Another weekend has left the station, and for many of us with younger people in our homes, the last vestige of freedom from teachers and homework, as many kids have to climb up and in that yellow bus this week. Did you get anything accomplished? My Friday started by spending a huge amount of time getting my office computer fixed from infected files. This went on into Saturday before finally getting back to where it was on Saturday night. Sunday was spent in Rockford IL at a model airplane fly-in. I did see an old co-worker and friend from my days at Testor and naturally trains came up in our conversation. Other then talking about it, no model railroading for me. None next weekend either. Maybe by October... So how about you? Did you get some new structures built or new DCC decoders installed? How about shop maintenance and cleaning? Scenery, track work, bench work or just running, whatever you did, let us know! We'll all come back on Friday the 23 and start it all over again. Until then... ​High Greens!
I "fixed" my Athearn BB "TR6B" calf unit. It was having electrical pickup issues so I "hot wired" the side plates on the truck mechanisms directly to the decoder. Now that really improves electrical pickup! Maybe I should do that on all my H0 engines. One of the guys here in the club does that. Also, thanks to TrainBoard and gjslsffan (Tom Holley), I fixed the sideframe on the same unit.
I have been building cornhole boards. Here's the first one done--the second is going to be the earlier 'flying' Rio Grande (non-stacked herald) as seen on the GP9's.
Sunday morning I was up very early and left the house at 4:30 in the morning. Our daughter Annie was competing in her first triathlon, which started with a swim at 7:30. With no traffic, I got to Maine in plenty of time, but better safe than sorry. She did pretty well for her first try, finishing only 31 seconds out of a "podium" position for women 20-24, her group. And, she was only a stroke or two behind the first racer out of the water in the novice group she started with. I had some dead time Saturday, so I did a bit more brick mortaring on the third tannery building. And, I assembled and painted the body of the covered hopper. It's time to print up the decals and apply them.
Absolutely nothing was done on my layout this past weekend. I was down in Monterey, CA for the Mecum Auction selling some of my collector cars. Now that this is out of the way, I can hopefully get back to the layout. I was going to do the auction is Des Moines, but it was cancelled, so this one was the closest for me. Drove straight through, 1100 miles in my 59 Impala leaving Saturday afternoon and getting home mid day Sunday. Getting too old for that.
Cleaned off the workbench; removed some track to begin integrating the "new" yard module; added two handrails to my 50ft UTLX tank car rehab (rebuliding an older MDC/Roundhouse 50 ft tank car); and noodled track ideas for the final section of track in area 3 (Kidder/Morgan Devils Swamp Rail-barge transfer dock in Alsen, LA). And finished sealing the basement so I can run a dehumidifier down there and paint in the summer.
