Welcome back everyone. I hope you all a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. lets get started. Saturday: I woke up, sans alarm, at my usual time of 5:00am and took care of the dogs, cleaned up and headed for my favorite hardware store. I got in only 30 minutes after they opened and had the store to my self. I picked up more hardboard, pink foam and a few new handy tools. Once home I set up shop. Unfortunately my track was not in stock yet so I ended up working on the HO modules. I was happy to learn that I had enough Baltic Birch to kit up three additional modules, so I'll have 4 HO modules when done. I had to clean up at 4:00 so we could meet Angela's Dad for dinner and so I called it a day. Sunday: Was nice and relaxing. My new book from Lance Mindheim was hand delivered to me from the nice Amazon delivery driver Saturday while working on my modules. Sunday mornings are just perfect for brewing up the proper cup of Earl Grey and enjoying it in my B&M mug whilst reading and this new book hit the spot. Ang and I enjoyed some breakfast and then a quick trip to the store for supplies in the Mustang took a fun detour. We stopped into an antique mall and spent a few hours and a few dollars. I'm always looking for old electronics and RR items. No such luck this day but we'll be back. We took it easy with an early dinner and a trip for some ice cream before I went back and studied the new book some more. All in all, a nice way to recharge from the week. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 25th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, remain safe, be healthy and as always... High Greens!
Well, I worked on everything I thought I would but finished none. Paint and touch up on the GHQ scraper and windows added. It's basically done, I just have to attach the wheels. Fiddled with the scenic divide but think I am going to have to make a trip to Lowes for a part to finish it up. Did get the crossing installed that I planned and started on the access roads. Should be an easy finish next weekend. Started on a new project as well. Have an old HO scale Tyco high hood Alco I'm going to redo in the N&W blue hamburger scheme. It will just be a shelf quean but should be a fun diversion. Hope everyone had a good weekend and that you all have a great week to come.
Good weekend overall. I got out the Atlas Middlesex kits and started studying arrangements w/ the parts, etc. I have a scheme I like and have it "propped up" where it will go. I also got out 3 engines and assessed what needs to be done for service and worked on a couple of them this weekend. For the RS-1 I got out all the new parts I ordered years ago and got them fitted in. I was able to use the cab salvaged from the old body. Fit like a charm. The BL2 I worked on was brand new from around 2003 or 4. Never worked right due to the classic "Life Like P2K Cracked Wheel Gear" syndrome. I had several packs of ALine gears on hand and FINALLY, replaced them yesterday. Runs great now. Just needs a decoder. Also, took a P2K Life Like E8 shell and put it on a BLI E7 frame w/ sound. The E7 shell by BLI was a horrid blue that doesn't match what the C&O had. Enginer runs well, it just looked like the devil w/ the wrong color. With the Proto 2000 shell, it looks great. One of the pictures below is "cracked gear". I have a guitar pick in it so the crack shows up.
I had a very good weekend. Saturday: - Our meeting with our financial adviser went extremely well. We are on track for retiring in 5 years - and. possibly 4. I did more prep work on my 2-10-2 and REA delivery van. Sunday: More work on the 2-10-2.. made some decent progress. Painted the body of the REA van. Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Friday. We've been having groceries delivered for months. Friday we went to a wholesale produce store for the 1st time since pandemic. It was nice to pick out my own vegetables and have a larger variety to choose from. Afterwards I set up for soldering and soldered up some rail joiners with track feeders. Saturday. Saturday was Barbara's 60th birthday. Her son visited us and brought pizza. We had what I've began calling "an old fashioned set down porch visit". The kind I remember my mother having with ladies from church. No TV or phones. Saturday night I installed power feeds and cut and trimmed track to it's (hopefully) final configuration and finished fitting track. I ran out of insulated rail joiners so I made the mill area spurs power routing. I'm thinking I should go back and insulate all four rails at the frog end and add feeders to each spur for when/if I convert to DCC. I took a test light and rang out all my feeders to verify I have the correct color wire going to the correct rail. Sunday Sunday morning I dehydrated mushrooms and ended up with several quarts. I also started my first ever batch of hot sauce. I cleaned off the layout and tried swaping metal portion of Kato rail joiners Peco insulated rail joiners but decided to wait for Kato insulated rail joiners and save Peco joiners for future Peco track addition to layout. While waiting for Kato insulated rail joiners I can test out the S turns in the industrial area. I'm pretty confident a switcher and hopper or 40ft boxcar will navigate them at slow speed. I strained and bottled the hot sauce. I tasted a half spoonful and immediately got the hiccups. I can't wait to try it tonights fresh spinach frittata and fresh ginger tea!
Good morning all, Made some good progress on the staging yard rebuild. Got that 5th turnout all wired up and tested. While I had planned to start the control circuits for the yard ladders after looking through my supply of parts I realized I could not unless I wanted to cannibalize some old projects for parts. The new parts were cheap enough so I spent some time ordered what I needed and turned my attention to starting the yard ladder at the loop end. In this photo I have scraped off all the old turnouts and track there. The bridge that carries the upper yard return loop over this area can be removed or installed in just a couple minutes. Also started building the new control panel. Got the acrylic panel cut and the holes drilled. The drawing shown in this photo was used as a drilling pattern. I'll need to print a new one that will actually be used. From the skipping black lines on this one it looks like I may need to order some ink for the printer too. Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend whatever you were doing.
Well, I finally got my Coal Dock module wired. I had to repair burnt out Hare switch machines, and replace one Tortoise that draws too much current and thus don't make it to the end of travel with 10.5V. So all the turnouts now throw, but the Atlas Z Scale turnouts operate just like a Peco Electrofrog, and have that over center spring that clicks the turnout into place. I like that feature, but unfortunately the slow motion effect of the Tortoise is eliminated. The module is now ready for scenery: I made a track schematic for the module, and put yellow/green bi-color LED's behind each turnout, wired such that they are all green in the through route condition, which is the way all the switches should be set for trains to run at shows. This way at a glance, I can see that this module is ready for running on the mainline tracks. What I did was drill 1/16" holes through the module facia using a laser cut template, then drilled the backside with a 3mm bit so I can push the bi-colored LED's in place. Here is a closeup of the schematic: Here on the underside at the top left you can see a hidden switch panel, where I can manually throw the turnouts. I hid the panel here because after years of train show experience I found that kids like to press the buttons, so only leave buttons visible that you want people to press. This is the 4th module of my Lester WA module set, so I numbered the turnouts 41-45 for the Fourth Module, turnouts 1 through 5. At the bottom center there is an Anderson Powerpole connector with a wire going to the Tortoises. This is the DCC Accessory bus, and I can unplug it from track power when running this module on DC power, and just plug the DCC Accessories into my own DCC system for show operation. The black and blue device to the bottom left is my 12 VDC accessory power. It has screw terminals for 5 devices, and a bridge rectifier so any 12V DC or 12V AC accessory supply can be used. Some people use Marklin AC accessories, and sometimes someone accidently crosses their positive and negative wires, so I put protection in place with that 15A bridge rectifier. In the four corners you can see I am using 1/4-20 x 2" set screws with black rubber caps on for leg levelers that will not scratch up the banquet tables, and the rubber makes the modules less likely to slide around as they grip pretty good.
More good stuff! Ya'lls cooks sum mitey exotic vittles. As for me, I mostly got out. Friday nite football watching grandson play. Have yet to meet my new great-granddaughter. Soon I hope! I worked on component fab. Sorta' like shelling peas... Be safe and have fun!
This weekend just slipped by without much happening. Saturday the wife and I went to Delaware and picked up a couple of new kitchen chairs which I put together. Sunday the wife and daughter started put up the Halloween decorations. It is a little early. we usually wait for October but with all that has happened this year I guess we need some distractions. Nothing got done on the workbench or layout. I did photograph all my tank cars and get them entered into the computer inventory.
Monday got by me, and Tuesday. Oh well! Last weekend I got the fuel tank figured out for my baby-boat! Almost done... These aren't final parts, mainly they're final versions of the test pieces to make sure everything fits. Finish work comes next, tuning the details... Cheers -Mike
Hey Philip - I don't really have a build thread on this guy as it's a kit I'm developing along the way, and each step of the build is getting a new part. When I'm done this will go off to Jeff Gowers to work his magic - I think there will be four total units for the first order but I'll open it up for others to get their own units. I've got three different cab styles going and I'll be doing new truck sideframes as well so the original GP9 ones can be switched out if desired. It's been a fun project and I'm surprised N Scale hasn't had a U18B yet given how cool this little guy is! -Mike
