I'm one of the can drive in it crowd. Back in 2000, we got a big snow, I show up for work and my boss isn't there. I call the DM and let him know, he tells me the first assistant is on the way because Boss is stuck in his driveway. When we get the store opened Boss calls to see who showed up, and so far it's only me and FA. Boss asks me if I could come and pick him up and bring him to work... sure, but you need to give me gas money... no problem... So off I go to drive 30 miles to pick him up. He lives on a rather long and somewhat steep hill in Gig Harbor. I park my car (86 Olds Cutlass 2 door) on the street and get him. He was expecting my truck (which has bald tires and sucks to drive in the snow). He was further amazed that I made it there with no chains. We also made it back to the store with no issues. This snow was almost 18" at this point and the roads were packed snow and ice. It was a difficult day to be driving. My boss was legitimately stuck as his driveway was a hill on the side of a hill and even a 4x4 would have had a tough time with it. My only problem with going to pick him up... He now knows that I can make it anywhere in the snow so I cant call in and say the snow is too bad for me to make it... or if I do say that he should know that no one should be on the roads.
Was really unmotivated this past weekend but despite myself, I pushed forward and got a few things accomplished. After getting the new roof for the silos cut out last weekend, I got it attached. Just need to finish sanding a couple of spots. Put some filler in the seams between the flat strips I put between the silos and the silos themselves. Made a rough-cut paper top house for the silos just to see if what I have in mind will work. Just need a warm enough day to do some rattle can painting of the silos now. Originally, the head house for the grain elevator was going to be on the opposite end of where it is now. I had already installed a light for the interior at that spot. Removed it and reinstalled it in the new location. Doesn't really show in the above pic. I am trying to decide if I am going to keep the smaller elevator to the right in the above pic. If I do, will need to add an interior light for it as well. Speaking of lights, I finally replaced the bad interior light in the guard house for the chemical dealer scene. Was one of those fairly quick switch outs that I shouldn't have put off so long. After the knee thing, I have just made everything with super long leads and use terminal blocks to hook the lights up so can pretty much do the wiring for the lights without actually getting on the floor under the layout. That also helps with fixing wire issues. As long as I was at it, I had two used Kato Unitrack switches that had bad connector plugs. Finally got around to fixing those and once again, all switches are back in working order. Those were slightly harder to fix but again, with long leads, it was doable without getting under the layout. The two in the up position were the ones with issues.
Spent a good bit of time going through the projects bucket to decide what I had to work on and what I had finished and could get rid of the leftovers. Posted a bunch of the finds in the swap meet forum (Shameless plug). In the process, I uncovered several packs of M/T 1015 and 1016 pre assemble couplers. After fighting with screwdrivers and thanks to some great info from fellow members, I was able to find one that worked and got 7 1/2 Atlas locos upgraded to M/T's. Would have been 8 but one of the 1015's blew apart during install. Also found a couple of packs of partially used Unimate couplers. I know Unimates are still available from Intermountain and not sure if they are labeled Intermountain or red Caboose at this point but the packs I have are old enough that they still sat Precision Master on them. Who remembers them? Used up these to update some ConCor passenger trucks to Unimate couplers for now on my ConCor N&W passenger train. Some day they will get M/T's. The first car and last car now have M/T's on one end and Unimates on the other and all the in between cars now have Unimates instead or the old rapido couplers. Looks much better. Here's a look at the swap out of the couplers since there have been several threads about such things recently. Starting with the ConCor passenger trucks I pry up the tabs on the clip that is holding the old coupler in Then I flip the truck over and use a small flat head screwdriver with a blade about the width of the clip to loosen it I generally don't completely remove the clip. just move it enough to slip the old coupler out Then slide the new coupler in and push the tab back flush Then reclose the tabs on the top of the clip and there you have it, a t shank non operating knuckle coupler installed. These are a great quick fix for adding knuckle couplers between sets of cars that will rarely ever be uncoupled while on the layout. I have been using these on cars since they were first introduced way back in the day and have found them to be extremely reliable. Okay, okay, I know that was boring but just felt the need to share it
Earlier in the week, I started adding some more small scrub trees (for lack of a better term) to the layout. Continued with that using up what I had left. They seem to be turning out okay. Here is the area I started earlier in the week with more added. Now it needs more ground cover. Then this was my next target area Before After I had a few left so I added them here.
The other project for the weekend was to build one of the 3 GHQ kits that I have accumulated. Two bull dozers and a road grader. I got to start on the first bull dozer Friday night For the most part, it started going together better than expected so I decided I would get the second one out as well. The pair went way faster than I expected Only had an issue with one part that wanted to stick to my fingers but not the model. Finally got it to stay in place. So with those done, I decided to move on to the road grader. Again, everything went much better than expected and now all 3 are done and ready for the paint shop. Just need a nice warm day to get a rattle can base coat on them. The plan is for these to be OD green so they can be flat car loads of an army construction crew on the move along with some other military equipment. Should make for an interesting train. That's about it for now. Thanks to you all for checking out the progress. Hopefully you are enjoying it all.
Wow, nice work on some nice kits BNSF FAN. I don't know much about GHQ and will have to delve deeper.
Very nice! I heard Gorilla Glue is a good hair product... All kidding aside, those GHQ models look nice. I have a few myself that need to be built.
Thanks sir! They are neat little kits and fairly straight forward to build but I have the feeling 3d prints will most likely replace these at some point It would be great for your hair sir, especially if you are going for that look of that guy on the Ancient Aliens show. LOL The Gorilla Super Glue in the pic seems to work as well as any super glue I have used. I also got a bottle of the Gorilla Super Glue Gel but I think I got a bad bottle as it seemed more liquid that the regular stuff
Paint shop was open this weekend and the grain silos got a nice coat of white primer. I got a coat of paint on the GHQ construction equipment as well but I guess I failed to take a pic of that. Also pulled out a Royal Models garbage truck I bought last fall and started on it. Did not make it to the paint shop though. That's about it. Heart just wasn't in it this weekend.
dont you hate waiting on mother nature im thinking of getting a spray booth from amazon so my wife well let me paint in the garage
That primer coat just turns it into something really good looking. (Sometimes I have crazy thoughts to myself but I was just think the Defense Department can hide some ICBMs in those. No all the silos, just a few so you have to guess. No one will figure out grain silos.... )
LOL, I could just picture that, adding an open pop top on one of them with an ICBM about half way out. Would probably require a smoke generator and some lighting effects...… naw, better not
Now hold your horses there!!!!!! Who's currently building an N-Trak module with grain silos, raise your hands????!!!! Add animation of the missile slowly poking out with smoke and I bet you will win a prize somewhere!