And we're back from another weekend. How did you fare? It was a good one for me, getting a lot of items crossed off the list. Saturday: was a busy day. With me working full time at the hobby shop, I no longer have my Fridays to get a lot of the non-painting business done. This particular Saturday required a trip to the bank and sending out a Chicago Central GP38 I custom detailed and painted off to a new customer. It is the twin of the one in my avatar so I still have my personal one. I'm happy to report it is going to a good home here in Illinois by a modeler who, like me, misses the Chicago Central & Pacific. With all the business affairs out of the way, it was time to sit down and try to finish those BNSF heritage units. The number boards took the longest, but patience paid off. By the time I shut down for the day at 5:00, I had the red locomotive done and ready for clear coat and the black one with about 90% of the decals applied. A bit more striping and it too will head off to the spray booth. Sunday: was my day of rest, and by rest I mean, sleeping in, enjoying tea and doing a bit of reading before working on my Inglenook project. I don't have any pictures to post because while I did get a lot done, there isn't really any thing to show to prove it. I added the missing ties to the flex track, then I cut the hole for the NCE DCC panel, followed by soldering all the feeders to my bus line and cleaning it all up. I was hoping to test it yesterday but I still need to install the panel and the two power wires. I also had to switch out the blind nuts that are used for the leveling feet because of a production mix up at the factory. Fortunately Terry at T-Kits set me up with the correct hardware so all is right with the Inglenook. All in all, a great weekend. So how about you? What did you get done this weekend? Did you visit some train shows, anyone do any rail-fanning yet? Let us know and unlike your author, post a picture or two. We'll assemble again this coming Friday the 10th to start another weekend. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
Added some spring time fun... a grilling party: (I also continued "planting" power poles) Thanks, - hope ya'll had a fantastic weekend!! Wolf
Cold, cold weekend (and windy), so staying inside to work on trains is a win-win proposition. Almost finished an Atlas RS-1 as GTW 1951. All that's left is the white frame stripe and associated decals. I also started using something new to bond small parts (and some larger ones), like broken handrails (those things are getting soooo delicate...): Bondic, a UV-cured resin-like stuff that's very similar to what dentists use. It's very strong when correctly applied. Other things I tested it on: a signal tower's upper floor walls, a GTW GP38AC cab, (that never really stuck back together normally) and a wood auto rack kit floor and frame. Very satisfied. I like this way better than super glue, which tends to stick to things you don't want to stick (like fingers to model parts), and not stick when you want it to stick (when holding two parts together and patiently waiting a few minutes for those few seconds to bond pass by...).
I had a friend over and he filmed this for me as my R shoulder isn't working so good these days. We had a blast, really enjoy having people over here as borrow out engineers. One thing I need to do is try to film a couple road swithers.
Holy Moly! That's amazing - the amount of rolling stock boggles the mind! I managed to get my "time saver" pretty well built, the new NCE controller hooked up and tested, the new GP7 set on the tracks and run back and forth - have to admit that four feet of track ain't much, but it's 4 feet more than I've had in years! Going through old stuff I found a naked loco with some kind of odd looking wiring on it, and a hand written note on the bottom "decoder dead" - not in my handwriting. I must have picked it up at a swap meet or the like before I had any idea what DCC even was. Long and short of it, it turned out to be frozen worm bearings rather than anything to do with the decoder, so with a little work and elbow grease (and some of the other kind too) I now have two DCC locos on my four feet of track! I scrounged around some more and found an old battered shell that fits the naked one, so it's half painted and I will soon have a somewhat decent GN F unit to talk with my Geep. I have plans to make a couple of temporary loops of track at the ends of the "hump yard" in the middle so I can get some run-in time on these locos. My Alcos should be here Wednesday and after the decent performance of the Bachmann GP, I'm in hopes the FA2s won't disappoint. Y'all have a great week!
Re-lettering project; "Done". Don't look too closely. I'm only a hack modeler. The fuel tank is wrong, among other things. Its only a simulation. It'll work. Now to give it that well used look....
