No, you did not miss this, it is a day late as I have just recovered or still recovering from the worst case of food poisoning, I have ever encountered. Friday: Was feeling run down since my trip to Denver so I took it easy. Saturday: Was the first real nice day of the year. I set out to get yard work done but naturally when I was getting a lot done, it was time to leave. The rest of the afternoon was spent at Grandmas and driving. Angela's dad did come back with us and helped with the truck, then dinner then since it is such a long drive, Angela's dad stayed the night. Sunday: We had breakfast, and this may have been where my issue started. It is a place in the next town over we have been to many times. I had an omelet then headed to the parts store for a sensor for the truck. With the truck fixed and no more lights on the dash, Angela's dad headed home. I then went to Alan's op session and had a good time. It was on the way home I felt worse and worse. I'm pretty sure I got food poising, and it really took a toll on me. Today I feel better but I'm still taking it easy. So how about you? Let us know how your weekend went. We'll do it all over again on Friday, April 19th. Until then, have a good remainder of the week, stay healthy (unlike me) be safe and as always... High Greens!
Good mornin to Y'all @Jim Wiggin -- May you have a speedy recovery!! Get well!! This past weekend, I worked on a number of my friends locomotives. All of witch were long over due for some deep cleaning and maintenance. I was pretty much successful -- there are still a couple of stubborn locs to contend with. My NW2 project is moving along - slowly. Same for the F9M's Y'all have a great week, Wolf
Greetings to all. Hope everyone had a good peaceful weekend. @Jim Wiggin - Take care man. Keep taking it easy. Weekend modeling was good. I got out the new air brush compressor and worked with it. I like a lot. It is the Cool Runner II with the tank by Master Airbrush. I was able to paint and apply some details to one the F7 Lash-ups I am working on. Also spent time finishing the tobacco barn project for my brothers layout. We will take the short trip up to southern Virginia later this week and drop it off. I put a couple of shots of it below. Hope everyone is having a good week.
Hi all, Doesn't sound like that was any fun @Jim Wiggin, hope you feel better. I didn't do much this weekend myself. Friday night was a wash. Just chilled in the recliner for the most part. I piddled with my Rapido caboose some and finally got the battery compartment opened. The batteries didn't arrive until too late on Sunday to get them installed so that is pending. I did get a DCC decoder installed in my Kato George Bush SD70ACe and messed around with a few other projects but for the most part, that was pretty much it. Otherwise, I won't say I was sick but was just feeling blah and unmotivated. Hope you all have a great week.
Worked. Tired. Acquired a small hand full of train orders, all new to my collection. Struggled with my tremors, working on some HOn30 tank car handrails. Just missed out on an HOn30 caboose I'd been seeking. Rats....
Not too much for me. I'm still waiting for space to build an actual layout, so in the meantime I occasionally mess around with possible track plans for a future dream layout. Here's something I drew up modeling the Temple, TX BNSF yard...
Pics like this make model railroading seem intimidating. It's like fifteen hobbies in one. That's some very skillful work!
Jim, I've had food poisoning a couple of times myself and it was no fun at all. I did recover quickly and hopefully you will too. Last Friday was a clear day out and I mostly did yard work. Saturday rained all day so that was when I was able to work on the sound project for my layout. Here are some pics of the installation. The speaker. The unfinished building that goes over the speaker. The control panel installed near the scrap yard. The Digitrax SFX0416 sound decoder is behind the control panel. I built the panel for both the yard switcher and the road switcher, got to get another decoder for the road switcher. Here is a link to a short demo video I made while running this. The sound quality in person is actually better than in this recording. Sunday afternoon got clear again so I ended the weekend where it started with some more yard work.
Good morning from sunny and mild Northeast Ohio! Jim, get well soon, have been lucky in the food poisoning front, and if I got it it was mild. Well the weekend went somewhat as expected, but did not get everything done I wanted to. I did manage to finish the Moloco RBL kit and get the first coat of paint on it, now I need to mask it and another car and get the second coat of a different color on each. I did manage to get one side of the Evans 4780CF Covered Hopper decaled. I also started on a Intermountain Double door 50' PS1 boxcar kit, by first cutting down one of the plug doors to 6' wide to match the prototype. Saturday, went to the club with my Rock Island power and a train made up of covered hoppers, had a problem with the lead GP35 derailing at the same point of the layout everytime it went around, the problem was I have run that engine multiple times at the club with no problem. We did note the wheel gauge was a little narrow and there was a small flaw in the trackwork. Here is another picture from our tour of the Wheeling and Lake Erie shops: Another SD40-2 being repaired with a new cab and nose being fabricated at the shops. This is an ex-MP unit, we all wondered why two jacking pads on the locomotive. Behind it is an older unit that will be repainted into the current W&LE paint scheme. Rick Jesionowski
Precisely why I am addicted to this hobby. One can do historical research, paint, work with crafts, be an electrician, do planning, be a mechanic, understand RR operations, tinker with engines/motors, and if you get tired of it, shut the door for a couple of weeks and do something else. Thanks for the kind words. You are correct sir, it is indeed like 15 different hobbies.
It was a fairly light weekend. My wife and I ran errands to the produce store, pharmacy, and grocery store. She felt well enough to venture into the produce store and grocery store. The produce store is small, being it was a gas station, and the grocery store had scooters. I was able to get a couple loads of laundry done with assistance with the heavy lifting from my kids. I finished our taxes. I still need to finish my son’s. There is some information he needs to give so I can finalize them. On the layout I ran trains. I first test my new Atlas Master Locomotive series Silver Trainmasters in Reading livery. Just like in real life these locomotives are brutes. I am in the process of seeing how powerful they are. I am currently running one Trainmaster locomotive as the power on a 40-car coal drag made up of two-bay hoppers. 40 cars are the longest train I have had on the layout. I am thinking about going to 50. This will mostly use up all my 2-bay hoppers and removable coal loads.
Well........my big accomplishment for the weekend was frying the motor on my Athearn FP45. I did a decoder install and placed it on the track, and immediately got the magic smoke. Took it back to the bench and popped the decoder off while uttering a few choice words and put the standard board back in.......placed it on my test track (DC) and got no response......tried the "9V battery to the trucks" (and frame), and nothing. So I pulled the motor out of the frame and spinning it by hand feels gritty (and just to be sure, tried applying power across the motor terminals). That made me wonder, so I swapped the decoder into a different loco and it appears to be fine. Never had that happen before. I also got the couplers swapped on my 2 Kato NW2s......the consisted pair are my main yard switchers, and they still had the original couplers, and Kato couplers just don't play nice with other brands (and frequently other Katos) so they had to go. I got lucky and the MT2004 couplers showed up early, so got them installed. Then my new Kato F7s showed up so I got them programmed and consisted up with my other pair for an ABBA set. Now I have to either A. find a new motor for the FP45 B. Tear the drivetrain out and make it into a dummy C. turn it into a display model in my display case or D. tear it apart and use the parts to repair another FP45.
@Jim Wiggin, you are definitely excused. I am glad it was not worse. A "passle" of loco's comin' out. The tobacco barn is outstanding! I think unmotivated counts as ill. I hope the HOn30 caboose comes back around to you. Temple & Brazos Valley plan looks beefy. Loco sound project looks professional. I think I could go to the W&LE shops and help with the "sitting down". Trainmasters in Reading livery sounds like a dream come true. Motor frying sounds like the work of evil circuit gremlin. I am on here late due to A.M. dental appointment. All good, basically. The last thing on the passenger depot will be the chimney which should be done today. To be followed by "whew". Big little project. Pics should be posted Friday. Have a great rest of the week.
@Jim Wiggin sorry about the food poisoning. No fun! Results here were a mixed bag. I got my setup tools done reasonably well. The weather over the weekend was nicer than expected. The enticement of being outside was too much to resist. Just some pleasant walks down by the water. Not a bad exchange for modeling time, I suppose. Soccer was not nearly as fun. One draw and two losses for the weekend. A couple more bushels of dandelions were sent to the compost bin. In the end, I did make some actual progress on the boiler. The first two cuts are done. Now I need to do some math and trigonometry. Another element of the hobby if you enjoy it. Stay safe,
Yes!!! It's a very good hobby for the brain because it makes one learn things, and hones our problem-solving skills. Being good at improvising stuff (in Québec French, being a patenteux) is an asset. And being a big kid at heart (guilty as charged). For my weekend, a moderate but interesting haul from the Laval Hobby Show, as seen here: https://www.trainboard.com/highball...ecent-ho-purchases.69843/page-72#post-1296822 The 1974 NMRA Convention reefer needed new wheelsets and a lot of added weight to be, of all things, compliant to NMRA HO car weight standards... I also added Kadees to the NMRA 50th anniversary boxcar, and a "real fake coal"* load to the Pennsy "Buy War Bonds" hopper. Plus the magic ingredient to all this, fun! *Real fake coal: the contents of a pitcher cartridge water filter - actually part charcoal. As opposed to fake coal, which is a piece of shiny molded plastic.
For once, absolutely bupkis. Not only did I work most of Saturday and Sunday (does earning train money count as a Modeling Accomplishment?), but my air conditioner broke down on Thursday and so the window that normally houses my paint booth exhaust is instead occupied by a window-mounted AC that's keeping me from steaming in the unseasonable 90-degree weather.
90?!!!!! huh. I know, in a humid area it's much worse than my arid desert valley. Sorry to hear of the AC failure. I hope you can repair in a timely manor.
@Jim Wiggin you have my sympathies. Food poisoning is no fun. Friday was spent doing homework and little else. Saturday, my wife and I spent several hours at my Mom's house loading up another truck full of stuff to sort, store for retirement, donate, or thro.w away. My siblings and I are making good progress but I have barely scratched the surface of packing up Dad's train room. Sunday, was church, followed by a trip to the train club (where I got almost nothing done except to file the receipt for our Accurail anniversary train cars), then back to church to use the internet for a Liberia mission board Zoom meeting, then home, dinner, and some work on this semester's group project. Monday sort of continued my weekend as my wife and I drove to our accountant's office to sign our tax forms, then to Wooster for her doctor appointment, plus a stop at the Post Office to mail our tax forms (and checks). From there we continued another hour out to Bucyrus where we stopped for some of their famous bratwurst, and then onward another 15 minutes or so to the farm of one of our Liberia mission board members to drop off a box of flip-flops and school supplies to include in a shipment she is making in advance of a mission trip this summer. Having done that, we headed home (now a two hour drive) and arriving too late for the scout meeting so I did more work on my group project.
