We're back at the station, and looking forward to the weekend. Grab a chair and a donut, pick your warm drink and gather around. Saturday: Though my day off, I'm still working part-time for my job in Illinois so I'll be spending some time on that as well as grocery shopping and yet another eye appointment. After all of that is out of the way, I hope to clean and organize the area where I hope to set up the City Job at least temporarily. Once cleaned, I'll be setting it up and if I'm lucky, with few distractions, I might even fix that section of track I fouled up at Galesburg this past year. Sunday: It is supposed to be nice and sunny. Since those warm summer days are quickly becoming more and more rare as the season changes, I hope to take Jess out and do a bit of Rail Archaeology mixed with (hopefully) some railfanning. Guess we'll see if the trains are biting or not. So how about you? What is on your list of work to do this weekend? Track work, scenery, painting, a train show? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Monday the 24th. Until then, have a great weekend, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
I'll be inside all day Saturday at the Mid Atlantic Railroad Prototype Modelers Meet (https://www.marpm.org/). There's a great line-up of interesting clinics set for tomorrow. I started off with an MARPM Open House visit to Lance Mindheim's layouts list night, and I'll finish up Sunday with Dave Vaughn's O Scale NKP layout.
My plans are simple --- continue to work on the Lark. Adding more roof detail to the observation -- then primer. Perhaps' I'll work on other projects -- we'll see. Y'all have a great weekend!! Wolf
Well since I got the wiring done on the roundhouse Monday now I can start ballasting and scenicking the area. Monday I need to visit the LHS for more ballast. I have some but not enough.
I'm going to start erecting poles for the trolley layout. I've marked 80 locations, so bought four more 1/8"x3' brass rods, total seven to cover the whole shebang. I would have bought realistic poles from a few vendors with beautiful products. But since this is only an engineering proof of concept just to see if I can get it operating without derailing or dewiring, I'll be ecstatic with joy. OK, I'll admit, engineers are weird.
I have a big car wiring project to do. I went on a trip to Germany this past summer, so of course I got some trains. I placed a big DCC order from Streamlined Backshop, a Trainboard advertiser, to upgrade those as well as some older models I already had. There is a sound decoder in my OBB class 1216, a decoder in the Railjet Steuerwagen (cab car) and one in my Spectrum ballast tamper. This weekend’s project is on an SNCF Z2. I got a decoder for it, as well as DCC lighting strips. They are an ESU product that I am pretty excited about. They have an integrated decoder in the LED strip for DCC control of the car’s interior lighting. There are different flickering effects, HEP, and random on/off functions for bathroom lights etc. It has red lights for making tail end markers (KATO superliner anybody?), as well as solder pads for optional cab interior lights or other auxiliary functions. Now I have to do truck pickups, a decoder installation, directional lighting, interior lighting, and all built around a micro 6 pin connector in between the two cars. Did I mention I have to paint a building for a new module too?
