We're back from what was hopefully a great weekend. Let's see how we all did. Saturday: Was as planned, my buddy was waiting for me at the dinner, although I was running about 20 minutes late. We had a good breakfast then went over to the Lincoln Square mall in Urbana to finish our set up. I had had been over Friday night to set up my three modules, now we just needed to set his five modules up and get everything running. By show time, we were off and running trains. That's my buddy, switching out some cars for Galesburg Casting on my module. If you ever hear me speaking of the Taco Hideout in my railfan adventures with Brian, there it is off to our right just behind the trees. The restaurant started around 1964-65 so it fits our era and it as well as the tracks immediately in front of us are still there. First day of the show was busy and we got a lot of great comments. There is still a population of modelers however who don't understand the fun in a switching point to point layout, at least here in the Midwest. We ran trains until 6:00 then headed out to enjoy dinner with Angela and get some much needed sleep. I had been up since 4:00 and my buddy left Michigan at 1:00! Sunday: We ran more trains, the show was slower as is expected for Midwest Sundays at a show, so we had enough time to run two operations. Here you can see my NW2 pulling a string of cars forward to allow my buddy to switch out the cars at Galesburg Casting. You can also see the repairs I made to the parking and crossing areas using polystyrene versus the major brand Spackle. No more stalls on this section! I call this image "Bittersweet". I have been coming to the Urbana Lincoln Square show, off and on since 1999. Back then, it was a true mall with anchor stores and major retail. Like most malls across the United States, it has lost all of it's major retailers and now is mainly empty with a few local shops occupying the spaces that the major retail stores once had. Even the model train show itself was gone for a number of years, but it came back in 2015 and so did I. The image above is my last train dropping off my buddy's cars before we pulled everything and packed up for the last time at this show. I'll have a lot of fond memories of Lincoln Square and I hope it continues for may years to come. Once packed up, my buddy and I stored our modules at my place since we have the show in Decatur this weekend. we grabbed a great meal and he went home to Michigan. We'll do it all over again starting next Friday where we operate at our first and last Decatur Illinois show. So how about you? What did you get accomplished? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 7th to start all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get too much accomplished this weekend. My module is located in the unfinished junky 4 car garage, under our apartment. My father-in-law showed up Saturday morning, with a truck full of wood and pegboard to build my son a workbench. Dust was flying so I had to cover everything up. I quickly realized that this set up is not going to work. I can't have Dust stuff flying around especially how Im modeling winter. One of the garage bays is isolated with the walls, sharing the oil tank. So I decided to move all my stuff in there, including my module so Now set up in there, of course it's smaller, but it will work for now, and everybody will be happy. It could be a lot worse I guess! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I finished the assembly and installed a couple of oil pump jacks (I still need to weather them a bit). And -- I did a sound decoder transplant in my BLI PA-2's. I also did a bit more detailing on them. (Sorry - no video) I will be changing the number boards to reflect the train number -- Daylight #99 - or - #98. Thanks, Wolf
Between guests and furniture moving, I didn't even get started on the backdrop - maybe this week. But I did at least get a good start on the engine service tracks and the yard. It'll be nice to have someplace to park the crane and the snowblower.
I was able to get my Kato F7 ABA string of SP black widows upgraded to ESU decoders. LokSounds in A units, LokPilot in B. Also detailed the units with the BLMA EMD detail kit. Still have to speed match and fiddle with a few settings to get them ready before the next show this coming weekend. Photos to come
I went to a semi-annual hobby show on Saturday, and I wasn't very impressed. There are a lot of different modeling types - trains, RC aircraft, military, etc., but for the second time in a row (last time was November), the number of vendors/displays with trains has diminished. And the prices! Used items, locos or rolling stock, are either the wrong scale, wrong era, nearly full-blown retail in price, or very poor quality (sometimes pricey poor quality). One used freight car, good condition, without Kadees, was for $15. Two weeks ago, in Ottawa, in a local club's flea market, I could have found something similar for $5, with Kadees. This may be the last time I attend this show. Parking is awful (especially when it's raining slush, like Saturday) and content is less and less interesting for me. The only advantage is that they're less than a half-hour drive from home. Otherwise, I'm pondering and guesstimating how I'll fit a CN comfort cab to an Athearn GP38-2.
Well if you need a cab - Miniatures by Eric is your best bet. if you have a cab - saw and file . . . .
I have two cabs, one already decorated and taken off a bought-used Kato SD40 that was modified with the cab (would have bettert on an SD40-2, but it was a parts loco anyway - the decoder mod was a rat's nest of wiring... a miracle the shell actually fit). The other is undecorated. I hope to put some order in the Kato frame/drive to be able to make it run again - at the very least to have a spare in the highly unlikely case one of my other Kato SD40s goes kaput. I did make some calculations and test fits of such a cab to an Athearn SD40-2, but the drive mechanism and frame casting interfere with the fit - Athearn filled the inside of the shell as much as they could, including the short hood. and there's a boss jutting up from the frame where the standard cab's nose ends (requires milling metal off, means taking whole kit and kaboodle apart, etc.). A comfort cab's snout is shorter than that of a standard EMD short hood, so the drive mechanism butts up against the inside of the snout of the comfort cab. My conundrum is eyeballing the fit of the cab on an Athearn GP38-2 shell, taking into account how much space Athearn's innards take up. I need a bit more time - and coffee - to figure this one out before the razor saw comes out. As the carpenter's saying goes, measure twice, cut once.
