The first weekend of the new year is done! Did you get everything done you wanted to do? What are your plans for this year? Not a whole lot of modeling for me, but some progress none the less. Saturday I picked up my paints for some new projects that I intend to start in the next few weeks, mainly B&M and Rock Island. I also got the spray booth and airbrush area up and working. While non-train related, Jared and I spent the weekend building our Tamiya Rc car Fast Attack buggies we got for Christmas. If anyone in the 30's remembers these, Tamiya re-issued them. Jared got to use the airbrush for the first time and he liked it. Now to get him to paint a locomotive. Sunday we started the process of turning Shelby's old bedroom into the home office. She like many 18 year olds moved out and after three months, Angela decided the office / railroad room would be better off in the old bedroom. Jared inherited a quen size bed and now the clean up process begins. The spray booth will stay on the porch however. I thought with the new year here, it would be a great oppertunity to see what is on our list of items we would like to accomplish model railroad wise. Please take a few minutes to give us a brief bullet list of things you want to accomplish in the model railroad hobby. It can be everything from layout plans, club activities, new skills, joining a historical society, whatever you want to accomplish in 2013. Kind of like a New Years Resolution, but more fun! Here is my list for 2013: Finish the plans for structures on my N scale layout, specifically the freight and passenger depot in Potter Place. Publish an article on T-Trak prototype modeling. Build an N-Trak module Publish more articles on N scale diesels. More research on the B&M Northern Line Write an article for the B&M historical society Join the Burlington historical society. So there you have it. Let us know A: how you did this weekend and B: let us know what you plan to get done in 2013. Next week I'll be typing away from St. Loius at the WGH train show, but we'll still do it all over again. Have a great week and... High Greens!
Well, it's now officially ski season, so I will be getting very little done on the weekends. After looking at my current inventory of flat cars, I ordered 3 more to use as "handles" for the car float terminal. The prototype typically doesn't let locomotives run on the apron or float. This avoids the problem of having to power the rails on the float itself, which will be removeable and therefore require a plug. Another bit of good news. I tried pulling around a long string of cars with the 0-6-0T that I'd like to use for the carfloat terminal, and it was able to haul a half-dozen freight cars plus the idler flats around the layout. I was worried that this small engine wouldn't be up to the task, but it did the job. The Little Engine That Could, I guess.
My club put on a nice show yesterday (Sunday) at an assisted living and nursing home complex in Goshen NY. We had our 20' X 20' HO layout, an 8' X 8' Lionel layout and a members nicely detailed 2-1/2' X 5' N gauge layout on display. We do this show every year, usually before Christmas, but due to scheduling with other shows we had to delay it until the new year.
I cleaned up the room a bit and found some parts I had been missing for months! Yay! I had almost burned $20 on a Proto 87 switch detail kit so I could get a Code 70 #6 frog I was missing, but luckily the frog and guard rails were among the parts located while cleaning up. I also set out around 30 locomotives on some open benchwork and used post it notes to identify what each one needed (MU Stands, Horn, decals, etc..) to get finished. I have 4 units with me in the hotel room this week to work on. I'm hoping to have about 15 locomotives fully detailed and ready for paint when the weather breaks closer to spring. First project this week is applying a Cal-Scale RS32/36 detail kit on an undecorated Atlas Trainman RS32 which will be Gulf & Ohio Midland #2710.
