Welcome back everyone! Welcome to a new year and welcome to crossing out a 1 to be replaced with a 2 for every check you write. Does anyone besides me still use checks? Let's get started. Friday: Was as predicted. Got up and spent the majority of the day removing all the outdoor decorations and I'm glad I did, when I did because winter is here now! By evening, Ang and I were so tired that we just enjoyed dinner and a classic movie, Capricorn I. NEW YEARS: Ang and I are apparently party animals now. We went to bed on Friday evening at 10:30 and slept in. We tackled all the indoor decorations and tree as well as made a concerted effort to organize. At 4:30 we were done, and we changed to go to our restaurant. Too bad they were closed! We ordered pizza on the way home and enjoyed the evening enjoying pizza and watching TNG. Sunday: Ang took it easy, and I cleaned the layout room and home office. In between the three days I spent a lot of time looking at maps, searching online and playing with track designs. What did I come up with? Nothing! I did get a lot of ideas. I think all of us sometimes has to sit down and analyze what it is we want out of a layout. Another source of inspiration comes from YouTube and a particular channel, Boomer Dioramas. If you have not seen his channel, I suggest it highly. I call him the Bob Ross of model railroading and he has two great layouts, one that is only 16 inches deep and 8 feet long. So, at this time, I'll be working on the shadow box layout with a goal of having it done by this year's Ohio N Scale Weekend. I have the City Job up and I run that to scratch that itch. We'll see where 2022 takes us. So how about you? Was your New Year's weekend a good one? Did you get any time to work on trains? Let us know what you did. We are back on a regular schedule now, so we'll come back on Friday the, oh I need some calendars! Oh, here we are, Friday the 7th to do it all over again. Until then, have a great first week of 2022, stay healthy, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Happy Monday and here's to better New Year!! Phase one of a long in the making project is finally complete. One of each class of SP F unit. DF1 (2),DF2 (2),DF3, DF4, DF5, DF6, DF7, DF8, DF9, DF11 and DF12 Next (Phase 2) - T&NO class DF14 - F9M (As delivered A-B-B) Then (Phase 3)Cotton Belt FT's. I have done the as delivered Confederate gray and yellow as well as repaint into black widow. I will be doing the rebuilt version of the SSW FT's. As well as an example of an SSW F7 set as well as the lone FP7. And finally (Phase 4) I will be doing an F7 set in bloody nose. Thanks, Wolf
Over the course of the 3 days I: Pulled up all track in the 'Eastern' end of the Grey and Grandure Washed all of it, (except turnouts), with warm water and finger nails. I allowed it to air dry. Relaid all of the track on flat smooth surface making sure all joints were smooth and tight Tested and re-tested the 'Kato Steeple Cab'. It ran smoothly pulling and or shoving 2 to 5 light cars including around Kato R239-45 (9 3/4)" radius. Also tested using a printed to cardstock image of the stone arch bridge. From Viewing Distance: I will be extending the stone wall to the left using similar procedure.
Let’s see-New Year’s Day I took down the Xmas decorations and spent the better part of both afternoons playing Axis and Allies with my oldest daughter. On the train front, I finished 2 (out of 4) Chicago RTA coaches from WoT. I replaced the underbody with Kato Bi-level Coach donors awhile back in preparation for installing Kato interior lights and decoders. After installing lights, I glued passengers insider and was able to tint the windows to get the prototypical green. There wasn’t enough space to insert tinted styrene inside the windows, so I had to cut six small masks for each light. The end result is that it is a little dimmer at the far end of the car, but IMHO, I like that better than the clear windows the WoT came with. I ran out of passengers, so the other two will wait until passengers come in. After that, I worked on some autoracks-fixing my earliest attempts at hand drawn graffiti and installing Plano panels on Concor autoracks. Not done yet, but they look better than before. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In the last few years, I have accumulated a few old beat up Lionel 027 steam locomotives. One came from my father-in-law's little brother. The tender, two cars and a caboose were well worn but still serviceable. The 2-4-2 locomotive however was missing its mechanism. I picked up another trashed non working locomotive of the same model on Ebay and was able to salvage the mechanism, repair it and transplant it to "Uncle Joe's" old shell. I had to rebuild the "E" unit (reverse mechanism) but it works like a champ now. The other locomotive, a 2-6-2, is a mystery to me. I have no idea where it came from. It was missing the motor brushes and the smoke generator unit was a dead short. Removed the smoker and installed new brushes. So after this weekend I now have two working Lionel steamers to go with all my Marx trains from my youth as well as an American Flyer S gauge set that came from another of my wife's uncles.
Hello from cold, snowish and cloudy Alabama. Lot's getting done here. Great pics! And Boomer Dioramas is indeed well above par. Check it out. On my "The Omega Scale Railroad" we have a number of goals for 2022. Maybe twenty-five or more. Right now, a batch of ten open top hoppers is being worked on. Specifically, coupler hooks are being fashioned. My little dual rod flare tool worked well too. So, on we march into 2022. I am hoping I get a lot done this year. All be healthy and safe.
The holiday here went about as planned. Just my wife and I and we did not go out at all. Was able to get done what I wanted to do on the layout which was to get all the siding and turnouts installed. I also got some of the spur tracks in and started dropping feeder wires. This spur is in the center of the Carlin section and will be a sort of team track mostly used for transfer of chemicals from tank cars to trucks. At the right or west end of this section is a spur will serve as the home track for the RR equipment that will be based in Carlin, a switcher, road switcher, and a caboose. The aligned part of the turnout that has no track now will have a track leading past this area to an adjoining section serving either a scrap yard or propane dealer.
For a 3 day weekend, not that much really got done at my place. Worked a little on two of my winter layout party projects and managed to get trackside for an hour or so on Sunday. Here's wishing everyone a great week and a happy 2022!
I second @Jim Wiggin's recommendation of Boomer Dioramas on YouTube. His current set of posts on foreground trees is simply stellar. My understanding is he makes his living doing modelmaking and set design for the movie industry in Vancouver, and it shows in his videos.
*Sigh*. Well, it was just a long working weekend. I achieved nothing, except opening a dialogue with a suggested decal maker. But I would guess even doing that is some sort of hobbying and making progress.
For the long weekend I managed to finish the 86’ Hi-Cube and get the white end stripe painted and masked and the body color painted. Masked the sides and painted the ends of a 50’ NACC RBL boxcar. Also painted a Kadee 2003CF covered hopper kit. Started the assembly of another NSC 4550 CF covered hopper. Rick Jesionowski
Happy New Year all. Over the weekend I did as I thought. Mostly I went around and touched up ballast and few other items that I have ignored. Yesterday I built a small walkway at the old water tower so the signal crew can get over to Albemarle towers. After I add a little more ground cover and clean up some of the walkway lumber, this will be done.
It was a laid back weekend. We didn't do much around the house. We did run a few errands. I finished inventorying my kits and unweathered rolling stock. Now it is time to move onto the locomotives. These are either kits or locos that need couplers changed from hook and horn to Kadees.
That summarizes my weekend too. Caught NS's NS Heritage Unit trackside [ ], ordered some Kato Unitrack and made some progress modifying bridge piers. Also wasted several hours trying to fix my 25 year old lawnmower without luck.
Moose manage to go two whole days before completely blowing yet another new year's resolution to not start yet another "some day" project ... ... ... Yep, this time, Moose started researching prototype info. for PNW logging locomotives & operations that match HO locomotives have in inventory so that Moose can add a whole 'nother scale to the "same day" project list... Moose sense a moose stampede heading towards moose-self...
I spent the weekend recovering from a cold. I was able to get the lightning and thunderstorm effect finished and the installed. Sunday I got a work area ready to work on my modules. Gotta be ready for a show in February Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
