Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a good weekend and got plenty done. Let's get started. Saturday: I slept in and then went to working on the layout plans for the shadow box. After a few hours, I called my not-so-local hobby shop to see if he had the Micro Engineering turnouts I need. To my surprise he did. We also discussed installation of a keep alive in my N scale Kato NW-2. With good news from the shop, I hurried up, cleaned up, had some lunch and headed over. Fortunately, the small TCS KA-2 seems to fit however I will sacrifice the cab interior. This to me however feels like a good compromise. He also looked at my full scale print out of the shadowbox layout and said the plan was pretty prototypical with only one suggested change. That made my day. Once home, the wife and I enjoyed a quiet evening in enjoying cheese and crackers and an episode of the Grand Tour. Sunday: We got up and started our day a little bit earlier and headed off to Ang's dad and grandma to visit. It was a nice relaxing day, and I did not get any model railroading done, but that was the plan. Overall, a nice albeit quick weekend. So how about you? How did your weekend turn out? Let us know. We'll do it again this Friday the 21st. Until then, have a great week, stay safe, be healthy and as always... High Greens!
Good mornin Y'all, I had a fairly productive weekend. I installed decoders in a couple of LifLike Alco PA1's (Soon to be Cotton Belt 300 & 301) I also repaired a few street signs as well as put together some new ones - for my down towns. I also started populating them. Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Good Morning, I made some progress on the Bitter Creek Models 36-ft boxcar kits. These are wood and press-board kits. The trucks are bought separately, with these being Tahoe 5-ft arch bar trucks. The first one is assembled, minus decals (This one will be a C&EI car) and weathering: I learned a number of things that will allow me to better construct future models like this one. These include order of assembly to avoid gaps and misalignments, and some confusion over specific parts. Also, the sides cupped slightly when painted, so will need to better brace the car sides. Happy Monday, -Bob T.
Already another Monday! Saturday got off to a good start with my son and I getting his scout stuff done right on time and then picking up the wife for us all to get out booster shots. That took a tad longer than expected so by the time we finished lunch and stopped at the store it was time for our gust to arrive. Didn't get the couple of hours I expected in the train room. Sunday, I got up feeling really stiff, sore, and all around fatigued. Side effects from the shot so I pretty much spent the day sitting in my recliner watching it snow and getting caught op on the latest issues of a couple of modeling magazines. Not really feeling much more energetic this morning but probably heading in the right direction. Here's hoping you all have a great week!
Made some good progress on the control panel for Carlin. Got to the local hardware store and picked up new 3/32 and 5/64 drill bits. It turned out that the 5/64 was the one to use and I got all the holes drilled in the acrylic panel. Then installed all 25 LED's and 1 toggle switch. Then started the wiring on the back side. Here all of the commons (the cathodes) are wired together. Those white mounting posts are for a small circuit board that has resistors for each of the LED's.
Adjusted the Kato Unitrack location on my layout to move it 3/8" away from the rear of the layout to allow more room for tunnel portals and wing walls. I want to get this properly set because it's a key piece of line that will be difficult to move as I add other routes to it. Also worked on my bridge piers and am ready to paint them, but it's too cold to set up for airbrushing in the garage.
This was a great weekend! Saturday very productive. I wired and ballasted the track on the extension of the module. Went to start working on the scenery and found I was short some fencing so off to the LHS. Four shops later I found only one package of fence material. Had to order from Walthers two more packages. Hope to have them by next weekend. Changed my focus. Saturday’s temps were a nice balmy 45 so I built two more module frames. Sunday I didn’t get anything done. It was colder today as well. Glad I built the frames Saturday. I did however renew my NMRA membership for the year, registered for the NMRA convention in St. Louis this august and booked some airfare to St. Louis. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Good morning from cloudy, cold and snowy Northeast Ohio! No work today because the roads are so bad around here! Friday, I had another 600 series and the team won 7 points and moved into 3rd place in the league. Saturday, Went to the club with a raft of my 86' High Cubes and they ran well around the club layout. In the evening I worked on an old E&C 52' Greenville Gondola, removed all the cast grabs, drilled holes for metal grabs and installed them and then put all the rest of the parts together. Sunday, painted a 52' Blue Island Reefer, the first coat of paint on the NSC 4550 CF Covered Hopper and the gondola I put together on Saturday. Started construction on a 57' PC&F R70-20 Intermountain Reefer Kit. Also did some work on a 40' Trailer installing the wheel sets to get ready for final painting. Rick Jesionowski
Made progress on the scenery work for the west end of the layout. This section has no real prototype, but it does have geographical reference. It was intended to represent the EL near Waverly, New York where it interchanges with the Lehigh Valley. But when I found pictures of the elevated mainline and passenger station in Elmira, New York I decided to work with that concept. The station model is kitbashed from several structure kits, and the elevated main is just painted balsa. It was a b**ch making up those tiny road signs. Lots more work to do, but it's going in the right direction.
Weather here in Raleigh was more bark than bite. No snow, a little bit of sleet and roads stayed mostly clear. Wet/slushy, but clear. Western parts of NC did not fair as well. Most of the weekend went as projected: Saturday spent most of the day working on ballast at the north end of the layout. Getting down the base bed against the ballast. Also worked on the service tracks and staging yard approach ballast that is visible at Albemarle City. Sunday: Started separating pieces to the ITLA elevated kit. Also tweaked the Central Valley bridge that will be a part of this new larger bridge I am building. Also lettered the water tank that will sit near the interchange track. There is a description in the picture of why "Highland County" Have a great week all!
I like what I'm seein'! More inspirational stuff. Just a while ago I discovered a dimensional error with the center beam length. Just before getting on here, I was able to add a filler section without any swearing. Now for the draft gear. Have a great week.
Got my custom HOn30 decals ordered. Failed to get around to testing my custom re-motored little HOn30 critter. Maybe next weekend. Looking at my N T-Trak revival mini-layout, decided I could do a little more, so ordered some additional Unitrack. Searched for a couple of missing items, and actually was able to locate them! A RR friend who had been working out of the area stopped in for a visit. Sure was great to see that person again! Wow. Actually a weekend which went semi-decently, enjoyably.
Guess that depends on what part of Raleigh you were in. We spent Sunday without power for four long, cold hours. Don
Friday I attended the funeral of our (Sebring) model railroad club treasurer, and Sunday I went to the regular club meeting, mostly just to talk. Several club members were running trains while we had visitors from our local NMRA region. Otherwise, I started on my latest conversion project. Starting with an old Tyco flat car, I removed the deck, replaced the internal, steel weight with a larger, lead sheet, cut off the truck mounted horn-hook couplers, replaced them with body mounted Kadee couplers, drilled out holes for, and installed four 6mm magnets, painted the deck and the hunter blaze orange trailer mounts and reinstalled the deck. It's still a little underweight, but now rather than being an ounce and a half light, it's only off by a tenth of an ounce. Now I only have ten or fifteen more to go... "Before" and "After" photos below. Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk
We got all the Christmas decorations down expect for the tree. I need to get the bins up to the attic and get the Christmas ball bins down. I tuned up an Accurail boxcar by replacing the truck pin with a screw and adding a screw to the coupler pocket. I added roadbed to the layout. I will post pictures in the Layout Party thread later.
North Raleigh near the inner beltline. Sorry you had the outage. What part of Raleigh? We are in North Raleigh close to the inner beltline. Losing power is a bite for sure.
Got 'er done! Installed diaphragms on a pair of MT heavyweight cars and changed the couplers to close the gap appropriately. Still had time to burp a snow globe, watch some sports (soccer and football), enjoy breakfast with my son (waffles and bacon) and go for a few walks by the bay, the tsunami being largely a non-event for us. Sorry to read you folks further east are feeling winter's harsh side. Hang in there. Only 16 days to Groundhog Day. Stay safe,
Thank you! I would love to take credit, but these are as received from Lowell Smith. Except for the diaphragms. Stay safe, Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
