Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and accomplished all that you set out to do on Friday. Let's see how we all did. Saturday: As predicted, I slept in after being up late for the Friday live stream. The live went well with no technical difficulties or barking Beagles. The weather was not as bad as predicted and the wife wanted to go to Costco, so I went with her on a quest for a new printer. No printer but we managed to find enough to buy. Once home I worked at one of my projects then enjoyed dinner with the wife. Sunday: My good buddy and his wife wanted a night out with me and Ang for Sushi, trains and whatever the women wanted to talk about. Last year he wanted to start an NTrak club after saving a few modules from the dumpster when the Bloomington club split up. I just do not have the time to get involved so the project was shelved. Since then, he has found a group of guys that only meet at shows and have a strong desire for prototype operations and looks. After talking with the group leader, I determined that having a module might not be such a bad thing. We'll see. About the only thing I accomplished besides day dreaming was cleaning up the office/workshop. Then the weekend was gone. So how about you? Did you do better than your scribe? Let us know. We'll do it again for the last weekend in February on Friday the 25th. Until then, have a great week, stay safe, be healthy and as always... High Greens!
Didn't get my modules. Fedex is too dimwitted to figure out they cannot deliver on weekends, when the business address is closed. According to those fools, weekends and National Holidays are "regular business days". It looks as though they are now going to ship them back to their origin point. And I am in for a struggle. Thankfully I only have to deal with these morons once every few years. Every time it is a battle.
Did battle with some couplers and lost! Also fired up the grill yesterday and that went well! Hope you all have a great week!
Friday night bowling went well 183 - 233 - 221 for a 637 series. Also managed to paint up an Atlas Caboose for decaling later and the roof of an Atlas Blue Island Reefer. Saturday, was club meeting day and an operating session afterwards, completed my job in good order, but I found out that my new Bowser RS-3's came with McJunky plastic couplers, made doing the operating session a chore as they would not couple after a while. Why can't I get factory installed Kadee's when spending big dollars on new motive power. Went out to dinner with friends after the club session and later worked on masking the roof of the Blue Island Reefer and repairing the outlet bays on a couple of Kadee 2003CF Covered Hoppers. Sunday, painted the Atlas Blue Island Reefer along with some boxcar underframes and one roof, worked on decaling the Atlas Caboose and a 40' Athearn Trailer. This was while I was doing the laundry.
Monday Greetings... Worked on what I thought I would when posting Friday. Did some cleaning in the workshop as well as cleaned up the slop sink in there. Also spent considerable time both Saturday and Sunday tuning up turnouts. This went really well and I wound up sprucing up even turn-outs that were working OK. 4 were misaligned and I removed the springs and Tortoise. I took small wood carving tools and widened the hole in some cases so the spring would not hit the side. Those now work perfectly. On previous layouts when I tuned turnouts, I always wound up replacing a whole turnout once in a while. None of the ones I tuned this weekend will need replacement. Did not get to removing the DigitTrax PM-42 and replacing it with a DCC Specialties unit. In any event. After tuning turnouts I spent a couple of hours late yesterday running trains. Even ran Atlantic and Danville "Acey and Doocey".
Got a couple of pairs of signals done for the yard lead turnouts. The first pair were Tomix/NJ International two lamp signals. I placed a standard signal on the eastbound track ahead of the yard lead turnout, with a dwarf signal on the opposite side. The turnout is a Shinohara all live #6. I positioned a micro lever switch on the throwbar. It's normally open, and has just enough travel to break the switch and flip the signal lights. Unfortunately on the dwarf signal one of the leads to the Green LED broke off at the base of the lamp. An hour of 'micro surgery with small soldering iron and magnifier failed to reattach it. To my better fortune, the upright signal works fine, and that's the one that matters most since it faces the primary direction of travel. Inspired by this, I made my own signal for the west bound yard lead from a pair of bi-polar LED's. This is also a Shinohara #6 turnout, so the same process was followed, with a micro lever switch on the end of the throwbar. I made a dwarf style signal stand from styrene and an LED holder, and placed one just ahead of the yard lead turnout and the other a few feet away ahead of the crossover to/from the staging yard. I tried wiring it to the same auxiliary power source that feeds the Tomar signals, but got nothing. After switching the wires around a few times and still getting nothing I took out the meter and realized the problem--it was AC power. After adding a 12 V DC wall wort everything worked fine. I'm now wiring up switches for the Peco turnouts on the mainline. These will be simple two position microswitches. I've drilled a hole in the switch and fashioned a piece of piano wire from the toggle to the throwbar to make or break the signal. I haven't wired it yet because I only had one DC wall wart, and this turnout is a good 15 feet from the other power source and i didn't feel like crawling under the layout to thread the wire for this distance when there is an outlet only a couple of feet away. It will have to wait for a trip to the hardware store to get another wall wart, that I can also use for building lighting in that area.
I was able to get quite a bit done on the modules even though I ended up getting a call out in the middle of the night and losing a day. The modules have track. Next is to wire them up then I can start the scenery. Sunday night before bed I pulled out a design for a module set that I drew up last year. After looking at it I realized I needed to make a few changes. So after reshaping a couple of the frames I started o redraw the track. The original track plan was drawn up using a local salt plant as a model. I liked the plan but thought an industrial center would be a great additions . So if all works well this will be a great switching location with five industries, it will also go from a stub end to a run through and a run around track for the engines. The attached track plan is the salt plant. The modules will be redesigned so they can be sandwiched together for travel. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Friday I did a little work on my latest flatcar conversion, not much, but some painting and weathering got done. I also harvested half of our dinner salad and two mild Hungarian peppers from my basement hydroponic garden. Saturday I went to my Mom's house and spent half a day working on Dad's N-scale layout matching rolling stock to crystal boxes. I also brought home Dad's rolling tool box. Once I get those tools organized and sorted in my other tool boxes, then this one will go to the Sebring Model Railroad Club to store some of my rolling stock so I don't have to carry it back and forth as often. Sunday, I taught Sunday school for one of our teachers who had to be elsewhere, then church, then dinner, a couple hours at the train club where we worked on a track repair, then home for a Zoom meeting for the board of the Libera mission my wife and I serve on, then to vent our frustration with a particular board member, we went to Tractor Supply to get cat food (they didn't have any of the food that was on sale) then took the dogs to the dog park (which has finally thawed a bit and is no longer covered in ice) to let the fur-kids our for a much needed run. Back to work this morning and Scouts BSA this evening.
Good morning, Much of my time this past weekend was spent on the cart for the new smoker, it's coming along nicely. When I got into the train room I was able to put some finishing touches on the yard office. This one is almost done, just a few more details and some light weathering needed. The acrylic paints and sponge brush arrived so I got to try out the road painting technique I saw on Youtube. It did not come out quite like the one on YouTube and I can't say I am totally happy with the result but I did find out I like the sponge brush. I Have to keep working on this technique.
Boy, howdy! Fed-ex frustration. We all feel your pain. I have a late running order myself. Not due to shipping Co. Backlog at supplier (non-model railroad). And battle with couplers to boot! Most others here making great progress. As mentioned, chores this weekend. I did start cutting out car side appliques (road name and reporting marks). Did some before logging on. This is a slow process, but well worth the effort. Will work on this awhile. Then, some assembly. All have a great week.
Good weekend! Saturday my son came by to watch soccer and share breakfast with us. We took advantage of the nice weather to walk around the community. Ended the day with pizza. Somewhere in there I unboxed the laser engraver and confirmed the parts were all there. Sunday started a little slower. Sharon and I enjoyed leftover pizza for lunch while watching another soccer match. Then I got the engraver assembled, loaded the software, read some documentation and watch a couple YT videos. I decided to give it a brief test of basic functionality. There were some adjustments I was uncertain about. I used a known good drawing file. "Known good" because it was produced by someone else. The result: Not good, but not surprising. The process was good for me. I learned to adjust the laser parameters in the software. Successfully utilized the engraver's offline capability. After posting this update I will be heading for the garage to start the mechanical adjustments needed to improve the quality. Stay safe,
I worked on the ramp to the coal trestle. I got the walls painted, weathered, and installed. I covered he foam with plaster infused paper towels ad then placed a layer of plaster over it. I attached more track and roadbed to the layout and weathered track in preparation for ballasting.
Although I didn't post my plans on Friday, cause I didn't have any. Ended up working on the second base to lay down cork roadbed, and this week, drop DCC track joiner feeders. Also, figured why not place items back into their packaging to see what I have, and mainly keep it all safe while working on base. I'll go through the N Scale drawer this week, and maybe the totes in the attic? Gonna try my had at using Atlas Flex track in area's to cut down on track pieces. Not sure if I will be successful or not? I don't have anywhere near the amount of items most others have here. Oh yeah, and I carved the foam for the very first time for some kind of water feature, me thinks. Poor canoers don't have enough water
I thought your burns look familiar, with one being a vector cut drawing and one being a raster burn drawing. The vector cut (right) shows hysteresis in the XY mechanism. Something is either vibrating or loose allowing the laser head to spring around while cutting.
Many things to do. The belts which serve as the rack for the Y-axis needed to be tightened. The roller which snugs the laser carriage to the X-axis rail was similarly loose. Made some adjustments. Also took a few minutes to make a simplified test drawing. Got it to this point. Much better than the first attempts. (It's actually better than the image.) Still much to do. Working on an air assist. Reading through the relevant group postings for known problems and solutions. Designing an enclosure with exhaust and window. Already have five projects lined up that will improve my drawing knowledge and familiarize me with the engraver. So far money well spent. Thanks for your help getting me started. Stay safe,
As expected skiing took up most of the long weekend, but I’ve spent today working on my shelf switching layout. It exists-shelf mounted, unitrack laid, 1/8” white foam in place to elevate structures to match the unitrack height. I built my first layout, a ~5’ tabletop in 2021 knowing it wouldn’t survive my next move. This time the goal is to build something that I can take the structures off of, wrap up in some blankets for padding, and mostly survive the move from Japan back to the US sometime in 2023. That way I can unpack it, throw it on a wall, fix some scenery, and then run trains while I build a bigger one. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
My only MRR work this weekend was cleaning up a batch of mixed HO and N scale buildings I got from a good friend down here. He had a layout as a kid but never got into the hobby as an adult - he has other avocations to occupy himself. So now I have them and am working to get them new homes.
