Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and got some things accomplished. Let's get started. Saturday: Due to weather, my Father-in-law and I helped my friend move his items from Northern Illinois back down to Central Illinois. The process took all day so no train activities were completed. Sunday: Ang and I slept in until 7:00am and got cleaned up and ready then left on the motorcycle about 8:30 to meet her Dad on his motorcycle. We had a good day riding, stopping for breakfast and enjoying the scenery of eastern Indiana. Later, we got home and cleaned up and all went out to celebrate Jared's new job and move to St. Louis. Seams like yesterday we were hauling him all over creation for a soccer game, now he has a career and an apartment. And like that, the weekend evaporated. Other then a little bit in the workshop, nothing to report. But what about you? How did you do? Did you accomplish the goals you spoke on Friday? Let us know. We'll do it all over again on Friday the 13th! Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Have an HOn30 boxcar ready to paint. Got it's trucks painted and ready. Traded some fun messages with a fellow modeler in the same scale, about a dream project of mine. Then it was Monday morning.... Might start another boxcar kit today. Might....
Good mornin Y'all - Happy Monday!! Hope Y'all had a wonderful weekend. Our class reunion went great -- The proverbial blast from the past. Finished another F7 set - SP DF-6 class Starting point: In service: Thanks, Wolf
Saturday it rained most of the day so I scrubbed the security cam work outdoors. Was assigned alternate ‘honey-do’s’ from the superintendent. Nonetheless, I managed to make good progress on the Central Valley Pratt bridge project. I got the hard work behind me of building the side trusses. Now comes the cross-bracing, clean-up, painting, and track.
Began building a pair of benchwork components that will connect my two HCDs. They're upside down here and will be glued and nailed facing back to back on the underside of each HCD. The tables will mate with six through bolts (3 Ea on the left and 3 Ea on the right). The four holes in the center are wire pathways. With the addition of the four gussets on each side, these should be sufficiently strong.
Made more progress this weekend than I expected. We’ve been having a yard sale on Friday and Saturday, so that cut into my weekend morning routine of early layout work before everyone else gets out of bed. First thing accomplished was the installation of a switch and all the track for the chemical plant. This is the first industry “north” of staging before you get to the rolling mill and electric furnace on the opposite side of the peninsula. Next was adjusting the approaches and setting the final grade for the stone arch bridge. I need to enclose the staging access track behind it, then I can paint behind the bridge, fasten it to the base and get track laid on it. Finally, I turned an idea into reality. On previous layouts, I borrowed a friend’s method of mounting ground throws at the front edge of the layout. I wanted to go a step further and mount the ground throws to the fascia. I found wooden oval plaques (3”x 5”) at the craft store and cut them in half lengthwise and drilled two holes so they could be mounted to the fascia. Here is how it turned out. Should work well. They’ll protect the ground throws from getting bumped into, but won’t inflict pain on operaters who might bump into them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Friday, painted an express reefer and a pair of 40’ trailers. Also finished up an Intermountain 5283 CF FMC boxcar kit after masking off the roof that I had previously painted silver. Saturday went to the club with a bunch of my Wabash cars and engines for a little train running. When I got home I got an email from Tangent with more 86’ Hi-Cubes being available including Wabash so an order went out immediately so as to not miss them like the SP ones previously. In the evening I started decaling the cars I painted on Friday. Sunday I painted the 5283 CF boxcar and a Branchline 40’ boxcar that I heavily modified. Also built an Intermountain ACF 4650CF covered hopper and continued decalling the express reefer and trailers. Rick Jesionowski
I was able to get the base coat of paint on my N scale Housatonic RS3M #9935 and my GP9M #7324. I still need to do touch up, gloss coat, decals and dull coat, then reinstall glass, headlights, etc. The day after I took these shots, I found a great shot of the #7324, which showed that the prototype did not have a steam generator, but the N scale shell I was able to source for this project did have the two domes. D'oh!!! I have removed them without doing too much damage to other details and will need to repaint the short hood, once I finish smoothing out the modifications.
On Saturday my attempts again failed at making a resistor axle so I gave up and did yard work the rest of the day. Sunday was better, I worked on 18 more Atlas line poles from the most recent batch I found on ebay while running trains and listening to a ball game on the radio. They got roof brown paint with the insulators being painted NYC jade green. Still need to do some touch up and get a coat of gloss on the insulators but temporarily put them in the holes as I was drilling them.
As I write this I am nibbling a cookie. As far as the posts, I'm likin' what I'm seein'! Everything looks great! Earlier I got four walls up! Still a lot to go but thanks to everyone's inspiration I feel that victory is assured. All be safe, well and have fun!
No modelling for a while yet, just doodling in AnyRail and wishing I could run my birthday present. A PFM 4-6-0, took a picture but it's blurry, I'll try and get a steadier shot later this evening. I know the date is wrong, I forget to update it.
I blew off working on the yard this weekend. The Boss hasn't said anything about it but I can tell she isn't too happy so I guess I'll pick up flowers when I run to the hardware store tomorrow. I did not work on the mess in the garage either. Saturday I finished putting windows in the granary. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Saturday after dinner we went across the street to socialize outdoors with the neighbors. Sunday I did a little more work on the granary. I did not get the corrugated roofing cut. I did manage to go through some more old Floquil paints and straighten a couple drawers of stripwood, sheetgoods and decals. I also swapped around the contents of a couple different style Tupper Craft containers. The granary sub assemblies would only fit in the one I had been using for taking box car kits to the cabin. Now I have my current projects neatly organized in their own containers Event though I didn't make as much progress on the granary as I had initially planned, I'm quite happy with how it is turning out and I know the time spent organizing will make time at the bench more enjoyable.
After the show on Sunday I didn’t do much. Monday I got three LHS. Got a little carried away but found the track I’ve been looking for for two months. This evening I built the programming board to take to shows with me. 10 days until the big meet… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk