The last weekend of July has quietly slipped away, how did you do with your list of projects? My weekend was a total bust. I never got to the Midwest Prototype meet as I had planned, the girlfriend wanted to look at used cars instead. Sunday was no better as my time was spent trying to organize and consolidate items into one household after living single for four years. So how about you? Were you successful in getting your list of projects done? Did you attend any shows or meets? How about track work or DCC? Let us know how you did with pictures if you have them. We'll come back and do it all again this Friday, August 3rd. ​High Greens!
Dealing with getting a starter replaced on my daughter's car took up some of my time, but otherwise I got to do a lot of scenery work. Fortunately, the layout has a great view of the TV in the family room, so I had the Olympics to keep me company. It was the start of the Great Static Grass Experiment. I got the applicator last Monday, and I've been working on techniques for getting it on to the layout. I'd already done the foundation work with foam, plaster cloth and Gypsolite, so it was time to actually "plant" the grass. It came out pretty well, I guess, but the "amber waves of grain" effect I was hoping for didn't really materialize. It may be the grass itself. My LHS only has Woodland Scenics static grass flock, which is very short, the 2mm variety. I've got to find some Scenic Express. I took some pictures, but they didn't come out very well. Better luck next time. Oh, and lobster is $3.99 a pound. We had a lobster dinner with great steamed clams on Sunday evening. Yeah, life is good.
Finally got into gear, after a reasonably long hiatus (spend more time preparing for, and doing, 1:1 than 1:160 rail work), and completed relocating the turnouts and trackage on the east end of Manning, lengthening the passing loop by about three cars and the secondary loop by two, and adding enough headway to detach a loco and run around without fouling the main. The AGP elevator trackage off the secondary loop is next to be formalised with the shifting of the sidings forward from their original (unsecured fortunately) position. Even managed to unpack 70% of the magazine library and place into the bookshelf which lives under the east arm of the layout!
On Friday, I was half way between Houston and San Antonio when I remembered that I had never got the module legs down to pack them for the trip. I stopped at a Home Depot along the way and picked up some 2X2s, captive nuts and a small back saw. First thing upon arriving at the show site at Live Oak Center in San Antonio was to make legs. Finally got the modules hooked in with the big NTRAK layout. I was between the SANTRAK and TexN clubs. NWX and AustiNtrak were part of the layout too. Had a good time running trains after I figured out how to fix the bad programming that I did on decoders on all the locomotives I took to the show. The speed tables were all boogered up and there was only off and full on. Don't know how I did that. I had to go back to the factory reset default values in the CVs and start over. I saw Flash Blackman a few times and talked a while. I stayed at my daughter's house while in San Antonio. She was back in Sugar Land going to her high school class reunion but left a "honey do" list for me. How sweet. I installed a water filter under her kitchen sink and did some tree trimming in the yard.
Just got a SD7 frame milled to do single tank SD7 in SP tiger stripe. After I get the first one dolled up I'll me having more frames milled.
Hi Nick, I did the exact same project about 3 years ago. I model the SP's Coast Div. between San Luis Obispo & Santa Margarita (Cuesta) in April of 1953. The SP has two single tank "specially ballasted" SD-7s assigned to SLO for helper duty. There numbers were 5288 & 5289. If you're curious, I could email you a few pics. Look forward to seeing your progress.
