Another weekend has come to a close. How did you do? The Champaign / Urbana Lincoln Square show went great this past weekend and looks like it will be on track for next year. A spring tradition in Central Illinois returns after a five year Hiatus. Saturday morning, I met the president of our club for breakfast and a quick set up. The T-trak set up was small, just about a dozen modules, but despite the size, it was a hit with the crowd. I worked the show the majority of the day Saturday with a few club members coming in to relive me for a break and Sunday, the club president and vice president came in to run their trains. I took a look at the show and and was impressed with the amount of vendors and displays the Champaign club got in and hope they can get even more in next year. So while no new projects were completed this weekend, a lot of running was completed. Now we as a club are getting ready for our big Spring meet in two weeks at Heartland College. If your in the Bloomington / Normal area, you should come and check out this show. No vendors just displays in N, HO and O scales and plenty of slide shows and presentations. Looks like I'll be working on my T-trak modules this coming weekend. So how about you? Any shows to report? How about some layout or module work? Whatever you got done this weekend, let us know! We'll come back here on Friday the 20th to start off another weekend. Until, have a good, safe week and... ​High Greens!
I took advantage of the nice weather Saturday and went into my garage to work on the legs for my layout table (HCD). I would have made it further but realized I was short one 8' 1x3, so next weekend it is! I also continued work on my lumber yard, just needs the roofs now, and then some paint, weathering & details.
I got my gas station finished and put it on the layout, I had to take out a couple trees but fit it in the 1930's era section of my layout: Here are some of the different components with the floor section made from cereal boxes: Here the dry transfer thermometer went in place, several of these came with the kit: It looks like someone ran into one of the pumps!! I like these little woodland scenics kits and have a small town made up of them: Thanks for looking!!
I spent some time with the little turntable. This a short N-scale model that I've converted to HO, because all it needs to do is turn a short engine. I got it wired up and it operates. I've laid down the roadbed, loosely, and next I'll put down the track. I did nothing on the grade crossing project, but our daughter Annie dropped in for a visit and we went out for a delicious sushi dinner.
The package mine came in was 1980, however they are abundant on ebay today. I shopped for a few days and got mine shipped to my front door for $16.00
Maybe this afternoon I will do a little daydream browsing. Something bringing back memories of the 1950's could be interesting.
No problem. Here it is from the top: And then from beneath: It's pretty elementary. There is a 12 VDC motor and pickups on the shaft. There's no indexing and I've got a DPDT toggle wired to the track power inputs to handle polarity. The turntable is about 9 inches across, the same as an Atlas deck model. I removed the N-scale track and replaced it with HO, cutting the ties down a bit with a Dremel so they would fit. I sprayed the inside of the pit with Rustoleum textured paint. It was already gray, but the textured paint has a rough surface and got rid of the shiny plastic look. I did the bridge with rust primer, which covered up the sloppy glue work from the previous owner. It turns well. I think it's a 1RPM motor. If I have trouble aligning it, I'll probably add a pushbutton to insert a resistor into the drive power as needed.
I've got to think about that a bit. That's the simple option, but pushing the button to bypass the resistor would make the turntable go faster rather than slower. Maybe that's OK. Or, it might be better to use a toggle.
All work is done on the Kato GP35, painted for CN 4000. I put in some Kadees and gave her a spin. Nice! Work has begun on the Atlas GP7, to become CN 4809. I put on the barrel-type headights and started painting it in the 1950s CN green and yellow scheme. When done, it will join two other GP7s aready in the fleet, 4816 and 4817. I put some Kadee 148s in to replace the two-piece plastic couplers that came with the engine (one of which broke when I dropped the chassis on my knee last Friday...).
