Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot done. Let's see how we all did. Saturday: After a busy and somewhat stressful work week, I took it easy and helped Angela with some shopping and getting ready for Halloween. We had plenty of kids show up and lots of parents liked our matching costumes. We finished the night by watching some scary documentaries. Sunday: Nadda, zip, zilch. It was my turn to be lazy. I'm not sure if it was the 50 mile per hour winds out of the north that gave us a high of 22, the loss of DST or what it was, but I had zero motivation and the closest thing to model railroading was reading a new book I received. Hopefully my bout of laziness will not bite me in the near future. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know with an image if you have one or two. We'll assemble again on Friday the 6th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, if your a U.S. Citizen, don't forget to vote tomorrow (November 3rd), be healthy, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Great weekend with more to come. Friday I worked on some rolling stock. Changed a few wheels sets and put some color on the knuckle pins. Sunday I worked on the track for the modules. It’s starting to come together. Ok still need soMe track and switches so Monday I will make a trip to the LHS. I’m off work all week so I plan on getting the track work done on the modules. My wife wants her family room back.
Finished an HOn30 critter. After I get decals made, (some day...), it will be lightly weathered. I also cleaned my work bench, and built the HO box car kit I acquired just before last weekend.
Did mostly what I wanted to do with the exception of cleaning the train room. Did spend quite a bit of time Saturday on the HW Meyers & Sons kit. Mostly putting down sculptamold and sanding it down. Looks rough as is and hard to tell what's going due to the all white in the picture. But over the next several weeks, it will take shape. Sculptamold is always weird to me to work with.
Good morning all. I did get several locomotives and freight cars repaired. This SD50, MP # 5010 had one of it's universal joints slipping on the worm gear shaft. This is not an uncommon problem and I re-secured both with some E6000 adhesive. SD60 C&NW # 8034 had that "the motor contact ain't touching the decoder board" problem. Hard wiring the motor to the decoder fixed that and while I was at it I dulled down the bright yellow with a bit of weathering. A couple years ago I bought a pair of Atlas SD60's cheap because they were missing some of the hand rails. I then bought 2 sets of hand rails but had not gotten around to installing them so I got UP # 6001 done this weekend, I still have another like this to do. I found several freight cars that still had the deeper flange wheels and replaced those with low profile wheels so they could run on this code 55 layout without bumping along. Then for a change of pace I got a start on another pair of tunnel portals. Other than a quick trip to Trader Joe's on Sunday morning, we just stayed home so I got a lot done. Hope you all had a great weekend whatever you were doing.
Started out Saturday working on some scenery and then did some organizing and cleaning in the train room before heading up to watch a few classic Universal monster movies while the wife and I prepped for Halloween. Very few kids out in our neighborhood this year. The good candy was left over so that was a plus (sort of). Sunday, I started to work on a rail and truck loading platform that will be at the back side of the chemical distribution point that I am working on. Then finished up with cleaning up the excess scenery material. Hope you all have a great week.
No pictures due to light, but managed to get all the remaining passenger and freight platforms painted 90%, now some texture paint on top and weathering. Hopefully next week these will be finished and put in place.
Halloween went off with a hitch. We had about 50 to 60 trick or treaters which is just below our normal amount. Our social distanced method seemed to work out. Then came Saturday night. A strong smell of burning wood throughout the area set off my wife’s asthma. If were not for the pandemic we would have gone to the hospital as her rescue inhalers and nebulizer medications were not working. There was no place to escape the odor. The smell was everywhere and, in a few areas, nearby it was hazy. It was so bad in three different locations the local fire companies were dispatched to investigate for a fire. No cause has been cited but people suspect it was a large number of fire pits being used by people giving out candy and all being extinguished about the same time. As a result, neither of us got much sleep. Just more of 2020. Sunday I was walking around exhausted and the rain just made everything worse. Since we don’t have enough stress one of the players on my daughter’s volleyball team is positive for COVID. The girl’s stepmother tested positive on Wednesday. The girl had symptoms on Thursday and Friday but still went to school and practice. She went to the doctors on Saturday and was tested. The results won’t be back until today or tomorrow. The doctor strongly believes she is positive. As a result, my daughter is working virtually until further notice. Volleyball is canceled and all the players were told to stay out of school. If the girl tests positive the high school and possibly the district will be shut down for two weeks. Apparently, there have been cases in the elementary schools. The district my wife works for as of Friday had 12 students and 4 staff members test positive. They are pushing forward like nothing is wrong. They did, however, shut down the special needs/life skills program in the high school due to positive cases there. They are now all virtual. Even with all the fun going on I did get seven boxcars weathered and three more ready to be weathered. I also ran some trains. With the passing of Sean Connery, I wanted to watch “Marnie”. The movie was filmed in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. They used 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. The scene where they are driving uses the Media Bypass, US Route 1. The Howard Johnson’s they pull into for lunch was in Springfield at the end of the Bypass about 3 miles from here. My wife and I ate at the HoJo’s several times but it was no longer a HoJo’s at that time.
Best laid plans... got to the railway on Sunday. Sanded the plaster on the risers, but disappointed the overall result is bumpy. Wondering if we should spackle to even out the track surface, so no painting. Got the recomissioned PC hooked up to the PR4 and set up the programming track with Decoder Pro. First entry went without a hitch. UP E8 957 is now at address 957. Bachmann J 608, not so much. Whenever I tested it with the Decoder Pro throttle, the volume went way down, to barely audible from a foot away in a quiet basement without ambient noise. Checked the sound levels, and they were fine. Got frustrated after an hour, but excited about Decoder Pro. Sent from my SM-N950U1 using Tapatalk
I adjusted my 3D model of the U36B project, refined measurements, drafted up the detail add-ons (radiator grill inserts, horn, exhaust stack) and did a print! Still pretty excited where this is going. Here's the Bachmann U36B, my U36B and U18B: Left to do: fuel tank and some additional adjustments. Cheers -Mike
It was a no trains week and weekend for me. I picked up my new camper, and I was supposed to go camping, fishing, and atv riding at my Daughter's Elk Camp this week, but my new camper has issues. The fridge don't work on 12V. The Lithium converter/charger did not show up. I couldn't get an appointment at the DMV to register the camper, and my Daughter's family came down with Covid19. So, I found out that the RV manufacturer didn't have the fridge 12V wiring drawn up in their plans so nobody got their fridges wired to the 12v, only 120, and these are offroad campers! The lithium charger converter got lost in a hurricane between Florida and Illinois somewhere. I ended up standing in a line from 7:15am till 9:00am to get into the DMV this morning, then the number system computer broke down. By 10:00am I got my camper registered, but only for 2 months then I gotta do it again! When I walked out of the DMV, there were still people standing in line that showed up at 7:30am. DMV opened at 8, but by the time I arrived, the line already went around the side of the building and all the way the alley behind. And, my Daughter had waited so many years to draw an Elk Tag, and she finally got one in a prime area off the Snake River, so she packed up her household and went hunting anyways, sick with Covid and told to quarantine. My new camper toy hauler: DMV Arrival 45 minutes before opening, the line was already out front, and around the side of the building: And by the time I got to the end of the line it was already wrapped down the alley in back: Gotta love the DMV.
Wow, that turned out really nice. I love the touch of the bucket tossed over the exhaust stack -- just perfect.
Some months ago I made the mistake of trying to get a Real ID. After standing in line at the DMV, they decided they didn't like the look of my birth certificate and sent me on my way without explanation, rejected. I later learned that the Real ID requirement has been pushed back into 2021 sometime. I'll figure it out then ...
Great day today. Track plan figures out. Now to mark the centerline and then pull it all up so as to lay the cork road be d
Wow! Challenges galore. What got done looks great. I hope folks dealing with stuff have a great improvement. I am on here later than usual. It has indeed been a strange week. I got up Sunday (last) in a tizzy thinking it was Monday. I finally calmed down and got things underway. The "big" thing I did was build a custom box to carry the module to the Train Show. This was the main "accomplishment" for the whole week. Preoccupied I think. Friday night grandson's football game. Saturday, the big show. Fairly good turnout. Saturday night, stayed in with scary movies. Sunday, chores. This morning, got back on the Mogul at last. Whew. All be safe and my best to those fighting more important issues.
I liked it anyway. It's 2020 and I admire the way Robert just laid out the facts without any over the top commentary. Just gotta keep pushing that stone up the hill.
Was a good weekend for me. Friday night I downloaded a CorelDraw trial and tinkered with it a bit. Didn't get around to drawing the disc driver face, but I will get to that. Saturday Sharon and I took a walk before cooking some bacon and eggs. Then we watched a soccer match for a couple hours. After that I was off to the storage unit. Found the drill press, vices and lathe. Re-arranged the remaining stuff to make future visits easier. Most of Sunday was spent figuring out where to keep the tools in the already overstuffed garage. Once that was done I checked out the lathe. Not sure when the last time I used it was, but it has been in storage since March 2018. Discovered the head stock needs work so I am shipping that off to the manufacturer tomorrow. I finished cleaning the garage and returned extra stuff to the storage unit this morning. Stay safe.
