Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend with many things accomplished. Let's see how we all did. Saturday: I woke up with a monster migraine and the cold, wet weather did little to help. I did manage to get going around 1:00 to my "not so local hobby shop" for his open house and 10th year of being open. While there, I picked up my 2021 Walthers catalog and the RH HO turnout I need for my switching layout. Also while there, I met up with my old friend Steve and another old railroad buddy from our NTrak days. The three of us have longingly looked into the past of the "glory days" of NTrak here in Central Illinois, but the local clubs have gone to TTrak or are just not active anymore. Since the three of us our prototype modelers, we agreed to start our own FreeMo N modules. Nothing formal, just three guys getting together to run trains, FreeMo style. We hope to start building modules soon. Sunday: A nice relaxing day. I made biscuits and Gravy for breakfast and cleaned up the office/shop and got to attend my first Virtual Train show. With train shows being cancelled far into 2021 here in my area, the virtual train show is the next best thing. It was fun to see the fellow manufacturers and what they were working on and seeing what I need to pre-order with my dealer. I finished the virtual train show and enjoyed a nice dinner with Angela before retiring and enjoying an episode of Star Trek. So how about you? What did you accomplish? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 20th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Well I got nothing done. Sunday was a bust. I got home at 3 am and spent the day dragging. Although this weekend I did spend some cash for some necessary items for the modules. Today I will get back to wiring. I’ve been asked to give a clinic on basic wiring in February. Time to take a whole lot of photos sonic a little together a decent PowerPoint t presentation.
We went to pick up the new kitchen chairs and table on Saturday. The chairs fit in the wife’s Sportage but the table did not, so we are going to have to get that delivered. No sure what happened to the rest of Saturday. We stopped at few places on the way home with the chairs but before I knew it was bedtime. Sunday, I assembled the chairs. We changed over the tablecloths on the dining room and kitchen tables and did some other household cleaning. I weathered the two Intermountain boxcars that were on the bench. I need to seal them. I also prepped four more of the Atlas Trainman offset hoppers for weathering. I now have twelve hoppers in the pipeline for weathering.
Did a little work on the box car, as hoped. But not as much as desired. Also, been researching, seeking freight car stirrups (brass!) easily adapted to HOn30. No certain answer found, as yet.
A couple of weeks ago I posted my plan to build a new refinery flare unit but did not get it done. I did complete the unit yesterday. Be well, Carl
Well, again.. "The best laid plans of mice and men", and all that good stuff. Sometimes the weekend and train plans just don't turn out like one thinks it will. The good news is I got to spend time in the train room. Got the wall prepared behind Albemarle City to put in the new back drop the USPS kept telling by tracking would be to me Saturday. Nothing, nadda, zippo, nil, zilch. I got nuzzing. So I spent time finishing up the harnesses I started last week. Got six of them made up and started putting in the Tortoise machines. Found 2 of the turnouts with point-rails that had gotten "gooked" up wouldn't transfer juice as the turnout operated. The frog switching I put in worked great. So I had to spend some time cleaning the contacts on the point rails. A trick I've learned over the years is gun cleaner spray (CPI) works well on cleaning nickel-silver track and turnout contacts. Got them working. Also worked on a cantilever mock-up to finally determine how the signal masts should be positioned on the cantilevers I built. I DID get a notice this morning, about 20 minutes ago from USPS that my backdrop was delivered and sitting on my front porch. And so it goes. Methinks there is merit in the term "going postal".
I finally finished filing the parts for the two steel trestle towers last night. They are ready to put together now which will do sometime today. Joe
Got a slow start to things this weekend. Friday got a shingles vaccine which left me with a sore arm and aching joints and muscles through most of Saturday so I did not get out to the train room until Saturday evening when I started this next layout expansion by removing the temporary return loop. By Sunday everything was fine and I got the hard board mounted into the corner and painted. And the back drop trimmed, shown here temporarily held in place with tape. Going to need to figure out how to blend in the back drop with the already existing scenery at the right end. The backdrop section on the right is an insert that sits in a window. And got the river base cut out from hard board and started installing the sub road bed for the line that will be in the rear of the scene. The section where the concrete trestle will go gets cut out. Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and stays healthy.
Oh, I almost forgot. While suffering through the side effects of the shingles vaccine on Saturday I put together an update on my blog covering how the auto sequencer in the staging yard works. http://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/2020/11/yard-sequencer.html
As I suspected -- no modeling for me this past weekend. Saturday: We helped our daughter with her new oven. Sunday; - We had our granddaughter - so, all attention was on her. Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Nothing like a gas flare to make you day. The rest, great too. Me, a little while ago installed cylinders and crosshead guide. Also laminated material for the cab assembly. Preliminary measurement of stack height to top of rail, fifteen thirty seconds of an inch. Nearly spot on! All be well and have fun.
Well, best made plans went out the window. Had a bit of a headache Saturday so spent the better part of the day in bed. Saturday evening, I discovered that the Southern heritage unit 8099 was at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth GA. Wish I had discovered that Friday night. It had delivered the passenger car Marco Polo that NS was donating. They took the 8099 and pulled the 6900 (a Southern E unit) out beside it. Great pics on the Facebook page for the museum. I called Sunday morning at 10 and was told it would be there all day. Well, got ready after breakfast and made the hour and 20 minute drive across Atlanta arriving by noon only to find no 8099. According to the guy I spoke with at the gate, it had been gone about an hour and a half. So, it left about 30 minutes after I called. To add insult to injury, they had moved the E unit back under the shed. Was in a foul mood when I got home so wasted the rest of the day sitting in my recliner watching TV.
Well, as I figured, Sunday was spent doing domestic stuff. In some ways, it was a nice break form the A, A & IDC. Saturday, however, we aligned the track and glued some of it along the incline. There are bumps in the rail joints in a few places causing derailments; the V11 problem strikes again! I'll have to file those. The bigger issue are the two step transitions instead of smooth slopes on either side of the elevation change. Uncouplings galore with my MT-equipped engines and Kato rolling stock. At this point I'm too vested in Kato to change all my passenger car trucks, and I don't necessarily want to change out all my Kato engine couplers to boot. Ran my new Bachmann J and the Kato ACS-64 for a bit. The accompanying photos show what the A,A & IDC is all about. N&W J 608 is hauling the Pennsy Special (GG-1's and Pennsy E-8s are being DCC converted, and I can't find decent N&W cars), while ACS-64 is hauling Amtrak #1xx. SceneIt, my MUCH better half, got her fancy new contour ruler and used it and a hot foam wire to sculpt the base pieces of the mountain on the inside of the far curve to try it out. The first picture shows the sculpted foam.
Last week I installed Sergent couplers in my Arrowhead Railgon. That probably doesn't sound like much but it was pretty involved since the model was designed to use long shank couplers. I ended up removing the screw boss/coupler pivot point and moving it toward the end of the car to accommodate a standard length coupler. Because of the brake rigging detail under the draft gear/coupler box lid I had to be careful with what I removed. In the end I was able to get the couplers installed and everything works fine. Here are photos of that process: So this weekend I just weathered the model. My usual approach is to paint the trucks and couplers with burnt umber enamel then brush on Bragdon powders before the paint dries. I brushed powders on the rest of the model and sprayed it with flat clear. Another round of rusty brown powder on the clear coated interior gives it a texture rusty enough to give you tetanus just looking at it.
Friday evening we picked up a pizza and a couple salads curbside. It was a fun treat and had some leftover pizza for the weekend. Practiced with CorelDraw a bit more. Saturday we started house cleaning for the coming holidays. I took a limb down that was hanging over the back pad. The rainy season has well and truly begun with very high winds expected on Tuesday. Picked up some of the groceries we need for the next two weeks. Got a chance to do some prep on the T-trak module kits. Sunday we finished the cleaning. Started wrapping gifts that need to be shipped. Big modeling accomplishment was building the modules. Good learning experience. Both easier and more difficult than I expected. Certainly less difficult than the Ntrak modules I built years ago. Figured it out well enough to put them together. No track or scenery yet, but I am not feeling any time pressure to go to any shows. In fact we are going backwards on the Covid-19 restrictions. Hope we can get it right this time, at least until the vaccines are available. Stay safe
