I will be camping with my son’s Cub Scout pack this weekend. Of course the high temperature for Saturday will be 95 F which is the highest it has been all year. We will be sweating. We are already altering our schedule by moving some of the more physical activities into the morning instead of the afternoon. It does not look like any modeling will be getting done.
Temps here are supposed to be 99+ all weekend as I sit here in the A/C and look out over my dandelion infested yard with heat waves coming off the ground. Great weekend for trainwork . I'm trying to finish up a gage for determining the length of N-Trak joiner tracks (our old gages have disappeared over the years) that will hopefully work better than the old stamped metal ones. Also trying out super thick Aileens tacky glue for gluing supertree pieces to Woodland Scenics plastic armatures (instead of using superglue and accelerator). I borrowed two DVD's by Paul Scoles on scenery and hope to finish watching those. His first one is where I learned of the super thick tacky glue (not the usual brown bottle, but pinkish/purple). Finally will sit down and look over the layout to figure out which "little project" to tackle and make some headway on.
Also a scorcher here in Pittsburgh this weekend. After helping my parents with some outside house work at their home I am hoping to finish laying and ballasting my track. With any luck I will put some pictures up by Monday.
I got one of the double mainline drop-ins/lift-outs constructed, but not finished. It is runnable, but still have to finish one the lines on it on the other side to connect to. Have to build another one, but this one wont be as detailed as the 1st one. The first one has a drop in it to accomodate double track bridges all the way across it. Have a friend of mine from another forum supposed to come down and run some of his engines this weekend, so I need to get busy and build the other drop-in/lift-out section to complete the double track mainline.:tb-ooh: I also need to enclose a big picture window thats in the train room to block off this heat, so the ac has a chance to try and cool it. I'll prob hang sheetrock over it for now, as the rest of the windows in the house are double paned and this one isnt.:tb-sad:
My "weekend" was midweek- I vacuumed up the ballast (it wasn't glued down), painted the rails Floquil Rail Brown and ties Tie Brown. After I cleaned the top of the rails with a Bright Boy, I applied ballast and Woodland Scenics green turf . The ballast is light gray, and looks much better to me. Next on the agenda is gluing the ballast, and applying some more basic scenery. I took a trip to Denton and Addison to get some modeling supplies (as well as a couple of cheap pulpwood flats), and am awaiting three Frisco covered hoppers from "that" auction site. I may do the ballast-gluing as time allows this weekend.
My plans are to work some more on scenery. Right now the layout has the blue foam mountains look. I'm also planning on converting an older loco to dcc.
I am needing to get the chicken coop and run finished this weekend because our poor chickens need more space. If I have time, I am also going to put the traction tire back on my GS-4 (it looks like a loose neck-tie around the connecting rod right now, but I don't think it stretched out) and also install the DCC "fix" and the EM13 decoder. I will probably also track down photos of the rag-tag assortment of log bunk spine cars and flatcars with stakes that PNWR/WPRR tends to run so that I can get ready to model specific cars using N Scale Kits offerings. Adam
I hope to have my bridge completely installed, including the piers and abutments. Of coarse I need to do the surrounding scenery. I hope to also work on a friends HO layout. All this will have to be slipped in between 2 parties on Sunday and my 12 year olds 4 ballet performances on both weekend days.
So far I've netted about half of the vegetable garden. While the pests ignored it last year, this year four ground squirrels have discovered it. These guys are extremely wary--one click of a door opening, and they scatter. And the threshers are back--fairly large birds that, indeed, thresh young plants. I'm going to have to rebuild the framing next spring. Weather's been great after a cold spell the last few days. It gets into the low 90s, but no humidity. The sun can be brutally hot during mid-day, but in the shade it's pleasant. When we get out early in the morning, it's in the low 60s.
Up to #7 of my SP 40' Yellow Stripe Rebuilt Box Cars. All up I"ll have eight extended and two standard versions. The doors are from Mocalova which have been milled down to a more realistic thickness. I've also lowered the ride height, added air lines, MT 905 couplers and fitted FV wheelsets. I also replaced the original door tracks with longer items. I'm really looking forward to the paint, decal and weather phase.
