Another weekend is in the books. How did you all fare? My weekend started at 4:30, Saturday morning to get ready for the trip to Galesburg Illinois. By 6:30 I was on the road for an enjoyable two hour drive. It was a cold but sunny day and made me appreciate Jessica's hard top! The show in Galesburg was at the Carl Sandburg Mall, and is what is considered by many as a "dead mall." It was kind of sad really, watching Santa Claus come to the photo area and only having a few kids show up the entire time I was there with my table. The local model railroad club that put on this show owns and operates the HO scale railroad layout that is in the middle of the mall. I snapped a few pictures before I left that day as the future of this model railroad is uncertain. The mall itself is slated to be torn down on March first of 2017. I guess it's just another Galesburg building that will join the many that have been torn down these past few years. There will be a few retail chains in the area of what is now the mall but the locals are not too optimistic of the future. I was able to sell a few things and just squeaked by in terms of making enough to pay the expenses of table rental, gas and food to put some money towards Wiggin Locomotive Works. After the show, I walked around the area that Bill and I are modeling and snapped up as many pictures in the low light as I could. My days of getting in Jess and just heading to Galesburg are slowly coming to an end. Sunday I slept in, then proceeded to get ready for the day by putting up the outside Christmas lights. The rest of the day was spent getting ready for Christmas and just relaxing a bit as work will now be even busier as we enter the Christmas season. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll assemble once again on Friday the 9th and start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
With the holidays coming up, didn't have much time to spend in the train room over the weekend, but did manage to get a few trees planted. Put three in front of the homes on the left side of the photo on Main Street. Also started putting some trees in on the hillside behind the roundhouse to try to give some depth to the scene. Still have more to put in.
After helping with our Christmas decorations and a few other weekend honeydoes -- I did manage to make huge progress on my main line's ballasting. I have roughly 5 feet to go. (From a starting point of roughly 38 feet of double track main line). Also started ballasting in the yard. Thanks, and hope ya'll had a great weekend, Wolf
My weekend was consumed by Christmas Parties and getting the Swimming Pool ready for summer. #antipodes Will have to see how much I can get done before 2017 rolls down the track...
I made a little progress on my Ye Old Huff N Puff Wood Bay Window Caboose before I ran out of glue. Then, I made a little progress on some basic scenery base shapes until I ran out of... you guessed it, glue. Then, I put a base coat of paint on the hill side surrounding the Westbound Staging entrance / tunnel until I ran out of.....brown paint. Then, I painted some more back drop and tried to blend in some darker clouds, but I wasn't satisfied with how they turnout, so I painted them over again. Not planning on any significant track work until sometime after Christmas, when the bank account recovers. In October, I ran out of..... Cork. In November I ran out of......Flex track. I've got a lot of stuff I need to buy to really get things going again!
Finished milling a Kato SD70ACE frame for ESU LokSound install , and double checked / reprogram the locomotives which acted up at the last show.
Got the house about 80% decorated for Christmas. Will finish that up tomorrow night or the next night. I did get into the train room and install more power wiring to the tracks I've put down so far. Takes a lot to drop feeders every 4 or 5' on a double track mainline, but its worth it. I ordered a Digitrax PS42 circuit breaker system for my 4 power blocks. That came in today. I also got out my Allegheny. I had a TCS WOW sound put in it last year. I ran it this weekend w/ an empty coal drag. Just a little treat to make all the work worth it. Dang thing will pull the white off of rice. The TCS WOW sound is great.
I tried to sell a few things at a small show in Joliet this past weekend. The show was small and not well attended, but it was put on by some very nice folks from a club in town. While I did not sell much, it was still a great time. There was an amazing amount of N scale for such a small show. Sometimes the small shows are better than the big ones as you tend to find more individuals selling their collections, rather than retail dealers. I found some older Micro Trains cars for $8 each and a pair of Atlas IAIS F-150 pickup trucks that I had been wanting. The show was held at a VFW. One fellow, a Vietnam vet himself, was donating all his proceeds to help disabled vets. He had a railroad map of the Chicago area, circa 1978. He wanted $10. I gave him $15 for it. I took my "layout" consisting of a Kato K1 set - which is just a simple loop. I figured when in rome..., so I ran a couple trains featuring "local roads". One featured GM&O and the other EJ&E. They drew some nice comments and a nice conversation with a fellow GM&O fan. After the show, I went downtown to visit the club as they were having an open house in conjunction with the show. It was free & certainly worth a stop. Some nice HO modules were displayed. It was further worth it for me as I was able to visit a friend in the West suburbs who was bed-ridden in the hospital. Plus Portillos' Malts!
Update on my ballasting: The main line is now ballasted. On to the yard. Hopefully all ballasting will be done this weekend. Thanks, Wolf
