Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a great weekend and got a lot done. Saturday: Was a picture perfect day. I headed off to my "Not so Local Hobby Shop" first thing so I would be home by lunch and enjoyed a nice ride with very little traffic. Once at the shop, I picked up, more like cleaned out, all of the Micro Engineering code 55 N scale turnouts. Unfortunately, he was out of flex but I'll probably be back next weekend. I also picked up some music wire for the turnout controls. As I was leaving, one of the members of the Champaign NTrak club showed up so we talked a bit before I headed back home. I also caught the local short line switching out the grain elevator in Heyworth. Once home, it was time to work on the monumental task of the garage and that lasted into the night. Sunday: More of the same. The garage task has taken so long because I have to build shelves as I go and I'm actually organizing and putting things away. By Sunday night, I declared that I was 90% finished with the task and I can get both the motorcycle and Mustang in easily. Unfortunately, since the garage is a tiny, single car garage, I have to move both vehicles out anytime I need to do any kind of woodworking. I ran the current iteration of the B&M layout one last time and started to take items off from it in prep for the new track plan. Overall a nice weekend. So how about you? What did you get done this past weekend? Let us know. We'll gather again on Friday, September 4th, the Labor Day Weekend, and celebrate an extra day off. Until then, have a great week, stay safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Did about what I thought. That is, did office work and spend time as I could in the train room. Despite the shortened time, I did manage to FINALLY clean up and straighten the train room. Took some shots of the entry to the attic. Also got out a 2-8-0 Bachmann with a old Soundtraxx not working well. The first picture is entering the room from the stairs, the 2nd is a pano' shot of the front wall of the layout. The last is the 2-8-0 split open so I could get all the info' to order a new decoder:
Well, I made an unexpected trip to Chattanooga to deal with an issue at the house there. Another month or two, I hope to have it sold and have that project behind me. Had not planned to work on the layout but I did end up doing a couple of things. The propane tanker I am working on ended up needing a few paint touch ups so it is still not done. I cleaned up the work bench and worked on the parking lot design for the chemical plant office. Here's a look at a test fit. Still a long way to go on this scene. Hope you all had a great weekend. Here's wishing you an excellent week!
Well - I cleaned up my work desk. - That's it. We thoroughly enjoyed our visitor - our Granddaughter. Hope Y'all had a great and very safe weekend, Wolf
Good morning, Was able to spend more time in the train room than I had expected because the smoke is still bad enough to limit my time outside. Got all of the scenery and details done around the steel viaduct while running trains. Last night put up a new blog post covering this project in more detail. https://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/2020/08/freelanced-steel-viaduct-part-2.html
Wry productive weekend. Thursday I was able to draw up the plans for the last building on the module. Saturday I ended up driving to a distant hobby shop. After visiting 5 shops (3 in Utah, 1 in Vegas, 1 in Colorado) and not finding any code 93 rail so I could hand it some turnouts I decided to purchase two pieces of flex track to destroy. I then started work on the module again. I was able to complete the control rods for the blue point switch machine. I also laid out all the vehicles so I would k ow where they would end up at. Sunday I finished all the loco eat wiring so now the unfinished module can be used even in its incomplete form. I placed one of the road pieces in place and glued down a few of the vehicles placed the day before. I need to hit another LHS today for a small piece to finish the crossing and I will be able to place the last road piece. I was able to build the transport cap for the module As well. Today I put it in place.
I began renumbering an Accurail CNJ wood reefer. I also began weathering a couple of Athearn reefers. I disassembled an unlettered Con-Cor P54 combine. I removed the windows and I sprayed it with Dullcoat. This is in advance of decaling it for Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines. I began inventorying my covered hoppers.
All good stuff from busy people. What we have here is a lot of humidity. Provides for "in garment bathing". Needless to say, I stay inside a lot. As of this point, the headlight and smoke stack have been glued to the top of the boiler/smokebox. The whistle (drive pin top) is in place. Domes next. Maybe I will get finished?
I got 4 of 5 Tortoise/Hare's mounted to the module. I had to modify the design a couple times to get them to fit and work properly. Normally a Tortoise hangs down 3.2", then the Hare decoder plugs onto the card edge connector, and the whole thing hangs down 3.5". So I bent the actuator wire 90 degrees, and designed a mounting assembly that holds both the Tortoise machine and Hare decoder, that hangs down only 2.4", enough to cleat the 2.5" depth of my T-Trak module box:
Friday I got the rear main and passing glued down. Then spun the layout around and hotknifed trenches for my track feeds to run through. Saturday I cut the foam base layer for the rear hill side Painted area behind hillside black. Painted brown base coat under most visible track areas. Positioned industrial and interchange tracks and fine tuned their alignment. Cut out some building templates and temporarily assembled some building walls and decided on final placement of industrial area structures.