Welcome back everyone. It sure looked like we had a few ambitious modelers last week. I hope you all had a great long weekend and spent some time with family. Let's get started. Saturday: Up at 5:00am and out the door by 7:15, Ang and I drove the Mustang to meet up with her Dad and his Mustang then off to the Hoopston Sweetcorn celebration. The threat of rain and much cooler temps kept a lot of cars and people away, but there was still a lot of nice cars. We enjoyed the corn as well as a fresh fried fish sandwich back at our "pit". By 1:00pm the car show had it's awards as the threat of rain was coming. We then hurried back to her Dad's, put the cars in the garage and and took the trusty ole F-150 back to the festival. In a way the rain was good because we didn't have to wait anywhere. After having a great BBQ dinner, some fried dough (Elephant Ears for you outside New England), we left and visited with Angela's Grand Ma. We got home late Saturday night. Sunday: I slept in and then got to work on the display layout. I purposely used a CSX/Wabash light gray ballast mix on "the main line" and dirt on the two industrial leads. I had forgotten how demanding ballast work is so it took me all day to carefully build the two Peco track bumpers (highly recommended BTW) and carefully ballast the entire lower half of the inglenook. By dinner, the first module was done. We took it easy the rest of the night. Labor Day: I got up at 6:00am, made breakfast then got started early on module two which is just a four foot long stretch of track. Thinking this would be easy and quick was only partly correct. It was easy, especially as I learned by accident that by using a credit card found in junk mail, is a great tool to to keep the ballast on the sides of the track, somewhat neat. After four hours, the track was completely ballasted and drying. We spent the rest of the day by enjoying a short ride on the motorcycles with Ang's Dad and cooking up some ribeye's and sweet potatoes on the grill. It was the perfect ending to the long holiday weekend. So how about you? How did you do? Did you get everything accomplished that you set out to do? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 10th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Well, time spent on drying and salvaging stuff from the mess last weekend. It was not quite as bad as first thought, but more than enough went into the trash. Hoping by next weekend to sit down and concentrate on something else which is much more entertaining! Be it football on TV, or building something on my workbench.
Happy Tuesday to Y'all!! I completed another F7 set. DF-7 class Starting point. On the "B" units - I corrected the road numbers and removed the steam generator details. And - In service Hope Y'all had a great and safe Labor Day weekend, Wolf
Note: Only 2/4 of the layout is on bench work. The other 2/4 is waiting for the future son-in-law to help construct the cabinets. Correction: For me to help him when he has time. I talk in terms of '4ths' because that is how the layout is laid out. Significant progress *and* corrections made. Primer bing already down I, er, *We*, (the wife and I), bought 3 colors of latex paint at the local store: * Dark Tan / almost brown * Dark Green, (Forest if you had to give it a name) * Bright yellow The intention was to put down an overall coat of the tan while mixing in the yellow and green to provide a more 'natural' variation. Oooops. The variation went in as anticipated and I was pleased with the results. But The tan was way tooooo dark and I could not easily see the Kato track against it. That never stopped me and I did quite a bit of it as much by 'feel' than 'sight'. I have been using Kato for probably over a decade. Ran trains. Well, more accurately I ran my new Kato steeple cab with an unmarked Atlas 40' boxcar. Ran into a problem with a glob of glue on the tracks. Argh, fine. But It was too hard to see what I was doing so: Last night, (Monday), Without help, (I'm bragging), I mixed a ratio of (about) 70% Yellow to 30% tan and spread that evenly over the middle section. While doing the front section I added, (by dipping the brush on the paint can lids), bits of green and yellow variations to the future 'agricultural' areas, (leading 6"s). I'll finish the other 1/4 today. This was just over 1/4th of the layout as a test.
Cut and test fitted my layout's fascia panels around the perimeter. I'll sand, prime and paint them before nailing them in place. Because the layout is designed to be disassembled for a future household move, the build takes on a lot more steps.
Good morning from sunny and warm Northeast Ohio! Got back from Colorado late Friday night, plane was delayed due to bad weather and lack of crew at the Denver airport. Now for a little travelogue: On one of the days there we took a ride up Guanella Pass and took a hike to the begining of the Class 2 Ascent of Mount Bierstadt (14,025'), the parking lot was at 11,000'. The area is listed as the Mount Evans Wilderness with Mt Evans being hidden behind the ridge to the left of Mt Bierstadt. This is a scenic overlook about half way up the pass from Georgetown, CO. There are also some dams along the pass for hydro electric power generation. Saturday, retrieved our Beagle from the kennel and I went to the club for some relaxing train running, later in the day worked on decaling a 23000 gal tank car and building another Eastern Car Work H2a Hopper kit. Sunday, continued resting up from the trip, but completed the side lettering on the tank car and most of the hopper car while starting out on a Proto 2000 Double Door Boxcar kit. Monday, spent some time boxing up completed cars for use on the club layout, finished the end lettering on the tank car and completed the Proto 2000 kit, along with investigating my decal stash for the next car to build, which will be utilizing one of the Soo Historical Societies Accurail Fond-du-lac cars for a couple of Great Northern Boxcars, I am first removing the cast on side grabs to be replaced with wire grabs. That's all for now. Rick Jesionowski
In the trainroom I did jack squat! Saturday I Mowed my lawn and weeded some beds. While walking my dog I saw a neighbor and his teenage daughter struggling to load a 54" mower deck into his truck. He shattered a spindle on his mower deck. Says he doesn't remember hitting anything! I offered to help him fix it instead of taking it to the shop. Long story, short. We couldn't get the sheave off so I chiseled away the shattered spindle housing until it cleared the hole in the deck. We put the spindle in the vise and still could not break the sheave loose. By the time we decided to just replace the sheave the JD dealer was closed for the long weekend. Same neighbor gave me two old scythes. One with a cut down handle and short heavy brush blade. Just what I need for clearing the back of our property. I had tried to order a brand new scythe with brush blade Friday but the supplier was closed. The blade is a little chipped up but still has a lot of life left on it, more than enough of a thank you for helping with mower. Sunday was spent taking apart the scythes. It took a while until I realized the nibs (round handles) are held on with peaned over LH threads. The blade will need a lot of hand work to get it cutting efficiently. Monday I mowed the same neighbor's lawn and my own and started to clean out and organize garage. No model railroading but still got a lot done around This Old Dump.
I was able to order parts for some scratch build cars. Found some plans. I think I’m ready to start cutting styrene. I was able to start a six inch addition for a module so I can suitcase two of them together for transport. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Saturday: Pulled out a stack of Motrak retaining walls I purchased a couple of years ago and have been hanging on to for the long retaining wall on the north end of my layout. Came up with a mounting plan and painted them using cheap artist acrylics from Michaels. Basically stained them. Got them painted and then did the ink-wash thing. Also I needed T channels to mount the with but had none. Our local shop was closed and so I took I beams and split down the long axis of the web and made T channels. Worked like a charm. Sunday: Spray painted the T channels while I had the ribs cooking. Spent most of the day dealing w/ those things. Ribs were awesome. Also grilled some corn on the cob and spread chipotle mayo' on them and then rolled them in crushed, blue tortilla chips. Good stuff. Monday: The walls and the channels were good and dry so I laid in some 1x4's to brace the walls. The Motrak plaster castings look great, but they are "thin" to say the least. So I wanted something "stout" bracing them in the back. Got them all mounted, adjusted. Now I need to do ground cover and brush in the area along w/ ballast and all that good stuff. But that side of the layout is coming along.
Continued work on my DQ Grill & Chill kit. Hope to finish it this week. Or by next weekend. Paint pens using to paint it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Some spontaneous acquisitions. Saturday, at the local open air flea market, I was a) taking in some fresh air that wasn't laden with humidity or heat b) getting used to crowds again (stupid pandemic) and c) hunting around for some interesting treasures. One of these treasures I caught out of the corner of my eye, when some neurons fired on a very particular shade of blue... Athearn blue! Ooooooooohhhhh! I exclaimed, and made a beeline straight to that table, like a heat-seeking missile. Some old school Blue Box locos, such as GPs and SDs but with the non-scale width hoods. More old school Athearn PAs, SW7s, and some Athearn and Tyco freight cars. I bought two of the latter, one in a kit form. The kit is an Athearn MKT double-door boxcar, and the other one, formerly an Athearn kit, an ATSF "Shock Control" boxcar that tickled some fond memories of my childhood. Sunday, I assembled the MKT car, then weighted and Kadee'd both. I might just go back next Saturday...
In between all the other stuff the wife had planned, I was able to work on planting more trees on the layout. Used up most of what I had left. Started working on fixing an Atlas 60 ft. auto parts car that has a new future ahead of it. Hopefully it will be ready for the paint shop soon. Not a lot for a 3 day weekend but it was still good. Hope you all have a great week!
Saturday and Sunday were spent primarily on clean up and repacking items that had to be unpacked because of the water incursion from last week. The layout room is now the neatest in appearance that it has been since I started. Monday was a return to normalcy. I finished the staging access cover behind the viaduct and painted it to compliment the eventual backdrop. Later, the viaduct was permanently installed and about 6 feet of roadbed was glued down to it. I also completed a pair of hobbers that had been decaled 1/2 way and sat on the bench while the water episode from last week was dealt with. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
My weekend went about as expected. Helped my son and his roommates move into their new rental. Side benefit: Enjoyed Lao, Italian and Cajun food along the way. As to modeling, I exceeded my modest expectations by putting some primer on a driver overlay and test fitting it to a modified driver. I think you can see where this is going. There is much more work to do. I am very happy with the progress and look forward to finalizing the drivers. It will have to wait since I am away form the workspace for a few days. Stay safe,
I did trim the weeping cherry and the bush. I even weeded the garden around them. Of course it took the remainder of the weekend for my back to recover. I painted the mortar lines of the Walthers Union Station kit. I need to do a second coat. I ran some trains.
