Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and accomplished a lot. Let's get started. Friday: As predicted, I left work early around lunch time and started working on the layout. I experimented with gluing .010 plastic shims under individual ties of the code 40 to match up against the code 55 and after some work was pleased with the results. Rather than rush and glue the first spur in before dinner, I fought the temptation and set it aside. I also got the last two Tam Valley Switch boards installed. Saturday: I slept in, got up and made coffee and shuffled myself upstairs to get inspired. After three cups of coffee, I was ready to get cleaned up and start the day. I glued the first spur in that I had set up the night before and then started work on the other two spurs. It was a nice relaxing day, listening to podcasts and taking my time to ensure the track was smooth. By the end of the day, I had both spurs laid down and the one spur had its feeders installed. Since I'll be gone next weekend for the Amherst Railroad show next weekend, I had made reservations to a restaurant I had never been to in Bloomington. We enjoyed a nice quiet meal and each other's company for a few hours before going home and calling it a day. Sunday: Up and at it with coffee and the main task was to install bus lines for both the DC and DCC lines, then start installing feeders to the bus line. Since the layout is made of two modules, I use Anderson Power Poles to electrically connect the two modules. With this in mind I tried various methods of mounting both bus lines. By noon I had come up with a solution and started installing the feeders as well as the Tam Valley servos to the bus line. It is slow going as I test each section of track before going on. By dinner time I had installed all but one set of feeders on the first module. Almost got to run a train but that will now have to wait until I get back from Amherst. So how about you? What did you get done this weekend? Let us know. We'll return again on Friday the 26th to start the process all over again. As mentioned before, I'll be at Amherst with the Athearn crew next weekend, so please be patient with the upload on this coming weeks Weekend Modeling Plans thread as well as next Monday's Weekend Modeling Accomplishments thread as the schedule is tight when I'm on the road for shows. Until then, have a good week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
It was a productive weekend despite the 4 or 5 inches of snow. My kids shoveled this time around so I did not have to stress out my hip. My wife and daughter went to an English High Tea on Saturday and I went to the hobby shop in Claymont, DE. I picked up some more Rapido F30G TOFC flat cars, a Rapido NE Caboose for Western Maryland, and a couple of Roundhouse (Athearn) tank cars. Sunday was a lazy day that we put away some more Christmas decorations. Over the weekend I finished adding the window interiors on the Ashmore Hotel. I also assembled the four walls, the main roof, and the top floor. I installed one awning and have another one to do. I have the top floor roof and some details to do, and it is finished. I discovered I need some silver paint for the vents. There was more laundry to do.
Greetings all. This weekend went somewhat as planned. Spent Saturday AM getting our daughter's house ready for the market. Goes on sale this week. FINALLY! On the modeling front, I worked on the LCL building Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon. Took a good while to sort through kits and get the panels "loosely" arranged like I want. Also used old kits I have from the Walthers wall module system that "luckily" lined up perfectly w/ the upper level kits I am using. Also spent some time w/ the F7's and have a list of decoders I will order from TCS. Spent a little time w/ scenery at SL cabin, but not much. Yesterday afternoon I took an unplanned detour and razored out pictures from old C&O Historical Society calendars to add to my wall collection going up the stairs to the train attic. Here's a shot of the panel arrangement exercise w/ the LCL and most of the pictures I cut out. Have a great week all!!
Good mornin to Y'all Hope Y'all had a great weekend I did finish up the AT&SF H12-44 Hand rails, grabs and such had been added - awaiting paint And - put into service: Thanks, - and, Y'all have a great week!! Wolf
As, expected I did get some modeling done over the weekend. But Friday was no bowling, cancelled due to the snow we received, although I was sure I could get there, but as the league is made up of a lot of senior bowlers they do not like traveling in bad weather. Saturday, went to the club and we had our monthly meeting and afterwards I pulled out my Ann Arbor locomotives and cars to run around the layout, later I attended a memorial service for one of the directors of the Cleveland USBC. Went to dinner with one of our friends, his wife could not make it ass she was in the hospital with back pain and his brother died earlier in the week and he needed a break. Sunday, did the laundry and did some reading along with modeling, masked a boxcar so I could apply a second coat of paint to the car. Also did some work on the U23B and started on another DT&I RBL. Here is the completed work on the U23B, added lift rings in place of the cast on rings and the supplied grabs, left the bottom most grab off the body as a decal will be going there and I will install it after the decaling is done. On the RBL, I removed the poorly done floor and installed a Details West Floor unit, later I will add Moloco Coupler Pockets and the HyroCushion Underframe and then onto the detail parts for the sides and ends. Rick Jesionowski
Good morning everyone, All of my time in the train room this past soggy weekend was spent working on the propane dealer. All the chain link fence around the perimeter and all of the piping got done. The base got glued into its place on the layout, and the seams got an application of spackle then painted with the acrylic gray paint I am using to represent asphalt. So this industry is almost complete and by next weekend I should be working in a different area.
Greetings from a Chilly but Bright and Sunny McLean VA Painting and Puttering My wife helped me with colors and directed me to spots / areas that needed color. To the right is the 'Grey Rock Cut' The GP and 3 cars are on the Interchange which Leads to NoWhere: Forground is the 'Simple Bridge' in front of that will be a 'Mounument Valley' and da part of the 'Longhorn Bison Ranch" I am very pleased with the rocky / grey / black I will be using it to paint the 'Simple Bridge'
Slow going = better, sturdier results. The Ashmore is going to be fabulous. That LCL building is going to look cool. That H12-44 is looking cool too. Switch machines look intriguing. The U23b is one of my favorite more modern type diesels. I hate soggy weekends. I like simple stuff. So far, I have one turnout installed. It turns out that the tangent and diverging track area needed to be arduously reworked as well. I am currently working on the next turnout. It is the track to the freight house which means that while work is going on, a truck or two will be needed for transloading boxcars. You gotta' do whacha' gotta' do. I hope to be done with turnouts by week's end. Have a good week all.
It's been a while since I posted, but this past weekend and the next couple days are being spent preparing for the Amherst show with prototypes to be used in demos! Up first was Saturday's task, assemble a couple Throttles: These are only missing the encoder knob at this point, and they needed a bit of rework due to the display connector being wired in reverse to expectations. Sunday started with this ugly / hacky fix to the throttle: Ended up cutting the FPC connector off the main board and then cutting a chunk off a spare PCB so I could put a new connector on it and rewire things. It's a bit ugly but it will work for this coming weekend. I'll be ordering a new set of PCBs in a couple weeks based on the feedback from users. And then wrapped up with: Which is sitting on my workbench now to finish assembly, so far initial tests are positive. The only part I know of so far that doesn't work is the SD card adapter which is not critical for this week and is likely just a missing pull-up resistor which I'll be adding footprints for on the next revision. All of these are part of the products that will be announced at Amherst this coming weekend, if anyone is in the area (West Springfield, MA) please come by the Young building in/around booth 75. After I get back home from Amherst I'll post the new product announcements over in the other forum.
Thursday I should have done homework, but I had a headache, so I watched television instead. Friday was homework... all day. I got done before bedtime but had completed the part that I usually do on Saturday as well. Saturday, I caught up on a few chores around the house, and we decided it was time to take all the Christmas decorations down (though we considered leaving them up until our Texas kids arrive in a few weeks). With the decorations all down and packed away into their respective totes, I was able to play Christmas Tetris and manipulate them all into the "Christmas closet" in the basement. That closet essentially has two categories of rarely accessed stuff, 1) Christmas decorations and 2) camping equipment. There is also a "seasonal decorations" tote, but it's mostly winter and Christmas stuff as well. In the evening, I found the time to do two more cars from my maintenance pile. One, a Santa Fe caboose that came with my original HO train set in 1975, is now equipped with metal wheels and Kadee couplers, and the second was an ancient Athern kit of an SP boxcar. The caboose needed some shims for coupler height and a little extra weight. The boxcar needed a couple of ounces of weight, metal wheels, new couplers, and shims at the pivots to raise the couplers to the correct height. I didn't have any shims, so I had to use some plastic stock and a hole punch. Sunday was church, which was well attended now that our temperatures were back into the double digits. After church and a little lunch, I headed out to the Sebring Model Railroad Club where the furnace was returning the room temperature to normal, though it had not done so in the morning. The decision was made to call the installer since the system was behaving erratically. They were supposed to come today (Monday), but I haven't heard the results. While at the club, I ran a train with several of the cars I had recently converted. All but one ran fine. The SP boxcar repeatedly derailed in two spots. Initially, I thought the cause was the car adjacent to it, but it turned out that the trip pin, though correct on the coupler height gauge, was just a tiny bit too low for a couple high spots on the layout. A little fine adjustment with a pair of needle nose pliers, and all was good.
Happy Monday all! Was a cold weekend and went about as planned. Made it to the train show in Plano TX along with a huge crowd of other folks. Was a decent show and there were a couple of items that managed to follow me out. Did a little bit of railfanning over the weekend and started into a couple of little projects I brought with me but really didn't make much progress. That's pretty much it for me. Hope you all have a great week!
Late post today as I had an early morning dentist appointment. I finished the benchwork!!!!! I need to organize the room a bit, put down foam and work on painting the backdrop next. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Wow, a metric ton of progress this week! Great stuff All.... Late to the party today (thanks work). On Friday and Saturday, I spent a few hours with a friend of mine, working on some G-scale stuff. New to me, but a bunch of fun. We have been re-lighting (with LEDs) this trolley, as the incandescent bulbs would trip the current limit on his DCC decoder. A dozen LEDs and a few resistors later, we have light! During the balance of the weekend, I also spent some time on decaling and weathering projects. Our next freelance tribute to Kansas railroad history is this "Border Tier Leasing Company" car for the W&NW. In the late 1800s, as railroads raced south from Kansas City to reach Oklahoma, the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad, also known as the "Border Tier Railroad" or "Border Tier Line" played a prominent role. This is an old Roundhouse MILW boxcar patched out with some Smokebox Graphics decals. Not the straightest lettering, but fun fun fun! I also worked on some initial coats of weathering on the pile above and a few others. I have been re-stenciling the cars to look somewhat late 1980s plausible, putting car numbers and reporting marks on the ends of old Roundhouse boxcars (they come without in many cases), and starting the first coats of weathering with an airbrush. Here is one of the Home Shops LLC offerings from the Montana Northland off to a good start: I hope you all have a good week. Stay off the icy roads and keep warm! -Bob T.
Almost have the C&L down to the foam base for the rebuild. Just need to remove the cork roadbed now, and repaint the base. Building are there just for ideas and changes so when I make my roads width's smaller and just as templates. Probably won't end up this way, but I would like to face the Dairy Queen front towards me for a better view. It took me forever to paint those bricks with paint pens a few years ago Would like to see them when I look at layout. A lot of times we have to kind of pretend as it's not always possible to do 1:1 like the real world. Nothing is glued on this version just track nails and such, even track. That will hopefully change in this version? The C&L Layout & Beyond continues...
Had a good weekend! Friday: Took some time for a bit of grocery shopping and other errands. Did find a little time in the evening to tweak the driver inserts. Saturday: Yesterday's chores were intended to free up time today for modeling. The storage facility that flooded last week had other ideas. They needed me to confirm, in writing, that our units were undamaged. So off we went for one last inspection. At least we weren't itemizing a loss claim. Did take some time. I made progress on the inserts. Here are the latest samples in card stock. Engineer's Side Fireman's Side These are in the actual modified driver that will go in the loco. I adjusted the position of the various cutouts to match the underlying spokes. In the end I will need to remove on pair of spokes, leaving the rest to maintain as much strength as possible. In addition to removing those spokes, there are several more incremental steps to completing the drivers. That will have to wait until at least next weekend. Sunday: Sharon and I watched a soccer match in the morning. Then met our son for brunch nearby to celebrate the win. After walking back home we finished loading up and headed for the mother-in-law's house to help with chores and shopping. It was a good weekend! Not as productive as I hoped. But not bad. Stay safe,
Nothing. Work, lousy weather and atop it all, car troubles. Great timing on the latter..... Which should demolish the model RR budget for a while.
@Dogwood I would be interested in the manufacturer for the turnout controls you show. Are these made by Peco?
Hi Jim No it's not Peco. Look here https://aspenmodel.com/Hoffmann-Swi...onversion-Expansion-Kit:::20.html?language=en I have been using these drives for over 10 years. They work absolutely reliably. You can easily connect these drives to the Digitrax DS74 or DS64.
I Finished this unique WP PASSENGER caboose. It was probably local caboose for Reno, Sierraville/Loyalton as an example. Original # was 403. It became just another braced caboose when passenger traffic declined and was renumbered 619., Based a couple standard cabooses, some Evergreen strips and some mesh for the screen doors.........
