Another weekend has flown by all too quickly. Always the way except for when we are at work! For me another Galesburg weekend is over (sniff). Yes it really is better than Christmas for me. The weekend was great and all that went on would be too much to cover in this thread. To sum it up, I went to the Burlington Museum in downtown Galesburg and spent a few hours looking at all the neat artifacts and historical pictures of one of my favorite roads, then helped my club set up modules at the Carl Sandburg College. I didn't get as much done on my modules as I wanted, I had originally planned on taking last Wednesday off from work, but that did not happen. With modules set up, I was off to downtown again to meet up with a pair of my railfan buds to once again experience the BNSF VIP Yard Tour. The first 25 people who pay $20.00 get an exclusive tour of the BNSF facilities and get to ask questions to the BNSF employees. Our Tour was almost 3 hours long and we saw a lot of cool things such as the repair facility, hump yard operations and yard tower. After that it was dinner time and Angela and Jared came up and surprised me. They were originally coming up Saturday afternoon. Saturday I set up my display in the library as well as set up the display for the CB&Q SD70 ACe for the College Foundation raffle. I spent most of the day Saturday talking with friends at the show. By noon the three of us were hungry so it was off to the Packinghouse for one of their famous burgers. They no longer have the burger bar, but the burgers are even better than they used to be! After lunch, a quick lesson for Angela and Jared by walking through the ES44AC that GE parked down at the depot for display was in order. As we were leaving the depot, I was alerted to the fact that the NS Southern Heritage unit was the trailing unit on a westbound through Galesburg. I caught it, just in the nick of time. The second time we tried to leave, The Nickel Plate Heritage unit was on the point of a east bound. This time I ran and got a few pictures of the locomotive. Later that night we had a party for Harry as this was his last year doing the Model Train Show at the college. I was able to get a BNSF themed cake and surprise him with a few guests. He was surprised and loved his CB&Q SD70 ACe I painted just for him. Sunday I slept in and went to the college around 10:00. Sunday is typically my shopping day. I was able to pick up three undecorated Micro Trains Bulkhead Flat Cars for $20.00, a bunch of gondolas and a former Paducha GP10 project that was never finished, an undecorated Atlas GP9 for $40.00 and six Tortoise machines for the layout. The CB&Q SD70 ACe raffle garnered $167.00 in ticket sales with all of that going to the Carl Sandburg College Foundation for student scholarships. Plans are in the works to do this again next year. Soon the show was over and it was time to pack it all up and say good bye. All in all a busy weekend but great weekend. Now the count down to next year! So how about you? Was your weekend a working on the layout weekend or a shopping weekend? Any railfanning? Whatever you did, big or small, let us know! We'll come back here on Friday the 28th and do it all over again. Until then, have a great week and... ​High Greens!
Happy Monday Morning! At the moment, I'm happy to be back at work where someone else is paying for the air conditioning. It was 75 degrees on my way in to work at a quarter to seven, and it will be in the 90s today. Yuck. It was a good weekend for modeling, though. I started out Friday deciding I'd had enough of the sticky, never-quite-hardened Envirotex around the car float. My theory is that I didn't get it mixed properly before the pour. So, I mixed up a smaller batch with no tinting, and poured another thin layer over the old. 24 hours later I had the desired glass-hard surface I wanted. I now realize that I spent more time testing for hardness and fretting about it than I did just completing the second pour. While I was at it, I used a bit of the same batch to take care of the small space beneath the apron, which is only visible when the barge is "at sea." I put in some pilings last week, so here's the promised update. The real work began on Saturday, with the wheel upgrades from plastic to metal. I bought a bulk-pack of Intermountain wheelsets for most of the work, but the old Tyco/Mantua cars have metal trucks and they don't come apart for wheel replacement, so those cars get new trucks. While I was at it, I painted all the trucks and then weathered them with powders, finishing up with some Dull Coat to keep the powder on the trucks and off my fingers. A few of the cars were hoppers I'd overdone with Instant Rust, so I toned those down with powders as well. All in all, I upgraded a dozen cars. And then? Well, I got a needed turnout at my LHS, and started doing the trackwork for the tannery and the Railway Express depot, all of which are currently represented by cardstock mockups, since they're still in their kit boxes. As Sunday evening rolled around, I sat down and ran some trains. It's been a while.
Over the weekend I wiped a MTL hopper naked and gave it a new identity. As much as I preach less is more when it comes to weathering, I always pile it on thick anyway. Though most of my equipment will fall in the late 70's to early 80's, and the build date on this car is '77, it is showing some serious age already... Before: After:
Over the weekend I made more catenary masts, leaving just two to make before tackling the overhead wires. Looking forward to that as I love making catenary! Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
I put a TCS LL8 decoder into my Proto 2000 GP38-2 and it runs well. Proof that it's an easy job that anyone could do.
Not hot Hank, as the curve around the end is too tight for assured pantograph contact. But at the front of the layout the pantographs will slide along the wires (smoothly, I hope)! At the rear (less accessible) part of the layout, the pantograph will actually be very slightly below wire level, hopefully not noticable. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
I will take some pics as I solder up the new wires, as I will be using double contact wires as on the real thing on main lines where 3,000V DC is used, as in Slovenia. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
