Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot done. Thank you to everyone for the well wishes on my dad, he is recovering nicely from his surgery but still recovering at hospital. Hopefully he'll be home early this week. Saturday: I worked most of the morning then signed off at 10:30am. I called Ang to see how her and the pups were doing, then got cleaned up and went to go see my dad. The hospital is an hour north of here so this was the first time I had seen him since Tuesday. He was doing well and we visited for about six hours. I went home another way and enjoyed the scenery, stopped for dinner and then went home. Sunday: I had heard through social media that CSX was doing a lot of work on the old Concord B&M yard so since it was a beautiful day, I decided to check it out. After a round of calls to check in on my dad and Angela, two loads of laundry and some cleaning I set out to my favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch and went to Concord. I got pictures of the old B&M switch tower which unfortunately will be demolished this week. In the 1990s, this was the office of the New England Southern RR. I'm fortunate that I had the opportunity to go in it back then. Next I went north where the B&M switched the NH Liquor store as well as the old freight house. I snapped as many images as I could as the B&M freight building will also come down this week. CSX has been doing a lot of work and sad as it is to see some B&M history go, I would rather see a railyard used then reminisces of the old days and see ghosts. After images, I went home, fired up the mower and mowed dad's front field before the rain. I relaxed with a quick drive with the Mustang on a winding country road before putting her back and getting ready for bed. And like that, the weekend was over. So how about you? What did you get done over the weekend? Let us know. We'll come back on Friday the 11th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a good week, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Hey All, A good ~105-degree weekend here in S. Texas, so in from yard work by noon and plenty of time for hobbies. I spent some time working up my "10-minute modeling tips" presentation for our luncheon next week, and made some progress on decals for the W&NW project. These 40-ft cars are repaints of a set of Athearn RTR cars (with roller bearing trucks added). The white decals are from Precision Design Co., with artwork assistance from Bill Brillinger. The yellow car with black decals are a home-brew set. (Yes, I put car numbers on the ends of the cars after this photo...LoL). Have a good week All, -Bob T.
[mention]Jim Wiggin [/mention] glad your father is doing better. Saturday I relaxed and figure out the track plan for one of the yards for my next layout and through the first town. It’s going to be the Metra Coach yard up in Antioch, IL through the town of Antioch. Right on the Wisconsin border. Sunday I did a few chores, took my youngest to a Lego convention and watched Lego trains run and supported a friend who had a (non-train-related) display. Then I built out some more track plan, through Lake Villa, the next town. I ran out of steam as I worked on a staging yard. And then the weekend was over. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Good mornin to Y'all @Jim Wiggin - Great news about your Father. Sat: After our weekly grocery purchase and mowing and edging our back yard, I was able to get in some work on my Cotton Belt F7 project. Shaved off the cast on hand rails added diaphragms. Sun: In the AM I was able to drill the holes for the new stand off hand rails In the PM we had a get together for Mom's birthday -- it was great fun. Y'all have a great week, Wolf
Good morning all. @Jim Wiggin here's to a homecoming for Dad! This weekend went as thought. I got most of the cardboard lattice up with the exception of over the 3rd tunnel which goes up to where the coal mine will be. I have to complete that liner first. I should be able get that done during the week and the rest of the lattice up before next weekend. Also, I installed 3 120V pilot lights over the power strips that are around the layout and remote from the central Digitrax rack area. 3 1/2 weeks to the start of college football coming up. Best time of the year. Fall weather, football, and model railroading. Have a great week all!
Here we are at Monday again already! @Jim Wiggin continued prayers for your dad's speedy recovery. Great to hear he is recovering. Saturday, I had an hour in the train room. Powered up the layout and let the trains run laps while I drank some coffee and pondered new projects. Did sort through some scrap materials looking for ideas. Then it was off for errands and an early dinner with friends. Started the laundry Saturday night. Sunday involved all our normal Sunday morning activities plus more laundry. At his request, we took my son to a place called IFLY and let him try out indoor skydiving. After that we went to dinner. Then it was back home, finished up the last of the weeks laundry, and reading a little of the latest issue of Diesel Era. Hope you all have a great week
Good morning from cloudy, warm and muggy Northeast Ohio, rain and thunderstorms are off and on all day. Friday, spent the night at the bowling alley having our orginizational meeting for the season, and the onto the bar for a while. Saturday, had a club get together where we ran some trains, ended up fixing some track at the coal mine as engines were losing power at the switch points and the transition from Code 100 to Code 83. Later in the evening I did some work on another Tichy coal hopper kit. Sunday, Did some laundry and we moved some excess furniture out to the garage so Habitat for Humanity can pick it up. Also painted the sides on an ART Reefer kit along with dull coating a couple of completed cars. Got out the Kato RS2 and disassembled it so I can had the road specific detail, found out I have to order a new exhaust stack to match the prototype. Also got an Atlas FMC 5347 car out to assemble and found they completely assembled the car so all I have to do is paint it, but I changed out the Accubreak Couplers and since the manufacturer glued the return spring for the end of car cushioning to the coupler pocket I destroyed it while trying to remove it and place it on the replacement coupler pocket for Kadee's. Also did some more work on the Tichy coal hopper. Rick Jesionowski
It will take a bit of work to demolish those old buildings. Did that tower have a name or letter designation? Or was it just something such as "Concord Yard"?
I had some ideas for modeling tasks. But was diverted by following a powerboat racing event all weekend. Last of the season. But soon football will probably be a distraction.
@Jim Wiggin good to hear your father’s recovery is going well. Prayers that it will continue. Saturday, we made all our planned outings. We hit the produce store, the pharmacy, PetSmart, and BJ’s. I did some heavy-duty floor cleaning, trying out a new Swifter for wood floors. I even threw a load of clothes into the washer and dryer. Sunday the wife and daughter headed out to Home Goods while I made an Amazon return at Kohl’s. Went to Home Depot to get a quart of paint we need for some touch ups. The original canned dried up on us. Lastly, I made a stop at the grocery store. We gave the Guinea pig cage a good cleaning. I still have to trim their nails. I do the trimming while the wife holds them. I fixed the couplers on a Rapido PRR F30D TOFC. I also remedied the problem with them dragging. It was a combination of using the tool to scrap out the axle pocket on the truck and adjust the molded brakes which were rubbing against the wheels. I installed a decoder in one of my Bowser Alco Demonstrator Century C-628’s and programmed the address into. I then added it to the consist of the two Reading C-630’s. However, the C-628 runs faster than the C-630’s so I now have to try my hand at speed matching for the first time.
Good morning everyone, I did work on those diode matrixes, finishing one and getting a good start on the 2nd one. Also I put together a blog posts on the road number changes I did on a covered hopper I had with duplicate numbers. Tracks across Nevada: Patching a patch job (palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com)
As expected, I spent most of Thursday and part of Friday reading and highlighting the papers that I had downloaded and then much of Friday and Saturday getting started on writing this semester's research paper. Friday evening, my wife and I went to the food truck gathering at the local university campus, which is the beginning of Alliance's Carnation Festival, and had delicious gyros and fresh cut French fries for dinner. Saturday, after spending a few hours at my Mom's house with one of our sons sorting through things he might want to take home, we returned to the food trucks intending to have dessert, but instead had more French fries. Sunday, of course, was church, followed by our monthly business meeting at the Sebring Model Railroad Club. My proposals to buy business card sized invitations and yard signs for our November open house was approved and the membership chose to buy 2000 business cards and 20 yard signs without wire stands. Most everyone assumed that we could find at least 20 wire stands leftover from the contentious Ohio ballot initiative after the election this week. No action was taken on insulating the club's crawlspace. We're sort of vapor locked. We can't afford to do what many members want, and too few members are interested in helping do the labor of doing it ourselves. It might just be another cold winter.
Great history pics! (@Jim Wiggin, great "Dad" news.) Crisp boxcars. Relaxing and figuring is important. Cotton Belt F7 gonna' be great. Coal country pic! @BNSF FAN, a well-rounded weekend. ART reefer! Power boat racing = distraction. Speed matching is important. Back in the matrix. (nice looking blog.) If only the research paper could include model railroading. One time I was going to eat lunch but some ice cream accidentally fell in my mouth. As of yesterday, two of three loco cabs are complete. #3 only needs a roof. Then on to other stuff. Have a productive week.
@Jim Wiggin - Very good news for your Dad! Back to work today, after three weeks of R&R. Dang, that does a lot of good. The last weekend was spent putting Kadee #5's on a couple of cars, both of which had truck-mount horn-hooks. I removed the latter, cutting off the old draft gear from the trucks, and body-mounted the Kadees. To line up the couplers with everything else, I shimmed the draft gear with 0.030" styrene and they line up perfectly. Also started work on a Roundhouse Old Timer kit of three 30' MOW cars. Cut three 40 gram pieces of flat steel to ballast them up to close to NMRA weight standard. Still plenty of work to do. Nah, not work. Fun!
From what I have read, it was simply Concord. The sister tower was in Manchester yard, next city south. That tower was torn down last summer. North of Concord was pretty wooded. Three lines went from Concord, Concord and Claremont (North West to Claremont NH), The Northern, which went through my home town and connected to White River Junction and the Lincoln Branch which went into the White Mountain region. By the time I got to visit the interior of the tower, mid 1990s, New England Southern used the Lincoln branch to serve customers in Tilton and the lakes region.
Not sure if you ever saw this page, but I am always curious about these places names: https://train-orders.com/TOUR/B/BAM/BAM.html
