Well it's happened again. Another weekend has blown by us as fast as the Santa Fe Chief. Did you get everything done that you wanted? Saturday morning I set out to Bloomington to head to the clubs headquarters for our last work session of 2012. My part was to finish up the y harnesses that make up the bus to either a Power Pole or Cinch Jones Connector. Simply put, the Cinch Jones (female in this case) is held in place with the conduit strap and the Power Pole is loose as seen above. Wire is speaker wire. We built the six harnesses in an assembly between three of us. Cutting two sets of wires, stripping, tinning, soldering and assembly. Within a few hours we were about 90% done. This picture shows the panel that was built for the yard track. Simply put, center is off, left is home power (Power Pole conn.), right is N-Trak power (Cinch Jones conn.). Sky boards were also painted up in prep for the final assembly of the modules for next year. We hope to do a few test runs early next year. With club work out of the way, I was off to buy a new soldering iron. A fellow club member had a few he was willing to sell so I went to his place to see what he had and scored two soldering irons, one Weller pencil 25W and one Whal cordless. Both were older but made in America (score!). My intentions were to work on the layout when I got home. While some work was done, there is nothing worth posting at this time. Sunday was the mad rush to do Christmas shopping so no modeling that day. So how about you? How did you fare? Bench work, track work, or DCC work? Or maybe you got that right of way approved around the Christmas Tree? We had a few of you post pictures on Friday. For those that did, post again here. For those who did not and have their Christmas Trains running, post your pics here! Also post your pictures of what you got accomplished over the weekend. We'll come back on Friday the 21st, despite what the Mayans said, and do it all over again. Until then... High Greens!
Some weekends, my only purpose is to let people feel good because they got more done on their railroad than I did. We went skiing. It was fun, but the drive back was a slow slog through rain, sleet and snow. Wish there were a train I could take instesd.....
Got sound decoder installed into my N-scale Class J steamer. Was an unexpected gift from the wife on Saturday, and I couldn't get home fast enough to install it. Washed/primed the walls of my railroad room. Then noticed that the ceiling just wasn't an off-white color because it was aged, but because the person who lived in the basement apparently smoked like a.. steam locomotive. Now I know why I never smoked in the house when I did smoke (9 months off those things now). So, that got a healthy coat of primer as well.
The painfull arthritis in my knee is waning and I was able to get the one end of my T-Trak yard modules wired up. I used Anderson Power pole connectors and some modular telephone connectors to hook the T-Trak layout to my clubs DCC command station. The Blue/White power poles are for track power, Black/white are for the DC signal power from a wall wart, the modular connector and surface box are to expand the loconet from the UR91 to the modules.
