Rumor has it a warm front is on the way. What is warm really? Sounds like it will still be too cold to venture much outdoors, might as well get some planning done for Weekend Modeling Plans! After working a month of Monday through Friday's and having a weekend like most normal folks, I'm back to working a Saturday this weekend. So today is my first part of the weekend. I finally admitted to the slow march of old age and bought a pair of Optivisors for my diesel detailing. I had a good run of naked eye custom painting but rather than brag to my mates about doing all this N scale with my naked eye, I figured the pro active route of less eye strain while my eyes were still healthy was the better way to go. With that said, I'll be working on the super details of two N scale GP38's. What road you ask? You'll see soon enough I hope. And spare time from that will have me working on the modules which are all up and running. Paper work for the Galesburg RR Days show is on its way and before we know it June will be here so I have a lot of work to do. Saturday is a full work day for me with Saturday night being spent with friends. Sunday is supposed to be warm and sunny, so I may take Angela out for a little trip to break the cabin fever that has slowly set in over the course of the past three months. Next weekend, I'm pleased to see that I'll be attending the Lincoln Square Mall Show in Urbana Illinois once again. This show was the longest running free attendance train show in Illinois for years but was cancelled due to Mall management. After a seven year hiatus, its back and I can hardly wait. I'm still awaiting a response from my club mates as to ether or not we'll be going to this show but either by display or a attendee, I plan to be there. Just in case, T-Trak module work must be performed before hand. So how about you? What do you have planned this weekend? Let us know. We'll come back here on Monday the 9th to see how we all did. Don't forget Station Masters, set those clocks ahead to what I call normal time, on Saturday night. We'll now get an extra hour of daylight in the evening! Until then, have a productive and safe weekend and... High Greens!
I got some fun packages in the mail last week. I am really drawn to older and discontinued stuff and found this Fuel Depot on ebay a couple weeks ago, it was a risk buying something with the open box but it appears like everything is present, including the signs, The nice weather may be a distraction, otherwise I will get to putting this together: It is going down by my engine shed. I also picked up one of these WC small gas stations and that should arrive tomorrow, I have a place for it as well: There isn't any room on my layout for "big" stuff so am always on the lookout for a smaller detail that will fit in.
I've begun wiring one of the detection circuits for the first grade crossing, and I've been mounting the crossing gates at the other. The circuits work exactly as designed, but, well, what's the fun in that? They really don't support nighttime operations, so I've bought some infrared phototransistors to replace the daylight ones, and I'll put IR LEDs on the other side of the tracks to drive them. They are still a bit daylight sensitive, so I'll have to work out some sort of shroud. The shafts which drive the crossing gates from below the layout are too short to drive beneath 2-inch foam, so I was soldering on extensions. The solder didn't hold, as they are stainless steel and difficult to solder, and I discovered the hard way that the shaft mounting inside is very fragile, as both of them came loose. I'm going to just replace the whole shaft with a stiffer, longer single piece of wire, and mount it externally to the counterweight for the gate. I think this will give me a better mechanism anyway, as it will lengthen the lever arm and make it easier to adjust. We should have "balmy" temperatures in the 30s after tonight, which will hopefully be the last single-digit night of the season.
Last weekend was reasonable for going outdoors, so little work was done on my Kato GP35, which is becoming CN 4000. But it's close, since I did a little work on a couple of weekday evenings. I'll try to finish up on this - unless the weather somehow conspires to tear me away from my trains - and maybe start on an undecorated Atlas GP7 that will become CN 4809.
