Oh no, it's Monday again. RATS! I was having such a good time too. Oh well, lets see what transpired. Saturday: My friend came down from Michigan to set up at the Decatur Train Fair so I met him for breakfast at our favorite downtown diner. We then headed over to the show where he had a few tables set up to sell so I hung around there a bit then wandered around the show. I was bad in that I purchased a few more cars for the City Job. Most were for when I run 1970's BN era, a few for 1960's CB&Q era but ALL had body mount couplers as I have found these cars switch better on the layout. After around 2:00, we decided to head to the Monticello Railway Museum and walk the grounds. The Museum had lots of motive power running including the Southern Steam locomotive #401. We enjoyed the show and looked at all the neat displays including the recently completed switch tower and newly acquired PRR N5C caboose. I left early in order to get ready for our run session at the house. We had two guys from Kentucky and two of my club members from Bloomington show up. It was a fun time that involved pizza, drinks, train running and a lot of stories. Sunday: We took a relaxed approach. We stayed at the show until about 3:00 before heading back to my place and making plans for dinner. We agreed to meet Ang at one of our favorite restaurants in LeRoy. On the way, we explored the former mainline of the old P&E and found (new to us) spurs that served smaller industries. If there was ever a railroad that was begging to be modeled, the P&E is it! We settled in for a meal and a trip for some ice cream before calling it a night. Now my friend is on the road headed back to Michigan and I'm already planning next weekend. So how about you? What did you accomplish? Let us know. We'll come back here on Friday the 22nd to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
I did some labeling and organizing, and started putting down ground cover on Weaver Junction. Details at the link.
Well, I got the ugly picture for the week. No glitz, just roadbed glued down, showing how the "sausage is made". Spent a large part of yesterday framing the rest of the roadbed for the yard lead. It is also a "WYE" so trains can enter/leave the yard and go west or east bound. The foreground shows the track will widen as it is also the approach to Albemarle City. I framed the approach w/ homabed and infilled with matching thickness sheet cork. The staging yard is off in the distance behind the false wall.
In between preparing for my upcoming (This weekends) hunting trip. I got my GP-9's ready for decaling. (Their lettering back date project). I also got the lower headlight LED's installed and working. That's about it. Hope y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Not the most interesting train related activity, but I spent much of the weekend organizing and inventorying all my spare parts and supplies. Typically, I would get the rolls of resistors, packs of LEDs, screws, detail parts, etc., and then stuff them into plastic storage drawers (the stacked kind like one finds at Staples). I have known for a long time I needed something better, and after a couple recent 2+ hour searches of drawers for parts/tools I knew I had, well.... I purchased 3 of these Stanley organizers, and started cleaning house. The nice thing is I am also getting rid of most of the original packaging, which took up a lot of space, too. This is my electronics parts box.
I've started adding some topography to my layout-in-progress, using some 1-1/4 inch styrofoam insulation. I cut out, glue, sculpt and then vacuum up the uncountable little balls of styrofoam... To model rock faces, I'll crinkle some aluminum foil and use that as a mold for the plaster, poured between the foil and the foam. Once I'm satisfied with the topography. on comes ballasting and scenery. And scratchbuilding track bumpers.
Mocking up more roads and D’Amato Lumber... I just need to make a simple adjustment to the roof to fix the gap. The road is made out a styrene “no parking” sign that was simply painted with automotive body primer. It still needs to be striped.
Did you watch the same episode of Dan's models on TSGMultimedia's YouTube channel as I did. The one where Dan shows how he store all of his N Scale trucks and couplers and detail parts? lol
I ordered another Western Pacific Atlas GP35 in orange and silver from a somewhat local shop last night and I ordered an Atlas Burlington Covered Hopper and pre-ordered a green Atlas Northern Pacific caboose. Can't wait to get 'em!
While on a trip to Quanah to see family and friends, I ended up at the Quanah RR museum. They had this kind of Hallmark-ish type building, it was all cast and I tried to modify it but it is just to hard and I was afraid it would break, This is actually very close to HO scale and just what I was looking for. So, after I got the QA&P depot home. I decided to modify it to an extent, darken the windows and a few other little things, put some flat gel medium on the cast on Pine trees and then sprinkled some foam on them, dark washed the roof, made another Quanah sign for the front, anyways I think it turned out OK. I then had to decide where it was gonna go, had to remove a couple nice scratch built buildings, lay some more track, but all in all it was worth it. It is quite a Grandiose building for a 113 mile railroad, but in the early 1900's these folks had visions of building to El Paso TX, I can only imagine what rail traffic would be like had they not ran into the depression while building this little giant of a railroad. Now basically nothing remains of the original RR towards Floydada TX. Here it is, out of the box, just as I brought it home. Here it is installed, with a few extras. Thanks for looking.
