It will give an idea of how the layout 'fits' into the livingroom. ☻
What did I actually accomplish? Made a round 'home' using a tuna can as a base. I did the design in MS Paint and printed to color laser. I'm up to version 2 with V3 printed and waiting for cutting. Did drawings up for shipping container size homes. I say it that way because the 'owners' covered up the external detail of the containers, Sheesh. Should have them ready for posting in a few days. File attached is for 'Free Use'. Doors / Windows and details are up to you. ☻ 'Finished' updating the current footprint showing the extra 6"s I was granted by the wondrous 'Bureau of Land Management, Time and Interior Decor' To do the 'Tuna Can Home' and the container homes I had to convert dimensions to 'N Scale' so I made a reference chart: Item Feet Inches - Size of Model Car Length 40' - 480" - 3" Car Width 13' - 156" - 0.98" Human Ht 6' - 72" - 0.45" General Use 10' - 120" - 0.75" Formula: Actual Length in Feet Times 12 which converts it to inches Times 0.00625 which gives the size of the model So a 40'L / 8'W / 8'9"sH container is 3"sL / .6"s W / .6563"s H Well, either all of that or my calculations are way way off. ☻ Hope this helps someone. Container Length Width Height Actual 40' 8' 8'9” Inches N Scale 3” 0.6000 0.6563
As hoped, I made it to the farmer's market. Got my favorite cheese and some fresh veggies. As I was leaving, stumbled upon a vendor selling home made peach pies. I could not resist..... Not a lot done at the work bench. Had to work a bit of overtime and an extra day. A bit on the tired side. Experimented with adapting some wheelsets to (HOn30) truck frames. Those originally intended to be used by the frame manufacturer have now skyrocketed in price. NWSL $24.95 (not counting shipping), for four wheelsets. Enough to do one car! No way! These ESM alternates I had purchased seem to work. If I am not deceiving myself, and they are as my meager testing shows, a few pennies more than $4.00 per car. Quite the cost savings and more readily available!
Well, Friday, bowled over average but not as well as I would have liked, missed too many spares, but the team won all seven points so we moved up in the standings. Saturday, Had our monthly meeting for the Railroad Club after abstaining meetings for the summer months. After that we met my son and his wife for brunch, followed by a visit to their under construction house. Drywall is in and everything looks good, they should get possession in late November. In the evening I did some decaling and started construction on a Tangent Models PS 4740 CF Covered Hopper kit and finished the final detail parts on an Intermountain Canadian Grain Hopper. Sunday, Finished decaling a PS2893 CF Covered Hopper and most of a 40' Double Door Boxcar. Painted the first coat of paint on the Canadian Grain Hopper and a couple of 40' Semi-Trailers. Also got most of the grabs installed on the Tangent 4740 Kit, have to trim each grab to fit, takes a lot more time then precut grabs. Rick Jesionowski
Ambitious bunch here. If we could only export it? Up to Saturday I had made eight roof hatches. Twenty four to go. Saturday I went AWOL. Attended a "Goat Beauty Contest" post show visit. No jokes, please. Location: Dancing Goat Folkfest, Ellijay, Georgia, U.S. 3rd place winner "Yoga" from Gadsden, Alabama, U.S. Sponsor: Lookout Mountain Goat Ranch. Next got happily lost in the Rich Mountain Wilderness area on the way to Falls Creek falls. Did exhausting half mile round trip hike to falls. After stopping at Iron Bridge General Store to ask "Where am I?", I headed to town. Finally reached Blue Ridge where this behemoth was parked. There was no close parking. After driving a street filled with hundreds of walking and milling people I parked a block away. The place looked like Gatlinburg on a railway. After this, headed to food and then home.
Cart is almost complete. It shortens my staging yard by one foot but now I can have guests over that aren’t trying to fight the longer version and can move around. The foam is on it (not in this pic). All that is left is the back and paint, cork, and then track, wiring, and a touch of scenery. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I built an Rslaserkits Bank this weekend and cleaned up my office/modeling area due to me accidentally throwing away the floor...(glad that I didn't take the trash out yet)
Friday, I worked too much and did tasks around the house. Saturday, I studied studied studied for my big exam on Sunday, the third of six needed to get my architectural license. Sunday, I took the exam and passed it, and THEN stopped by an LHS and picked up some items including the new signals book from Kalmbach, a UT6D throttle (surprisingly hard to find, but then Digitrax stuff is low stock lots of places) and a UR93 that I could use to run it. From then I mostly just made lists of things that will need to be done as the outbuilding gets built several months down the line (partner gave her okay and so she and I have purchased a barn-looking 192 SF shed which will be arriving in January, and I have permission to do an around the walls layout as long as: there is a sewing area, too; there are no duck-unders; the shed is still useable for other things, too, like setting up a table to play board or tabletop minis games or cutting fabric. Adam
I got the sniffles on Friday afternoon, and spent most all day Saturday on the couch feeling like poo, and doing nothing. Saturday, my wife started sneezing and having the sniffles. Sunday morning I felt fine and went to church as normal but felt lethargic by afternoon. While I was at church, my wife went in for a COVID test since she had plans to be around a bunch of people later in the week. Since she was being tested, I thought it wise to stay home and not go to our train club. Monday morning, her results came in positive so I went and got tested for Covid that evening. Today my results came back negative so now we have to stay in separate parts of the house. In any case, little or nothing got done in my workshop. Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk
