Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend and are ready to let us know how you did. Let's get started. Saturday: After getting up and settling into my workshop with a hot cup of coffee, I noticed I had voice mall on my phone. It was my buddy Steve letting me know he was in the area picking up an NTrak module. A phone call ensued and soon I was on my way to neighboring Farmer City Illinois. The N Scale of Bloomington Normal has now set up their NTrak modules in a hobby shop as a semi-permanent layout. The club went to T-Trak a number of years ago but had no club location. This hobby shop allowed them to set up in an empty room off the side of the hobby shop and directly accessible to a side street. The good news is that they have a meeting and running facility and they have gained new members. They'll continue to go to shows with T-Trak but the shop is home base, and they plan to have run weekends at the shop. Steve was there to pick up an extra module the club no longer needed. We had a good time catching up and seeing the progress. Steve and I have discussed starting a central Illinois NTrak/FreeMo-N club to work in conjunction with NSBN, so I may get busier in the coming months. The rest of the day was spent inside as the temp and wind outside were too cold. We only managed to make a trip to the big box lumbar store for a new fire pit ring. Sunday: I managed to sleep in a little, made some coffee and wandered upstairs into the train room. After two cups, I was feeling motivated. I finally took the time to get the NTrak module out of storage then remove the Galesburg City Job modules. I spent most of the morning taking out all the electronics and saving as much as I could before tossing the rest in the refuse pile. The modules had a good run but with a better construction method, more accurate track plans made, the Galesburg City Job 2.0 will be built in a matter of time. The rest of the day was spent cleaning out the fire pit and installing the new ring we had purchased the night before as well as burning a lot of brush from over the winter. I flushed my trucks radiator again and installed a deep cleaner which will stay in for a week, then I fired up the grill and cooked a steak while the wife cooked up a pair of sweet potatoes. After dinner, I took the truck down to fill her one of two tanks. After sticker shock, I went home and called my dad to check on him. Then like that the weekend was. over. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday, April 26th. Until then, have a good week, be safe, stay healthy, and as always... High Greens!
Well, this weekend’s plans got fouled up before the weekend began. On Thursday I went to my hernia surgery but the surgery did not happen. For some still unknown reason my blood pressure spike and entered a realm it has never been in before. At first they thought it might be a bad case of white coat syndrome. We waited and the pressure did go now but not enough so the surgery was postponed. I talked to my cardiologist later in the day and told to monitor my blood pressure over the weekend and call back with the results. I was also given a list of things to watch out for and if any of them happened to call the office no matter the day or time and talk to the message service. My name would be on list that they would transfer me to on call doctor immediately. Luckily none of those things happened. I will call the office this morning and see where we go next. Since I stayed home from work, I got the car inspected which turned out to be rather painless. I thought I would need brakes and tires, but both passed. The only thing I needed was a nail removed from one tire, an oil change, and a couple of filters. Over the weekend we made errands to the pharmacy, PetSmart, and the grocery store several times. With help from the kids we got a few loads of laundry done. On Sunday we celebrated my son’s birthday. I ran trains. After finishing running the 54-car coal drag with my new Reading Trainmaster and putting away the cars I ran the other Trainmaster with a passenger train. I repaired a hopper that hit the floor when I was putting it away. Luckily it was only a coupler that was broken. I added screws to the couple clips, added Kadee couples, and added metal wheels to a Bev-Bel/Athearn blue box passenger coach. Here is the 54-car load drag on the layout.
Good morning all. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Here it was a weird weekend. Things started out horribly on the modeling front then fell together yesterday. Friday night and Saturday I spent considerable or too much time trying to get the LokSound ESU programmer running on the laptop I now have for the work shop. The ESU site only shows the comm or FDTI chip driver for up to Windows 8. I had a horrible time trying to get it to communicate with windows 10. So I joined the Loksound Group forum but wasn't able to view threads until late yesterday. So after searching for about 30 minutes on their threads, I found someone had linked the correct driver. After dinner last night, I went to that web site and downloaded and VOILA! Got my programmer up and running successfully, connected to my program track and detecting one of the engines I have that came with a Loksound decoder. Also got the 1st ABA F7 set up about 90% done. I had the last grab iron going in on the nose of one of the A units and stupid drill bit broke off in the plastic. It would not come out. So drilled through it with a larger bit, popped it out the back. Filled that hole w/ putty and got it sanded down. Now I just have to airbrush that spot and redrill. I'll try to finish that up during the week. Also got the train room "mostly cleaned up". But it is extremely better than it looked going into the weekend. The Sunday mail train had not been run in a while, so I ran that west bound while cleaning up the room. There's a shot below. Have a great week all!
Good morning all. I will be working on making room in the larger bedroom. Some of that will be moving the unused stuff to appropriate locations. Some junk removal.
Happy Monday all! I missed posting on Friday apparently. Guess Shiny Object Syndrome hit and I thought I had but never did. @Tompm hope that blood pressure issue gets settled out for you. Was gone the better part of Saturday but did score 3 old Aurora Postage Stamp N scale cars for cheap at an antiques mall. Sunday saw some train time in the afternoon. Made good progress on some freight car projects, did one DCC install, and swapped out the rail cars on the layout. The current batch had been growing as I finished work on cars or got new cars. Wish I had more to show for the weekend but that is about all. Will see if inspiration and motivation strike me better this week. Hope you all have a great week!
Good morning from sunny and cool Northeast Ohio! Friday, I managed to paint a IMRC PS1 Boxcar kit that I assembled the first of two colors. Also worked on the 40' Southern Brick Car. Saturday, went to the club and we had are monthly meeting, major thrust was picking the items for the buffet to be held at our annual Christmas party, reserving a room early was the important part of the operation. Also discussed the two open houses we are having in May, one for the Regional convention to be held in May and the second on Memorial Day held in conjunction with the Historical Society. After I got home we went our and purchased a new and hopefully better Dishwasher to replace the one that works like s**t, we sometimes run it twice and still does not clean the dishes properly. Later in the evening I got the Moloco RBL and the IMRC PS1 masked for the second color and built a Stewart 14 panel hopper for painting since it was going to be painted in the same color as the other two cars, then applied the paint. Did some more work on the Southern 40' Brick Car. Sunday, got up early to help administer a youth team bowling tournament, after I got home started on the laundry and removed the masking tape from the cars painted yesterday. After removing the tape on the Moloco RBL I added the grabs, ladders and door hardware as I did not want to mask around those items. Also started gluing back the handle on a mug my wife dropped and broke, trying to repair it with CA, I did one over 30 years ago and it is still in good shape. A picture of the work complete on the basic shell of the Southern 40' Brick Boxcar, the next step is to cut the flooring to match the bottom of the car out of Evergreen plastic sheet and then apply the frame, brake and coupler pockets. Rick Jesionowski
I had a great birthday Saturday-watched my daughter’s soccer game then went to the Spirit game where they beat Gotham 2-0. Came home for a bit and then went out for a really good pizza. Sunday I did a few chores, loaded, and cleaned up the benchwork to prepare for work later on. Rather than work on my track plan, I ended up organizing all my freight locomotives. My passenger fleet of Metra and Amtrak were already pretty organized thanks to Kato’s bookshelf cases. So not what I planned but a necessary and productive task. Afterwards I played board games with the family-I lost at “Sorry” but dominated “Ticket to Ride”. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Good morning everyone, It was a good weekend here. Did get quite a bit of detail painting done on the DPM building and ordered a Miller Engineering animated sign for it that should arrive sometime this week. Finished a repair for a friend on his Kato GP50 then milled a frame for another one of my Kato/Atlas GP35's that I want to install a decoder in. In between I took care of a bit of house cleaning and yard work. On Sunday we made a trip over to the VA for a visit with my father in law who is a resident there. Then went out for ice cream in the evening.
Saturday we got outside to cleanup the garden / yard a bit, the 2ft tall weeds got knocked down to ~2in tall and I can't count how many small oak trees we pulled out (darn birds keep burying acorns...). After the weeds were dealt with we got started on turning the water system back on, thankfully only one dead timer was found this year and was quickly swapped for a spare but I'll probably cap the water line once I track down the plugs. Sunday we got back out in the garden and planted 10 feet of cow peas and 10 feet of pinto beans. Each of the beans were planted in two rows with a rough 6in spacing for planting the beans in the ground, if I had picked up two packs of seeds I would have opted for 3in spacing along the rows and still used 6in between the two rows. I put in 8ft T posts and 1 1/2in PVC along the top of the posts to use for supporting the beans as they grow. I still need to add the twine from the PVC down to the ground but I'm putting that off until the beans sprout. On the modeling side of things, I've been debating on colors for the building I'm working on for the NMRA PCR clinic. I'm hoping to get the building assembled fully today and tomorrow add some interior lighting (0805 pre-wired warm white LEDs) and exterior lighting (thinking lights on the sign and near the rear door) Here is part of the kit, ready for a coat of paint: I'm thinking the front wall will be rather generic weathered red brick and the other three walls painted rather simple as cinder blocks. Just out of frame to the right are some inserts for the doors and windows as well as the recessed roof (it is the same material as under the walls). I'll probably run these outside and give them a primer coat of some sort and then dry brush the brick surfaces with makeup sponges using acrylic paints.
Good mornin to Y'all Hope Y'all had a great weekend!! Saturday's Cowboy Festival was a blast!! Sunday: I managed to program my friends BLI NW2's (That was fun - NOT!!! -- may I say it - ? BLI sucks!!) I also Reworked on my S12 -- finally, she runs as good as she looks. Then in the early evening my Wife and I prepared dinner together - I grilled the salmon and corn on the cobb - she baked the french fries -- it was awesome!! Y'all have a great week, Wolf
Happy Monday, everyone. I ended up with a little spare time over the weekend so I fiddled around with an alternate design for my yard. The goal was to fit it in less space than before without sacrificing much capacity (while also making it more efficient for operations). I also wanted to find a way for trains coming into or leaving the A/D tracks to arrive/depart directly from/to the mainlines and be able to bypass the yard leads should they be occupied due to switching operations. I think I accomplished both of those goals. New Alternate Version: Previous Version:
City Job 2.0 coming out! Keeping fingers crossed for surgery to happen. Coal train looks powerful. We love the mail train. Making room sounds interesting. Been a long time since I heard "Aurora Postage Stamp". Southern forty-footer. Sorry about Sorry. You'll do better next time. The DPM looks cool. New building kit will be interesting. Nothing beats a great running S12. Goals met! This past weekend was starting to draw a car diagram to make a stock car. This is going to be fiddly, I think. Bay window walls for the William Hull house were made as well. A new technique was used which looks promising. Have a warmer, healthier and safe week.
Scatterbrain week-end! Got the two RS-3 cabs numbered and dull-coated. Next up is applying Central Vermont decals for the two bodies (1950s colors). Other than that, I had a project suddenly appear that appealed to my creativity (one of those credit-card sized remotes that come with RGB LED lights, the membrane came unstuck and wouldn't stick anymore, so I put it in a plastic box along with two AA batteries in lieu of the 2025 coin cell - works better than the original...). I also tried, and failed, to make a homemade spot welder... It worked once and quit, or rather the huge 0-40 volt 7.5 amp lab power supply let its smoke out... ...Lots of very loud cussing ensued, in both of Canada's two official languages. I opened it up and I didn't see any toasted components... to be continued...
Happy to say I accomplished all the weekend goals. Likely due to it being largely out of my control. Saturday morning, we walked the half mile to the Bellingham Amtrak depot. The southbound was a few minutes late. Found a couple seats in coach and settled in for the ride. It was a Talgo train set built in 2012. Not sure what the status of these cars is in the long-term plans for Amtrak Cascades. Train was already nearly full of riders from Vancouver BC. Scenery was good! Arrived a bit late, but not terrible. Hotel let us check in early, so we dropped our bag and grabbed some lunch. After eating we walked to the waterfront. Then up the hill to the Pike Place Market. It was very busy. Not surprising for good weather on a Saturday and a cruise ship at the dock. After doing all the sightseeing we cared to do we walked back to our hotel. We found a taco place a couple blocks away and enjoyed some dinner before the game. Then a short walk to the stadium. Game was a bit of a letdown. Controversial referee decisions marred what had been an entertaining match. Sunday was clear, but cooler. The hotel oatmeal was adequate before we watched our European club on TV in the room. Then down to the restaurant next door for celebratory bacon and eggs. The hotel stashed our luggage in the back room, and we walked to the sculpture garden at the far end of the waterfront. Not quite as busy as Saturday. Local dance group practicing in the park. Joggers on the trails. Pretty typical weekend scene. The BNSF line runs right by the sculptures. Caught a couple trains while we were there. Back to the stadium for the afternoon match. A more interesting game this time, albeit still a loss. We swung by our hotel, picked up the bags and headed to King Street Station. About that time my phone lit up with the first of several schedule delay messages. Seems the train had broken down a few minutes south of Seattle. The renovated station was nice to look at while we waited. We left about an hour and forty-five minutes behind schedule. Amtrak swapped the train set. Unfortunately, the cafe car did not get stocked as fully as one might hope. I adapted to the adversity. The coach for the trip home was from the Horizon fleet. There was a plate stating it had been rebuilt, but no date. The interior was in better condition than the Talgo care we arrived in. In contrast, the Talgo coach felt roomier. Both rode reasonably well. Need to give the crew props for dealing with the situation in good humor. Both directions were near capacity, and we were almost to Bellingham before the line in the cafe dissipated. Seems Amtrak could add a second cafe car on this route, otherwise a very pleasant way to travel. Stay safe,
I hope it was something simple. Perhaps just stress related? Mine will do jumps upward in such instances.
Yes. Stress can cause a lot of problems. My blood pressure and coordination suffer when challenged for no known reason. Best wishes.
