No you didn't miss the Friday thread, I did and I apologize. Seams that the traditional Good Friday, Great Railfanning event that my friend Brian and I do each year was cancelled due to cold weather, then at the last moment, un-cancelled. This left me little time to get ready and be on the road by 4:30am. With all of that out of the way, let us see how we all did this past weekend. Saturday: While technically my weekend started Friday, no modeling was done. Just a lot of full scale train watching. Saturday was sunny-ish and warm, 54 degrees so a quick trip to my favorite hardware store to pick up supplies and then into the shop I went. The first order of business was to sand and stain the small B&M modules in preparation for their first show this coming weekend. I chose a black stain and I really like it. Next, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing the finish assembly of the second Galesburg 2.0 module. By the end of Saturday, two of the three modules were done and ready for wiring and track. Sunday: We celebrated Christmas, ah I mean, Easter. More of an April Fools then an Easter, we watched 6 - 8 inches of snow come down and blanket east central Illinois. As a result, after the festivities with the kids, I resigned myself to the sofa with Lucy and listened to music. So much for spring! So how about you? What did you get done this weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 6th, where it will still be cold here in east central Illinois, and we'll do it again. Until then, have a great week, stay warm and as always... High Greens!
I did manage to get some foliage put down around the mobile home and blacksmith shop. While waiting for glue to dry, I started running trains and ended up getting more interested in operations than working on the project. A pond will go in where the depression is on the left side of the first photo, some day. This was a large empty area and this mini scene breaks it up. There are still some more small details to put in.
Hope Y'all had a great Easter weekend!! Saturday: I changed the motors in my AC-9 and AC-12 -- the results were less then spectacular. The AC-12 does run a bit better. The AC-9 -- not so much. I think, I will take them apart and see how the mechs roll --- they seem to be binding. The crazy thing is - both of these models ran great when I first purchased them (Brand new --- ages ago). Over the years, I have no idea what happened to them. The AC-12 did suffer from a crazy surgical tubing coupling that slipped big time. That was factory installed --- terrible design. Oh, both models are Key Imports. I purchased motors and couplings from North West Shortline. The motors don't seem to have a lot of torque. I am a novice at that kind of thing -- so, who knows-? After the motor swap thing --- I installed decoders in my fleet of H24-66's. -- That went extremely well. I now need to hook up the lights. Sunday: I continued with a long over due project. Finishing up my H24-66's. I didn't realize -- I bought them in 2001-!! Wow Here is where they were at yesterday afternoon (I have since painted the add on details) - I need to take more photos. Thanks, Wolf
April 2nd. It is snowing and blowing outside. Good grief. Spent time digging through a few books I am thinking of surplussing and selling. Spent fruitless hours looking everywhere around here for a motor needed to repair a diesel. Cannot find it. Am frustrated!
After 9 dang years and 11 months, I FINALLY ran trains, non-stop around the room. More work, wiring, Tortoise machine wiring, etc needs to be done. But I can run trains now.
Congrats. A major milestone. I started my layout 30 plus years ago and now have all track and structures in place and when I go down to the train room to work on projects, I find that I just end up running trains. That's why we build our layouts I guess.
After spending the whole week building trees I wanted to build two HOn3 kits but didn’t get anywhere on them. Maybe another day. Sunday I sat down with a pile of structure kits and built three of them. My small town is looking like something. When completed it should look like a small city.
I played with magnets, uploaded some photos of a small freighter, cleaned up my workbench and layout (put tools away), and looked for a spare turnout to do some testing with. I did assemble one of those transparent "alignment" cars that Micro-Mark sells, hopefully it'll help me diagnose track issues.
Well today is the end of my weekend. I’ve built 6 structures, glued some track down, added some smashed cars to the scrap yard and a platform to the team track. Now to plan next week. Cutting cork, working on roads, ordering 4-5 more structure kits. Taking a large structure already built apart to use as back ground buildings (big red one doesn’t quite fit as is). Where the gas station is may become just a background building with only the facade of a convenience store so that I ya e a little more space for a small parking lot with a car show going on. All that is left there is a pile of scrap to be made and to place an old rusty tender.
Have you stripped and cleaned the gearboxes? The grease put in brass has a habit of solidifying and sometimes even jamming the boxes tight. I take the gearboxes out and strip them down, clean them in white spirit or degreaser, depending on the material and give them a good scrub with a tooth brush. re assemble them with a little white lithium grease on the teeth and labelle 108 on the bearings/axles. a drop of 108 in the driver axle bearing wouldn't go a miss.
Howdy Fordy, This is a great suggestion -- I had not thought about the factory grease gumming up. (I should have --). Sometimes we get a bit narrow minded and narrow focused. When I take the mechs apart, I will pay attention to the lubrication of them. Clean them up and proceed. Thanks again, Wolf
