Welcome back everyone. I Hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot done. Let's get started. Saturday: I awoke to the lovely smell of banana muffins and my lovely wife had even prepped a hot cup of Earl Grey for me. I got started in the cold garage and worked on the legs for the HO layout. By noon, I had run out of clamps so I switched my attention on the holders for the other HO layout. Ang found pavers in the small out building and brought them to the deck. I had ripped out the area between our back deck and garage last spring. The wood walkway and stairs to the deck had rotted. We started digging out the area that we would fill with pavers then went into town for supplies and then enjoyed a nice Chinese meal. We ended the night relaxing with the pups and watching camper videos on YouTube. Sunday: The time change had the pups confused as linier time as we know it is a man made construct. Regardless of the "extra hour" our four legged alarm clocks had us up. After my morning routine, it was back to the garage to finish the legs. I started sanding the legs when my Father in law showed up with much needed rock for the pavers. The rest of the afternoon was spent on digging, dumping rock and sand, leveling paving bricks and installing the wood stairs. I'm sore, and definitely not 21 anymore. We celebrated our little engineering marvel with pork chops on the grill and cold adult beverages. After a nice dinner, he headed home and I finished the support structure for the portable switching layout and got it up stairs by 8:30. Now the portable layout is off the floor. A busy weekend but still didn't get everything done....RATS. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 12th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Goo mornin to Y'all, I completed another F7 set. This is class DF-8 The only class that "B" units were not purchased for. Thanks, Wolf
So I got sick and tired of my VO-1000 not running with the new DCC decoder, so I decided to put the stock light board back in. I discovered a short in the loco, stripped it down, reassembled it, repeated many times...finally tested it with a 9 volt, it is my power pack....ugh....
I hate the time changes. They both happen on a night I regularly work. It messes up the whole crew both times. We end up tired and very grumpy. My next module assembly is laid out and waiting, waiting. Just too pooped to get more done. Yesterday I found a detail part on-line I need, so will be ordering it today. Decided I don't like a couple of cars with vertical brake staffs which seem too tall. Did some research and I will be cutting those down a little bit. Started replacing some stirrups on a gondola, but fatigue and some Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes ended that. Hope to finish those today.
Pretty much got done what I predicted. Saturday was the train show. Spent quit a bit of time at the Sipping and Switching Club’s modular layout. It is a ginormus layout that is really done well. Some picts below. Yesterday I applied trees and ground cover at the top and base of a rockwall. From the show:
Busy weekend for sure. The IIntermountain Train Expo put on by the Northern Utah Division of the NMRA kept me hopping for two days. I spent the day Saturday sitting at the the contest table. Sunday morning I sat at the ticket table for a bit then was able to walk around. Found a few items at the used dealers that I couldn’t refuse. I found two undecorated Atlas RSD 4/5s that I can use. Sunday afternoon I spent doing some NMRA evaluations on a few nice models. Saturday I was also able to work on three locomotives while sitting at the the table. I stripped the factory decals off three steam engines and redecaled them. I had quite a few people stop and ask questions about what I was doing. I also ordered another BLI Santa Fe 2-8-2 to go with the new to me Santa Fe heavyweight Passenger cars I found. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Saturday I was able to visit the open house at the South Bay Historical Railroad Society in Santa Clara. First event I have been able to attend since before the pandemic. Really enjoyed seeing the progress on N and HO layouts and visiting with the guys there. Before the pandemic I had donated a few items from my old layout for a new logging section they were planning on the N scale layout. While the section is still not completed, I got to see a couple of those (the open shed and the sawdust burner) in their new home. Found quite a few nice items at good prices in their company store and purchased a few things. Sunday I worked on finishing more turnouts and started laying track at one end of the Carling yard. As I do this I am starting to plan how turnouts are going to be controlled and how the yard will operate. It was an enjoyable weekend but and our cats all did struggle a bit with the time change.
Another weekend that seems to have just vanished. In between surviving the multipole trips across the the ATL, I did manage to pick up a couple of railroad and model railroad magazines, run trains for an hour or so, piddle with a scenery item, and just soak in what all I would like to do. So many "little" project ideas keep popping up. On a non train note, in the last 5 days, my son has completed his board of review and is now an Eagle scout plus completed his induction into the Order of the Arrow. His birthday is next week and he met his goal of hitting both of those milestones before his 17th birthday! He has worked super hard to get this done and I have to admit, I am a proud dad! Now back to the regularly scheduled model railroading program. Hope you all have a great week!
Here are some photos from the Free-Mo modules under construction. This is shaping up to be a very complicated interchange, and we still have one more route to lay out. The modules were designed to go together in one or two different ways, but in this configuration, we realized that you couldn’t get from the wye to the far module without reversing. The red line shows where the new route will go. We will use a Central Valley curved turnout kit on the curved leg of the wye, but all the other switches will be Peco. I’ll also need to hand lay the diamond where the new route crosses the perpendicular mainline. Let’s just say our soldering irons and auto reversing modules will be working overtime. We had been throwing around the idea of signals too, but I think we need to get the track down first before we get in too far over our heads.
Made decent progress on the small additional shelf I'm building for my adjunct DCC throttle. As usual, I'm overengineering it, making it removable and replaceable in case I want to upgrade the throttle someday.
Friday, bowling was okay, made average but the team lost 5 points and we fell out of first. Saturday, went to the club, sparse attendance as the weather was so nice, ran my EL trains and found a few cars with problems and fixed those. Managed to finish the Red Caboose R70-15 Reefer and got a coat of paint on it so it has time to dry for decaling. Also started on building an Athearn 2970CF Covered Hopper kit. Sunday, I finished the 2970CF Covered Hopper kit and started work on putting a load of pipes on a Wheels of Time bulkhead flat. Also stripped off the masking on a 40' trailer so I can decal it this week. Not on the weekend, but I put up the Christmas lights outdoors today since the temperature is in the 60's, it was usually in the 20's with a blizzard when I was younger, now I plan ahead. Rick Jesionowski
A friend of mine invited me to the South Bay Historical Society open house in Santa Clara, Ca on Sunday and then, surprised me with a visit to two layouts. One was Jack Burgess' Yosemite Valley and Dave Adam's On3 D&RGW Durlin Branch. Unfortunately, I was too awestruck by Jack's layout to take photos but I did take a few of Dave's:
Wowie! Where do I start? Great projects! Also, let's stop daylight savings time. I feel confident we here are all proud of the new Eagle Scout (and his dad). I agree with the "complexity" remark in the post above. I like to keep it simple myself. Looks very interesting though. Early Saturday I went ahead and nearly completed one of the covered hoppers. A friend at the local club had asked to see one when I finished it. I did not want to keep him waiting so I shared the Frisco hopper with him and another fellow. It was shy of stirrup steps (side steps?) and is now complete and on the module. Three more on the way. Pictures will come later. All have fun and be safe.
Sometimes things don't go as planned. Saturday afternoon I ventured to the Makerspace to use my two hours of laser time. I was ready to make the final, refined cuts for my Mikado disc drivers. While getting organized the person who seems responsible for the engraver, and taught my intro class, came over to see how it was going. He then shared that it had been necessary to replace the focal lens. On Friday night a user had allowed smoke residue to build up on the lens until it cracked from overheating. He proceeded to take the mechanical focus jig to a workbench for adjustment. After his return, we chatted for a few minutes about my project. Then he grabbed his gear and left. I am not sure exactly why, but things were not as before. The progress I had made on Wednesday could not be replicated. I tried adjusting the settings, using my previous efforts as a reference, but could not get close to the quality I had before. Was it the lens? The focus jig? Me? The tides? Still so much to learn about using this tool. I will try to set up some time in the near future to learn how to troubleshoot these sorts of problems myself. Overall my weekend was not too bad. Just nothing to show from my modeling time. Stay safe,
Congratulations to your son! Quite an accomplishment. We got the Halloween decorations down and packed away. The bins are back in their spot in the basement. Got the Thanksgiving decorations bins up from the basement and about half done with decorating. Sunday my wife got her covid booster and flu shot. She was feeling a little fatigued by evening and that is why the decorations only got half done. I got everything moved back in place in the basement after getting the railing installed on the steps. Did not get to the layout or any trains.
* Friday: Got my best yet vid of an Acela. * Saturday: Found a 'cone' printing program online: "A cone, optionally with the top cut off. (In that case, it’s called a frustum). Can be used to help create the geometry for a beaker, vase, party-hat or lamp shade" 'Frustum' - use that word to impress the boss. ☻ With this I can create 'K-Cup Koffee Kiosk' for the layout. * Almost finished 'construction' phase of the 'Eastern End' of the layout. * Today: Completed the 'Main Line' for continuous running and ran a short train round and round the 18' loop, (36' total). A lot of thanks to the 'Minister of Land Management', (my wife), who directly assisted in the construction.
Didn't do much this past weekend except add a few more mock-up pieces. I can never make my mind up And watched the season premiere of Yellowstone with family members. Love that show. And got frustrated with XtrkCad as I can't even figure out the simple use of it yet? Not really sure why? Looks like a really good program. Might have to start a thread to get help?
