Another weekend is in our collective rearview mirror. How did you do in your modeling endeavors? I myself did not get as much done as I wanted to. I had all day Saturday to work on my Rock Island project but did not finish it. I was able to finish all the decal work and was painting and installing the MU hoses when frustration struck. I'm blaming the sun or lack of it that is. Illinois has not seen the sun much in the past few weeks and I like natural light to work on details. After balling up one BLMA MU, I called it quits and decided it was better to walk away than to subject my family to a tirade of curses and me throwing the loco out the window. Despite the crummy light, I did get the decals done although I need to order more RI decals to finish up the number boards. After this loco, I have the B&M GP38-2 and a special BNSF locomotive for a friend and then there may be some drastic changes in the shop. Time will tell. Sunday was Angela's birthday so I treated her to some gifts and a nice afternoon out. So how about you? Did you accomplish everything you wanted to this weekend? Any painting and detail work? How about scenery or structures? Club module work? Whatever you accomplished this weekend, let us know, with a picture or two if you have any. We'll come back here on Friday the 22nd and do it all over again. Until then... ​High Greens!
I finally did get a bit of layout time in. Nothing worth taking pictures of, unless people really want to see yet another Tortoise underneath yet another layout, or some foam glued on plywood instead of the picture from a month ago of the same foam sitting unglued on the same piece of plywood. Ah, but the devil is in the details. My personal Beelzebub for the weekend was a Rix switchstand. The carfloat apron comes with a small round peg sticking up through the wood floor to control the points. I looked online at some pictures of carfloat aprons, and, to no great surprise, they don't use small round pegs. I found an operating switch stand in my cache of things I never got around to using, and spent some time making the necessary changes to adapt it to the apron. Along the way, I worked out the rest of the linkage details for the Tortoise, which turned out to be a simple straight shot up from below, like pretty much any other standard installation. Further inland, I made the final adjustments and glued the wye turnout to the pink foam so that I could mount the other Tortoise. I went by my LHS to see if he had another Rex switchstand, and found myself instead in backorder hell. (I told you the devil was in the details.) After a stop at the wine and beer shop for supplies for that night's corned beef and cabbage feast in honor of St. Patrick, I came back home and....rats. I glued the wye turnout to the pink foam. I forgot to paint it first, so, I spent some time with a brown wash trying to take some of the bright blush out of the roadbed. Since it's down by the waterfront anyway, I'll pre-ballast with a bit of fine sand and hopefully cover up my error. Like I did as a pre-teen, I still take train magazines and catalogs to bed, although I don't read under the covers with a flashlight any more. This time, I had the latest Walthers flyer. They are once again doing a production run of the carfloat and apron kits, so if anyone else is thinking about them, now is the time to place your order. The forecast is calling for a considerable amount of snow tonight and through tomorrow, so I'm thinking of staying home. I just hate to stop when I'm making progress,
I did get to check out my T-Trak modules on Saturday, sprucing them up, cleaning the track and doing some tree planting. Yesterday (Sunday) I traveled up to Albany NY and had the modules in a show for a couple of hours with another club.
I did a bit of work over the weekend, putting together a Roundhouse boxcar kit, equipping it with Kadees. I tested some Testors decal spray on a sheet of Walthers decal paper I had printed a while ago (and found out that it's @$%& fragile) and that worked, but I also found that the printing was nearly transparent... the yellow print, quite visible on the white background, all but disappeared on the brown of the undecorated boxcar shell... Grrr.... And I put to work my new Dubro wire bender in making a replacement handrail on an old tank car I had bought in February. The previous owner had done a similar job but with very soft wire that bent out of shape at the slightest touch. This fix worked beautifully. Another tool worth its weight in gold. @MisterBeasley: I take my train magazines and flyers to the bathroom, not to bed... :teeth:
been cleaning the train room and just laying around on my birthday today thanks for the b-day greeting have not been on here for awhile
I spent my weekend cluttering my trainroom First everything came off the layout *sniff* and got put back into storage. Then, out came the miter saw; dust everywhere -_- Discovered that method #1 for constructing my upper level is laughable, so back to the drawing board to come up with method #2 (and #3 and #4 and...) Happily, however, did get my mini bench mostly done, and a drawer to go with it completely done And a little more scenery shell Ta-Da!
