Today marks the exact half of the month of June! Just where is the time going? Hope you used it wisely! Well Saturday was used to work on the modules, specifically module 2, the module that has the most turnouts. 6 turnouts in all and rather than use 6 Tam Valley servo Singlets, I opted for the Tam Valley Octopus with the Octodecoder and 3 Dual Frog Juicers. By mid afternoon, I had all the Dual Frog Juicers installed and working well. I next selected a central location for the Octopus and Octodecoder combination. For those not familiar, the Octopus can only be powered by a pure, filtered DC source. Since I'm using DCC and since I may want to fire the turnouts through DCC, I picked up the Octodecoder Thursday night. Once this decoder is attached to the Octopus, I can power the whole thing with my DCC off the main bus. With everything mounted I started getting all six servos ready, but when I plugged them in, nothing. After a few hours research I found nothing to show my installation was at fault so it looks like I have a bad decoder. I switched gears to getting the servos ready but I'm stuck until Tuesday when my dealer is open again to see what is going on. Sunday was a day I had been preparing for, for a long time. I got up, got Angela up and got ready for a day of relaxing. I took her up north to a great little Italian restaurant that I have seen on many a railfan adventure. We enjoyed a great meal in a pleasant and quiet atmosphere, and after enjoying dessert, I fumbled in my pocket and asked the most important question of my life while presenting her with a diamond ring. She said yes! So soon there will be a Mrs. Wiggin keeping your humble scribe on the straight and narrow. Well, she'll try anyway. We had a great Sunday spending time together and traveling the roads less traveled on our way back home. Despite how busy I am with Galesburg and painting, I will always make time for family. Which brings me to the next exciting chapter in my life and its railroad to boot! Tomorrow I start orientation on a new, part time job. I'll be slowly walking away from the retail job I have now as it is not allowing me to pursue my passion, which is writing. Angela is very understanding of my passion for detailing and painting model locomotives and rolling stock and writing about it. I realized that this current job with the long drive, weird hours and environment were not going to be conducive to my painting and writing needs when it has taken 4 months to detail and paint those Chicago Central Locomotives where in the past I was able to do it in two weeks while working for Carstens. So as I have oft said so many times in the past. Life comes at you fast. I'm engaged to a wonderful woman, starting a new chapter in my life and with it new challenges. Stay tuned for more information on the train related side! So how about you? What did you accomplish in the train room this weekend? Track work, bench work, scenery or DCC, let us know! We'll come back here on Friday the 19th to start it all over again. Until then, have a great week and... High Greens!
Well, I got painting done Saturday and Sunday AM. The mornings is about it for being able to stand it in an "un-conditioned" attic. I do have the heat-pump/air system sitting in my garage. Should have the estimate today for installing it. Got started on the sky-blue on two walls. It is darker in the photo than real life. Especially since I do not have any of the layout lighting installed. That will come later. Between my lousy photography, missing the lights, and then the white clouds/atmosphere to come, it will be much lighter. A lot of work but I'm loving it.
Congrats on the engagement, Jim! Exciting stuff! As for me, since we moved to the new house a couple weeks ago, no modeling . The layout is still sitting on the floor in the basement. I've now got a 13x14' room in the basement that I was able to snag as the train room. It's finished with carpeting and a drop ceiling. I am going to try to put a small workbench in one of the corners also. For now, too many other projects to do around the house.
Yes. Congratulations indeed. Life coming at you fast, new job, most importantly new wife. That's the stuff that keeps you young. THAT was a weekend, milestone, and happy-stuff game changer.
Nothing on the order of getting engaged, Congratulations, Jim! I did make some progress on my power line project, not totally happy with the way the line is hanging now that I blow up the photo, but after a little tweaking I suppose I could get them more realistic:
Jim goes out and gets engaged and then expects us to top that with modeling. :closedmouth: Seriously, congrats on that front, and on finding ways to make your passion pay. We'll stay tuned. I managed to knock out the Honey Dos, including about 75% of the basement reorg, so my airbrush station is now all back in one place. Need a new basement dehumidifier before I can start painting, but Craig's list should help with that shortly. Also managed to strip a U30CG (N scale, trix) that I got a while back in BN foobie paint. THose old Trix locos have nearly bullet proof mechanisms, and the plastic idler trucks not withstanding, they can be real rock stars:
