Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Let's get started. I hope Rick is still recovering well, get well soon! Saturday: I was able to get to my "not so local hobby shop" and pick up the supplies I needed for the weekend, mainly track and roadbed. I was able to get the wife's Journey station wagon up to 27 MPG, so a huge dent wasn't made. Hard to believe however that my Mustang GT can get 29.9 MPG. Cruise control is your friend. Saturday morning I got to work on the module by finish sanding and staining the legs, securing the top and giving the garage a much needed clean up while things dried. By evening I had the first coat of poly on the legs. Sunday: Woke up early and got to work right away as I knew we would be gone most of the day. I sanded the legs, applied the second coat of poly then cut my fascia from 1/4-inch Baltic Birch. I was going to glue the fascia on, but I got to thinking, what if I ever need to replace it? A bit of measuring, six 3/4-inch #6 screws and six finish washers and I had a nicely mounted fascia. I still need to stain and poly that but it will be real easy. Once we got back, I applied one last coat of poly on the legs then laid the three main lines cork road bed, pulled the module inside, set some heavy books on it for weight and called it a night. Good progress but still have a lot to do. So how about you? What did you get done? 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 above all... High Greens!
Well I’ve been hit or miss posting the last month due to work, but I spent a lot of that time weathering a bunch of UP covered hoppers. To pull them, this weekend I weathered 3x FVM GEVOs and detailed 2x (one was detailed by the previous owner). I was nervous about weathering these as I think of the FVMs I’ve acquired lately as my nicest locos. But I’m very happy with the results. Sunshades didn’t come with UP 7909 (but I got the loco for about $80) and I gave up on installing windshield wipers and the smallest grab irons. On UP 7909 and CREX 1201. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Happy Monday all. Very important day, "D" Day today. God love our fathers or grandfathers. THE greatest generation. This weekend I did mostly what I thought. Saturday: Got the rails put in on the CV 1902 bridge, finished weathering it. Also got into the weeds of software for laying out control panels. My answer was right under my nose, "duhhh". I have a full version of Bluebeam REVU/Editor on my laptop. I can do simple drawings in Bluebeam and convert the PDF to EPS files, which is the file format the printer uses. On the Bluebeam editor I can actually draw the background in black with white characters. So this turned out better than I thought. Sunday: Played around generating a panel drawing. The one below will go at a location on the layout that is the state line between Virginia/West Virginia. Also, Sunday, I did more work on the ITLA "Elevated Bridge". I imposed a Walthers curved turnout to get the outside frames built. The center frame I will wait until I receive the custom built curved turnout. This way I can adjust as necessary to match the center section to exactly how the custom turn-out is constructed.
In spite of a lot of things going on this weekend I was still able to accomplish a few things on the layout. Biggest thing was that the new grade crossing in Carlin got finished. Still need to get something between the rails and some road markings but it's working. The electronics for this is mounted on a small angled scrap of 1/4 inch plywood under the bench work so it will be a bit easier to deal with if I ever have to access it after this section is installed in the layout. A small 2 inch, 8 ohm speaker delivers great sound and is hidden in a house near the crossing. Finished the weekend by getting some scenery started in this area.
The weather played a big role in how my weekend progressed. The plan to clean and prep the Highlander was scrapped because of the rain. However, the rain stopped in the afternoon and the wedding ceremony was held outside. A very nice event. Spend some time getting organized for the upcoming trip. And that was Saturday. Sunday's trip to the storage unit was successful. Got my swap/sell collection organized and in a single box. Sunday's rain didn't keep us from delivering a wedding gift or visiting my wife's aunt. Car prep was delayed again. Almost got my other stuff ready for the trip to Nashville and the N scale convention. Should be posting an update in The Cattle Car forum on Tuesday. Stay safe,
Spent some time looking for decent pictures of Bridgton & Saco River RR tank cars. There are a fair number, but most are not very good quality for looking at details. There seems to be only one good view of a restored car on the whole Internet. Strange. Tried to spend a few minutes at the workbench, but my eyes were just too intent on napping. Had to work an extra day this weekend. Tired. I am NOT working an extra day next weekend!!! And then it was suddenly Monday again...
Howdy, Folks I managed to work on movie tribute tank truck - she is ready for clear coat and final assembly -- photos will follow. Hope Y'all had a great weekend - and, have a fantastic week, Wolf
Wow on the locomotive weathering. Grade crossing looks crisp! Seems like good progress all 'round. Am on here a little later due to forcing myself to go fishing. Next phase: catch some. So far, car chassis cut out. I am redoing the tires. I did not like the first attempt. All folks have a great week.
I've been continuing to refine my CF-7 for several weeks (months? years?) and am calling it "done" so I needed to step back and do something new to clear my head. Literally a weekend project, I designed some Blomberg trucks for my Auto-Train U36B (since it will ride on either a U25B or U23B chassis with GE trucks, I need to swap them for Blombergs) I need to do some minor adjustments for fit, and also retro-style them appropriate for a 70's U36B, but I'm happy with the effort. Left side is 3D printed on low resolution settings, right side is Atlas factory. N Scale... The lame paint job on the U36B is quick rattle can so I can see details better. I ordered a compressor and some paints today for my airbrush so maybe by next weekend I'll be doing some proper painting? Cheers -Mike
Not much done on the layout. I straightened up some more on the layout and train room. I filled in a couple pieces of missing layout base foam I located the Unitrak pieces I had previously cut for layout seams. (They weren't on the layout.) I visited the LHS and purchased a Mason jar full of ballast. Yesterday I had some pretty severe discomfort at my sternotomy site which prevented me from working on layout. I was very concerned but all is fine now. Had a scheduled follow up at surgeon today. All is well. Friday I saw a modern gyrocopter fly over. Yesterday I heard the distinct sound of radial gasoline engines and caught site of a DC-3 flying by pretty low. Probably out of the Mid Atlantic Air Museum. Unfortunately I did not see any other WWII era aircraft this past weekend.
I'm a bit late posting my weekend progress. The first project was to paint and ballast the spur track leading into Specialty Minerals. I added some limestone spillage and weeds too. The second project was painting and ballasting the track and scratchbuilding the unloading area for Stratas Foods. They take in vegetable oil and corn syrups, then repackage them for consumer retail sale. That was Sunday night, thanks to a few hours of unexpected free time. I still need to add unloading hoses, spillage containment equipment, etc. There is no anti-fall protection at the proto location, so that is one less thing to have to model.
Moose did not have as productive a weekend as Moose had hoped, sad to say... It had rained, which Moose was secretly hoping for, but that didn't help much in the end... Friday: Grocery shopping with Mrs Moose. Yeah! Saturday: Since it was raining, Mrs. Moose told Moose: "Say, why don't we buy a new carpet cleaner and you can clean the carpets this weekend while it rains outside?" The moment Moose showed hesitation in responding, Mrs. Moose gave Moose "the look"! So off to the store to buy a carpet cleaner, and back home to assembly it and put it to work. Stupid carpet cleaner... Sunday: As it was still rather wet outside -- it's the Pacific Northwest, rains all the time, don't move here! -- da Mooses stayed in and worked on hobby projects. Moose spent most of the time trying to reinforce the warehouse walls and experiment making something for the yard to allow horses to exit and entering rail cars. Mrs. Moose was almost done cutting and gluing teenie tiny shingles to the passenger depot, when she decided that making the new cat something with yarn was in order. She was almost done with the roofing, almost, just a few more shingles to go, and the new cat suddenly needs something yarny? Like, what, a sweater? The new cat is the size of a small horse and as furry as, as, well something awfully furry, so why does she need something made out of yarn? Just a few more shingles was all it would take to finish the depot roof! ... ... ... Of course, Moose hasn't painted the depot yet, nor glued in its windows and doors, sooo... Have a happy and productive week everyone!
The only thing I accomplished was getting released from the hospital on Monday, am now at home and if I feel like it my do some modeling. Since this was major surgery I will be taking it easy for awhile. Rick Jesionowski
I built 10 Walthers Cornerstone kits, assembled 12 Tichy sugar beet cars, decaled 5 locomotives, ordered a ton of N scale stuff... Hmm... Kiz got into my fermented banana sup- ply again...
