Welcome back to the gateway to the weekend. I hope you all had a great week and are now ready to report what you have planned for the workbench or layout. Lots of progress last weekend so let's keep it up. Friday: I should be off the clock early today which means after I get a few errands done, I will head to my "not so local hobby shop" something I have not done since at least May of this past year. I need to pick up a new Walthers catalog and see what other items I just can't live without and catch up with the owner. Saturday: Will probably be an automotive day. Parts for the Falcon's exhaust manifold came in so I can finally start work on that. The father-in-law has to drop off his truck for maintenance at the dealership near us, so the plan is for Ang to pick him up tomorrow morning and bring him back to our place for breakfast where I'll be making my homemade biscuits and gravy. Once we are done, I'll nurse the Falcon the hour and half drive up north to his garage with Ang following as support vehicle. Once there, we will see how much of a fight the exhaust manifold puts up. For those who don't know, most old cars don't give up their exhaust parts easily and usually a threaded stud is broken in the process. If that happens, we'll need to take the engine head off and take it to a machine shop to get the broken stud out. I'm not concerned as this will give me an excuse to switch parts to make the Falcon burn unleaded fuel. After playing with cars, we're taking Angela's grandma out for an early dinner and calling it a day. Sunday: I plan to get up, make coffee and open the garage. It is supposed to be in the 60's so I hope to get a lot done out there before winter comes. I'll need to install the legs into my shadow box, design and install some small shelfs for the leveling screws on the modules to rest on and start gluing the backdrop in that I cut to size last weekend. I also need to finalize my method of attaching the layout to the wall. The legs are for when I take the layout on the road for display. I'm still leaning towards a French Cleat system, but standard "A" frame brackets are built as well. If I get a chance to get paint, I would really like to paint the backdrop and finalize my LED lighting. My goal is to get to a point to where I just need to install the outer fascia next week. We'll see. So how about you? What do you have planned? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Monday the 23rd to see how we all did. Until then, have a great weekend, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Happy Friday all! Unlike Jim, no knocking off early for me today. This evening, I will need to spend some time getting some things together that I will want to have with me Saturday. There's a chance each day this weekend that the temps will get warm enough to do some spray painting of some detail parts. Hopefully that will get to happen this evening if I'm lucky On Saturday, I'm planning on attending an event happening about 2 hours north of me tomorrow that is train related. It should be interesting and be a chance to catch up with a few folks I know that will be there. Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a small amount of railfanning afterwards before heading back home. As an added bonus, there is a Buc-ee's along my route so I'll be able to stop there going in both directions. Sunday, I'll probably do like last week, drink coffee, run a few trains, and see what comes up. I've been kind of dragging my feet on several projects of late. I'm sure as work slows down later this tear and the weather keeps me in more, I'll get back to them all. Hope you all have a great weekend!
Hey All, I have been working on some modest weathering for these old-timey tank cars. They are all ~1920s Oklahoma based petroleum companies (I think). I used the VMS "matt" finish from an airbrush to knock down the shine. You can really see the difference compared to the not-yet treated Chickasaw car. Adding a bit of grimy colors thinned and through the airbrush. I'll get the trucks this weekend and add a few streaks, but keeping the weathering modest on these. We also have a train show in New Braunfels, TX...maybe I'll see you there on Saturday. Have a great weekend, All! -Bob T.
It’s been an unexpectedly long week at work. Saturday I’ve got to get some volunteer paperwork done between my kids’ athletic events. I also need to trim some bushes and take some larger tree limbs to the dump. Probably harvest the last peppers of the season too. Sunday, if everything has stopped growing in the garden, I might run out and grab some weed mats to attempt to kill off everything in them. When I moved in the raised beds were overgrown and I’ve been fighting weeds to a draw each week. I had a butternut squash plant show up from the previous owners’ plantings, but no other “ volunteers.” So I’m going to quit this war of attrition and go nuclear-with weed mats through late in the growing season and just put a few tomatoes and peppers in next year, leaving any space I don’t need covered up. More to the point of this-afterwards I think I’ll look at my mock up from last weekend and paint some ground foam and order some flex track. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I need to clear out a bottom shelf of Model Railroader magazines in binders (rip out the interesting articles, recycle the rest) to make room for an airbrush station. Sometimes, modeling is about logistics...
Wet and mild Friday Morning here, just got back from the Orthopedic Surgeon's office after my wife twisted her knee and then fell a few days later on it. She got a cortisone shot, brace and a cane so as to avoid surgery on a torn meniscus. I hope to start building another Tangent covered hopper kit along with masking the roof on another Atlas Boxcar kit so I can apply the next color. Then bowling in the evening, hopefully keep up the good scores after last week. Saturday, no club as I have to work at a bowling tournament for the association, and like Metraman, I have to update my Safe Sport Certification as an Association Board member. I may get some modeling done in the evening. Sunday, just have to do laundry and I need to look up some tax information for my son on a local city tax return problem. See you all later. Rick Jesionowski
Good morning everyone, Today will be taking my wife Japanese grocery shopping and then to lunch. Saturday afternoon our city will have a disaster drill and I will be taking part with our neighborhood CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) group. Got the oil filter for the truck so will get that oil change done this weekend. In the train room I hope to wrap up the work on the Ntrak staging yard. It will be good to get my train room back and run something again. Will also continue with the controls for my friend's staging yard depending which parts come in. So a full weekend here.
Well, @Jim Wiggin, no one can accuse you of not being ambitious. Fingers crossed on warm temps. That matte finish really does the trick. Nuclear with a weed mat. I understand. "Modeling is about logistics". Well said. Knee pain is no joke. Hoping for fast recovery. I heard "covered hopper"! Staging yard outbound! Well, last week was something else. I made plans to cut the passenger car door openings and realized that there was not enough room on the ends of the coach sides to do so. I was made even happier due to reporting marks already being put on. Nothing for it but to recut the four, yes four sides on the laser cutter and then print and install more reporting marks. Got 'er done and made door openings. Also, during the process, I noticed that the sleeper sides were short of room as well. I had a little more wiggle room on these two sides, so I made the door cuts and installed partial jambs. A very finicky process. However, I did not want to try to reposition the sleeper windows as they are larger. All cuts now done. Earlier today I made center beams and coupler retainer rods. Next will be trucks. Have a great Fall weekend.
Started my weekend with a three-hour power outage (yet another...) and a flat tire . A nice big shiny Robertson head screw decided to take up residence on my left front tire... Both are now resolved so I'm getting set to have a little fun this weekend, to celebrate my 60th year (and thank the Big Guy for every new day), maybe by giving myself a little 1:87 treat at the LHS. There are a lot of ideas milling about up in the brain box (it's a real mess up there), so we'll see!
Happy 60th Mike, go for that 1:87 treat my friend! This weekend for me, I hope to morph this : Into this, not an exact copy but you use what is available, right ? But for you Jim, I am using this exact decal set up : I hope to get this wrapped up soon, but then why be in a hurry to do what next ? Thanks for looking, be well !
This will be a 9 day weekend for me. I hope to have one end of my yard track laid including, turnouts, throws, and wiring done. Then I will move on to the Indio side of the staging area on the upper level which will have eight turnouts. Once these two fair sized tasks are somewhat complete I have no excuse not to begin the next section of my benchwork. Then again, I could work the Fontana local at this point. Man, if I can run trains progress may go out the window. That said it's simply a giant switching area currently. Fun, but not what I am after. This is the area I am currently working on.
