Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend and got a lot accomplished, lets dive in. Saturday: I got up and realized it was my Dads birthday so once waking up to my first cup of coffee I called him and wished him a Happy Birthday. We ended up talking for three hours. After that I got cleaned up and went to pick up some prescriptions and charcoal for the grill. Back at home I started the big project of dismantling the south wall that was my workbench, pegboard and shelves while listening to a podcast. By supper, the workbench and associated pegboard and shelves were all back up on the north wall, leaving a clean south wall for the HO layout. The wife had me fire up the grill and I cooked a pair of steaks we bought from our local farm while the the wife prepared sweet potatoes. Why go out when we can eat like this? We relaxed a bit then I spent some time working on the south wall before heading to bed. Sunday: I had not slept as well but with coffee in hand, I did not fool around and quickly set out to get the HO layout installed. Three 1X3 pieces of pine, three metal racks and three metal arms were installed before the subbase that holds the modules was installed. By lunch I had successfully put up the HO P&E layout and everything was even and level, despite this old farmhouse. A new backdrop will need to be constructed to better fit the area and pegboard will be added below but I can at least run trains now. After lunch, the wife and I put in some yard time and even though the temps finally warmed up, the 32 mph wind gusts made leaf clean up impossible. A quick, light dinner and then I spent the rest of the night, organizing and putting everything away as well as getting ready for the week. So how about you? What did you get accomplished? Let us know. We'll assemble again, this week on Thursday the 17th as Friday is Good Friday with some of us off, and I'll be away railfanning. Until then, have a good, maybe short week, stay safe, healthy and as always... High greens!
Good morning and happy Monday everyone. The weekend went well here. My son and DIL came for a visit and dinner on Saturday it is always good to see them and catch up. Mrs. Kitbash as usual had a great dinner. On the modeling front, I got a little done on the LCL building facades. Also spent time putting in bracing at the edge of the upper level for the coal mine. The tricky part was cutting wood stock to match the curves along the aisles. But with aid of many clamps, I was able to position lumber at each curve, trace the curves with a pencil, then carefully cut out the pencil line. I finished that yesterday afternoon. After that, I got out some new passenger and baggage cars I have never run and tested them out. Have a photo below. It is Easter celebration week and we are looking forward to that here. Everyone have a great week.
Good mornin and Happy Monday to Y'all, Hope Y'all had a great weekend. Friday went great - the Wife and I now know how much house we can afford. My Edward Jones guy has a little more investigating to do. We will talk again today to nail everything down. Then - the loan process will begin. Saturday: I joined my compadres at a cowboy festival (We dressed as 1880's cowboys). We had a great time. Sunday: I played handyman for my daughter. Installed a wall mount TV bracket. Replaced rusty bolts on her toilet. Took some furniture for her to her storage facility (Part of the joy of pick up truck ownership -- hahahaha) Have a great week!! Stay Safe!! Wolf
Happy Monday all! Wasn't feeling great but went ahead and dove in to a Metcalf card kit Friday night. Saturday morning started with coffee and a hour plus trip to the Post Office that should have not been more than a 15 minute max trip. Fixed breakfast for the wife and then she had a list of honey do's and yard work to get done. I way over did it and am still paying for it. Sunday was a lot of Advil and I somehow managed to get more done on the card kit before we had to go out and finish up one more yard work item. My knees are shot this morning. No fun getting old folks Here's the progress. Hope you all have a great week!!!!
I had to content myself with watching a train ramble around my T-Trak mini-empire. Which is good and I am happy with that. But the freight cars I had expected to receive, coming from California, did not arrive. Instead, some dillweed sent them to New Jersey, where they have been sitting ever since, according to tracking. Brilliant work. Oh well.
Made more progress on my scratchbuilt N Scale anthracite coal breaker, carefully cutting spaces for windows and doors. Slow work, but so far so good.
Good Monday morning everyone, Had a full, enjoyable, and at the same time exhausting weekend here. Was at the Museum to operate both the Ntrak and AsiaNrail layouts. We had a good turnout of Ntrak club members, some who had not attended this particular event before. One new thing on the Ntrak layout was this ramp at the gate. On Sunday we arrived and started up the layout at 6:30am because of a 5K run around the adjoining airport that the Museum was having. We started our tear down early at 2:00pm and had everything loaded up by 4:30. Here is my pile of modules and stuff prior to going into the back of my truck. The process will conclude later this morning when I take the club trailer back to it's storage shed.
Put some of the Z scale 1960s steam locos and rolling stock out on Tapton as they havn't had a run for a long time The WD 2-10-0 is on a freight train, The unrebuilt LMS Patriot 4-6-0 is pulling four wheel double bolster wagons with runner wagons as spacers. The streamlined A4 'Merlin'is on the the Up 'Yorkshire Pullman' looking the other way An LNER A3 'Merry Hampton' , sister engine to Flying Scotsman is on a diverted ECML Passnger express made up of LNER Gresley teak coaches The A4 is a cast white metal body on a Marklin chassis. The casting took a lot of cleaning up. The Pullmans are Atlas editions ones fitted with MTL Trucks and magnetic couplers Kev
Well we made it back home from our 19 day trip out West via Amtrak. First thing I did was take a 6 hour nap and then started unpacking and doing the laundry along with picking up the dog from some friends who took care of her while we were gone. I also got out the voucher and wrote the check for the taxes that are due. I was too tired to get any modeling done. There is always this week. Rick Jesionowski
What a wonderful thing to talk to your dad for three hours! That HO installation looks super!! Kitbash is getting high marks. Pickup truck to the rescue! That card kit has a lot of personality. "Dillweeds" can be a menace. Coal breaker reminds me of my granddad's early workdays. Nice show report. Wow! What a freight load! Teak coaches. High quality. Yep. Fatigue works against modeling. First of all, the Gadsden Train Show was super! The club layout has so much new room, there is still a lot to do. Saw folks I knew and met new people. A nice fellow was able to sell me a box of magazines. New to brand new mags. Ten dollars for thirty-one mags. Seems like a bargain. On the home front, test track tryout of new drive was good. Decided to test on the Murphysboro module. Seemed okay for a minute. Then...jamming at the north turnout. This resulted in a complete tear out of this and the adjacent turnout (crossover). Now, the pressing project is replacing two turnouts on the main line. Oh well. This is what I do. Have a fine week.
Friday, I did some homework and went to a local laundromat where some of our church folk are washing (a little at a time) about 300 loads of laundry recovered from a hoarding situation (involving another of our church members). Saturday, Axel (my Rottweiler) and I headed out the door after breakfast and went to visit our tax preparer (about a half hour drive). Axel, of course, enjoyed riding in the truck and the treats along the way. Once home, I spent some time writing checks to the state and federal governments which was ouchy but was thankful that the advice of our accountant earlier in the year made it much better than it might have been. Once my wife came home from work she signed one of the forms and I took them all to the post office. Later, my wife and I took two of the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood. A little more homework reading was done in the evening. Sunday, being Palm Sunday and the beginning of our "busy season," I was, as always, up before the sun and in my office around 7:30 am to practice preach my sermon, do final edits, post it online, send it out the mailing list of subscribers and then have church. After church we had lunch and i headed out to the Sebring Model Railroad Club for our monthly business meeting. Oddly, we had delayed our meeting a week because many members had wanted to attend the train show in Youngstown the previous week, but none of them had shown up to use the table that the club had paid for (Grrr). A second reading was given a change to a paragraph in our club bylaws and a proposal to build a new handicap ramp (and porch, and steps) was approved after several years of discussion. Once home, my wife and I walked the two big dogs and then, after another change of clothes, I headed out to preach again at the Community Lenten worship held at the First Christian Church. After the obligatory cookies following the service, I once again headed home to discover that my wife had again been "experimenting" with a new recipe to use with her sourdough starter. This week it was sourdough blueberry muffins, and they were (and are) amazing. Possibly not quite as good as her blueberry zucchini muffins, but still quite addicting. The only thing left was sharing a bowl of popcorn whilst relaxing on the couch/recliner and the day was over. This week, I will likely be at church every evening except Good Friday (we don't have a service on Friday since we *do* have a Vigil service on Saturday evening). I hope that all of you have a fantastic week.
Saturday my wife and I redid some shelving in a friends train room (same friend we built the layout for a few weeks ago). He said he had a few more trains to put on the shelves and didn't think the original ones would hold the weight. They will now, and after partially loading them with his HO equipment it looks like he has more "in stock" than most hobby stores I've seen! Sunday I nearly finished my attempt at a control panel. Excel, photo paper, basswood and glue used for the panel. Nowhere near as neat or professional as many I've seen posted on this board, but it works for me. I still need to mount it but I am thinking of different ways I might want to do it. Nonetheless it is operational at this point. Pictures of the before and after...
It wasn't an especially productive weekend here. seems like I went down one rabbit hole only to branch off into another. I had decided to figure out where the dam would go before finishing the creek bed, so I had to finalize placement of the flour mill. Only trouble was, I couldn't remember where I had packed it away after doing the mockup a few months ago. (so far as I'm aware, prototype construction engineers somehow seem to avoid this sort of embarrassment.) Finally figured out where I had put it and got it placed on the layout section, taking measurements to the edges so I can get it back in place later. Then I decided that clearance between the mill and the Huron Central main line to Port Erehwon was quite close, so before final placement of the mill, I better establish exact placement of the right of way. In short, I spent a lot of time looking at the whole problem, and in the end, all I really accomplished was laying a couple of feet of roadbed.
Finally finished converting the Proto GP18 into a reasonable approximation of a GP9: After modifying the radiator grilles to chicken wire and a simple frame as a bonus I added a bell in typical CN usage. The frames are a bit chunky, I know... but it's better than the antsy feeling in my gut because my GP9 looked like a GP18... The Great Slave Lake Division was a CN line opened in the 1960s between Peace River, Alberta (using trackage rights over Northern Alberta Railway), and Hay River, in the Northwest Territories, with a branch to the Pine Lake mining area near Hay River. That was the biggest railway construction project in Canada since the transcontinentals (Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Northern and National Transcontinental) of the early 20th century (all predecessors of the CN).
A lot of coffee was consumed, but not a whole heck of a lot accomplished! Got the paint I ordered for the gondolas and that Cascade Green does not match the Cascade Green of the 2 locomotives (its obvious). Need to get in touch with the company that built my loco's to see if I can purchase some paint from them! Maybe I am being too picky?! Ground is still thawing, so no work being done on the mainline unfortunately!
Blame the sun! Pennsy Green always seemed to have a lot of variation in real life, partly because different shops mixed it differently but often because the sun faded it when it was in use. There's a solid prototype case for blaming color differences (to a point) on "sun fade." Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
I've never seen that livery before. I'm assuming it was specific to the Great Slave Lake line. Very sharp in any case. BTW, did this line involve a car float operation?
You assume correctly. It was a high visibility livery applied to locos on the GSL line, which was useful since they were equipped with remote controls especially for the Pine Lake mining operation. However, no car float service was available as the only other large town on the Great Slave Lake was Yellowknife and there was no rail terminal there. Hay River was about as far north as one could go on a railroad that was still physically linked to the rest of the North American rail network. Links between Hay River and Yellowknife were either by a long and circuitous highway route (not always usable depending on weather) around Great Slave Lake, or by boat across the lake (forget that in winter!), or by air (look up Buffalo Airways).
Just found this while doing some research... more proof that I am/was overthinking this lol HAPPY EASTER!
