Welcome back everyone to the gateway to the weekend. It looks like a lot of you got some great progress done last weekend with some great progress pictures posted this past Monday. Nice work everyone. Now let's see what we all have planned for this last Weekend of January. Saturday: I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing on this particular day. I'm trying to get my office / workshop organized so I can easily set up for live feeds and videos, both for work and my own personal YouTube channel. I know I have promised the soon to be Mrs. that I would spend the morning with her on her new hobby but after that, who knows. The research on the B&M continues but is scheduled to a future project as I will be spending the most time on my shadow box layout. Sunday: When I originally built my shadowbox for the N scale layout, I built the main box from 1/8-inch hardboard, painted black. I'm now seriously contemplating on constructing this from 1/4-inch Baltic Birch. This is my favorite material as it is light weight, easy to work with and sands nicely. Plus, with stain and a nice poly, it not only presents well, it holds up well for transport which is one of the goals. I guess I'll look into that a bit this weekend. I'm sure some domestic duties will be assigned as needed but I'll mainly be strategically planning this weekend before diving head long into the shadowbox and HO layout. So how about you? What do you have planned this weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble on the last day of January, Monday the 31st to see how we all did. Until then, have a great weekend, keep those images coming, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Been a great week so far. I was able to build two more module frames Tuesday so they are sitting in the garage waiting legs. In the meantime I will continue work on the two modules I built a week ago. They are ready for track to be glued down today. Saturday I plan on wiring them and getting them operational for the 11-12 show in Kanab, UT. If all goes well they will be showing signed of scenery. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Here we are - the end of January - WOW. I plan on thoroughly cleaning my layout. From the track to scenery - and everything in between. It's been far to long. I know, there will be a few spiders to evict - LOL. Y'all have a great weekend, Wolf
Last week I inherited a crate full of HO and N scale buildings from a friend of mine. I want to get them cleaned up and parsed - the HO ones may got to a couple of friends, and at least two of the N scale ones will find homes on my layout. Beyond that all three of the younger kids test for their next belt in karate this weekend, os that's probably going to take up most of my time.
The storm should keep the lighting even which will make painting anything easer for me. Will focus on scenery / painting ground / painting figures / maybe finishing transfer caboose.
This will be a lost weekend modeling wise, tonight is my normal bowling night, and on Saturday and Sunday I am working at the Cleveland Mixed City Tournament in my duties as an officer of the Cleveland USBC. I may get some decaling and model building done in the evening, but the days are mostly shot. I just made my payment for a pair of Bowser PRR RS-3's hope to have them by next week. Rick Jesionowski
Happy Weekend all. During this past week, I finished up the cardboard substrate at the Jackson River Gorge scene. So as planned, this weekend I will start on the plaster cloth covering. Won't get it finished however. We are going out of town for a couple of days next week and the Mrs. has me "scheduled" for some honey-dos over the weekend to prepare for the trip. Nonetheless, I should get some good progress made.
Good morning all, Plan today is to make a trip to the LHS. Then the rest of the weekend to start ballasting track and finalize layout of roads and structures. And give the work bench a good clean up from the mess that has been made over the past several weeks. This will be in preparation for starting a few structures. Everyone have a great weekend.
Hoping I don't need to work an extra day this weekend. Car kit build projects are beginning to accumulate on the workbench. I would like to whittle that down, before it gets too far ahead of me!
If the weather mis-forecasters are correct for once I may be doing some snow removal tomorrow and/or Sunday. Not sure how much as forecast call for anything from 3 inches to 11 inches. There are a couple of small projects in the house such as getting the tree box down to the basement. My wife bought a couple of end tables to replace some very wobbly ones that I have to build. On the layout I am working on assembling the Golden Valley Canning Company kit. I may fiddle with some wiring and ballast. I need to make a base for the coal yard since I have to modify the building locations from the recommended. There are a couple of locos to test and freight cars to tune up.
Last week I completed a coupler height/test gauge so that better coupler specs can be used going forward. Seems to work well. Last night I started to make a new cutting guide for hopper sides. This has not been successful. Fortunately, the old one works well. Nothing ventured... Since all the draft/running gear is complete, I will continue with the sides and more. Have a good one.
I was planning to attend the Amherst Railfest on Saturday, but the forecast of 12-18" of snow in Central Mass changed my plans. I'll find time to work on the layout some more instead. There is a lot of landscaping and detail work remaining on the west end (haven't come up with a better name for this section yet), and then I need to work on the fascia and finish the control panels. Sunday I have Zoom meetings most of the day for my engineering society (ASHRAE) where I participate on several technical committees. There will also be zoom meetings and webcasts of seminars and technical paper presentations Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I would normally be attending the conference live, it's in Las Vegas this time, but my good friend and associate that I always room with decided not to go due to the Covid numbers, and I didn't want to foot the bill for five nights myself. Vegas isn't a cheap destination anymore, especially when the conference center is Caesars Palace. They automatically add a minimum $35 per night "resort fee", which really hits hard when you aren't doing any "resort activities" because you're in meetings from early morning to late evening almost every day.
Moose plans? Moose plans?! Hmmm, Moose determined to get to the 95% finished point on super secret project -- that Moose started over a year ago. Moose has been dragging hooves on this project because it's sooo delicate and has teenie tiny hard-to-work-with parts...
Just getting in form a week long business trip. Hoping to relax a little and maybe sit down at the layout, drink coffee, and run trains. Not sure what else. Hope you all have a great weekend!
I’ve gathered up everything for my portable/stowable test/break-in track. I’m planning on making a start on it this weekend.
Planning on starting tonight gluing some items that have been knock over by someone, not saying who, items that keep coming part, because someone did not glue them well enough the first go round, not saying who, etc... alright, alright the pressure is too much, it was me that knocked over the items and didn't glue the items well enough the first time And try to make some N Scale hedges out of foam and Woodland Scenics different kinds of turf and scenery stuff. Luckily found an old backup White/Elmers glue ( dollar store ones still missing in action ), if indeed it works. It sure is OLD! If not trip to dollar store this weekend where when I return with Brand New white glue, the ones I couldn't find will be on my temporary work bench. I tell there are Ghost that are hiding them
This weekend will be the first meeting of the semester for the Illini Railroad Club. I'm not sure what our plans are, we might try to finish up laying track that we started last semester. I hope some new product announcements come out of Amherst. While I have no plans to travel halfway across the country to attend the show, I am excited to hear what news comes out of it. I know some of the other club members have been looking forward to it too. I suspect something major from Scaletrains, and maybe something new from Tangent or Exactrail.
Will probably continue my messing around with Kato Unitrack, arranging and rearranging sections to optimize the layout. Got a new soldering station, so will likely plug it in for the first time and retry making my own track feeders. My 40 year old Radio Shack iron quit several weeks ago, bringing my first attempt to a stop.
One more Christmas snowglobe to "burp" then we can put that box away till November. There are a few other domestic chores to complete. Modeling time will be dedicated to test fitting some full-width diaphragms to an Intermountain streamlined baggage car. The goal is to make the baggage car compatible with the heavyweight cars I installed diaphragms on two weekends ago. You folks back east take care with the storm. Stay safe,
Plan on getting closer to finalizing my freemo HO home layout plans. Also meeting up with some local HO guys to talk trains at breakfast Sat morning. Will get a link to my layout page up soon as I can in next month or so. Still an N scale guy and also going to do 2 4ft free-moN modules as well this year. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
