Well another weekend has ended. Hopefully it was productive. Saturday I started early on working on WLW stuff. Mainly artwork for boxes that are on their way for my detailed locomotives that I'll be selling. The Paducah is at a stand still until I get the detail parts I need to finish it up. So more artwork, more buying supplies and getting ready to make a website for all of this. I then worked on my Jeep a bit before calling Saturday good. Sunday was going to be the perfect "Do nothing but layout work day." Ang and Jared had left the house at 5:30 to head to Chicago and I had the place to myself. Unfortunately, a small stomach bug had other ideas... I did manage to carefully remove a section of track and install a turnout I've been trying to get to since before Galesburg so all was not lost. Hopefully I can wrap that section up this week. So how about you? How did you fare? Let us know what you did with pictures if you have them. Now here is a programming note. As I have tried to do in years past, I'll be doing a special long weekend modeling plans thread on Wednesday the 25th as some of us have Thanksgiving and the Friday after off. So we'll come back here on Wednesday the 25th to start off the long weekend and yes, the Holiday Season. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and... High Greens!
Very productive day yesterday. First day in a long time I was able to spend the whole day in the train room. I started off fixing the short. Mission accomplished. While I reputed the short my son made up some wreaths and decorated a few locomotives. After that we took and wired a switch and a spur that somehow got missed in September. Then we pulled out the power tools. We glued and nailed the fascia board to the carts and shored up the shelves. They are now ready for paint. Then I went to work on my folding bridge area that crosses in front of the doorway and got that built. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
Did run trains off and on, tweaked on the mogul and mallet, and a bit of track work amidst bits of outside work here n there. Also got the quicky Loksound install done on the Yellowstone, and so just had to do a pull test. Wow! Up the 5.3% with 28 cars! And it ain't even broke in yet! Next for it is more detailing and rebuilding to look more like the NP's 5000 series Z5's.
Didn't do much over the weekend work wise. clued down a few bushes and cleared out my hidden staging tracks for the first time in years. I don't store any locomotives or rolling stock in boxes with the exception of a few brass locomotives, but I did find a Milwaukee Road E-9 unit that I totally forgot that I had. Don't even remember getting it, but it is an extremely smooth running locomotive and is a brute when it comes to pulling. It pulled the freight train in the video below by itself out of staging tracks by itself. The grade out of the staging is about two and a half percent and it has no problems. Don't know what I'm going to do with it because I don't have any Milwaukee Road passenger cars and they wouldn't have shown up on my layout any way. Probably just run it. In the video below, an old pair of Atlas Alcos pull a train up the grade out of the hidden staging tracks. These locomotives came out some time in the early to mid 80's and still operate like new and as good as anything new on the market. Wouldn't mind having a few more.
I did get my portable DCC kit set up, built into a cheap plastic tool box. It's a "first draft" kinda thing, but so far it works well enough that upgrading it is way low on the priority list. Also fiddled with turnouts on the new switching layout, and I see that I need to acquire more flex track. Since my local hobby shop closed, it looks like I'll be travelling for some in the near future. I did order some online a while back, but shipping was outrageous enough to make a road trip worthwhile.
I think it was 30 cars and a caboose. Emptying out the staging/storage tracks to see what else I may have forgotten about. Those Atlas units have a lot of grunt. Probably could have handled more even with the grade.
Great video, Chet! Got started on lighting up this RDC; removing the unrealistic LED headlights and replacing them with a pair of 1.5v incandescents at each end, and a pair of red 1.5v taillights at the opposite ends, all directional, with interior lighting using the 6-diode setup. John
