Impressive output here. Looks great. Good luck with the auto adhesive. I learned some time back that Delrin cannot be glued to itself. I will be falling off the wagon myself this Saturday at the Gadsden Coosa Valley Model Railroad Association show. This is their 35th show. I finished the hopper end sheets and have been trying to start center beam cover sheets. The weekend chores ran over to this morning. To echo another post, have a productive, safe and healthy week.
Weeks after arranging and wiring feeders and insulated joints (I'm a DC fossil) at my yard throat, I'm still not happy with it. There's a convergence of tracks there and I feel like I'm playing a Wurlitzer organ, having to click far too many toggle switches with every move. After a lot of study on Sunday evening, I've determined there is no perfect solution, but I think I've found a better one. Reengineering is in the works .....
I have been hearing and reading similar laments now for decades. It has not happened. I wonder if your small gathering, a restricted membership type, (NMRA), is provable as a really a useful sampling? Demographics for your area could be very different from where others of us reside. What could do more damage to us is not age, but cost and space. Cost due to the travails of the tangled overseas manufacturing moves and limited production runs- which that latter also limits growth and participation. (Nobody seems able to see that latter fact. Yet.) And folks being forced to downsize living quarters due to skyrocketed housing costs and taxes. The group in my area, (HO-freelanced modular, non-NMRA), has been steadily growing. (The virus thing hindered activities for over a year.) We have guys and gals from pre-teens(!) to eighties. HO, On30, N, HOn30, O scales and more. No requisites, no dues, just get together and have fun. They just landed a great place to set up and let the public wander through. I am actually considering purchase of a couple HO engines and a caboose to use there.
Forgot the microsol l and micro set. So yep nothing done. However a great video of the Free-moN meet in a Wendover Utah was posted by Toy Man Television over the weekend. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sounds like you need some sort of routing system that could allow you to move X number of points with the push of a button. That kind of thing can be done on a DC or DCC layout.
Your cheap Chinese trees looks awesome. With the stone work, grass, the culvert, and such, I wouldn't have know it if you hadn't said anything about it? Great job to make them blend in with the other scenery.
That's a neat idea and it's prototypical too. The first "N-X" (Entrance-Exit) interlocking plant in the world was installed at the CNJ's RU Tower at Elizabethport, NJ in 1938. Check out the model board.
I installed Digitrax DN163A4 decoders in four Atlas GP7’s and did the initial programming for them in JMRI. I also installed a Digitrax DN163LA0 decoder in a Walthers/LifeLike GP18 and did it’s initial programming as well. I really like the fact that the newer decoders for the Atlas GP’s have slots in them for the tabs to go into. They are kind of fiddly to get installed initially and get the motor cradle stabbed into the frame, the decoder into the frame slots, and seat the drive shafts and bearing blocks. But, once they are installed, you don’t have to worry about poor contact from the motor tabs just trying to lay up against the pads. That is really cool. The Walthers/Life-Like GP18 install was pretty easy. It did require a small amount of filing on both the decoder and the frame, not a big deal, and it worked really well once installed.
Made my way to the Lewis County Model Train Show and Swap Meet on Saturday. Thoroughly enjoyed myself. It filled a single building at the fairgrounds. Being into N gauge I evaluate shows on how much of it I find to tempt me. There were at least six vendors offering N. I did note that there were also a few Z vendors in attendance. Some cool looking NP stuff in one case. I don't model in Z, but consider its presence at a show to be a healthy thing. I have dropped into a few similarly sized meets in the past and found much less to look at. I only bought a few things, much fewer than I was tempted by. There was a magazine collection with "FREE" signs on a couple tables. I grabbed one I wanted from 1991. A few small layouts in attendance. The Lego folks were there which always makes me smile. They do some really clever stuff. Some table top Z layouts, some self-contained displays and one HO meter gauge layout. Just enough going on to turn the page on the past two years. Looking forward to more shows in the future. Stay safe,
Two crucial things happened to me. Helix number 2 is finished and my Harley has woken up from hibernation.
It was a busy weekend. Just picked up another part time job with a company I used to work for a long time ago. Yep. It's still the land of emergencies and breakdowns. Started on Friday. Wound up going back on Sunday. In spite of this, I finished drilling (by rough count) 114 pocket holes today. Moving stuff (drill press, material, etc.) around in the train room today and ready to start assembling benchwork at the first opportunity.
No helix to report but right there with you on the Harley! HD Dealer called Wednesday and said it was ready for spring. Now I'm just waiting for a nice day to pick it up.
Finished preliminary designs of yard warehouse and a brewery facility. Now to print them off on paper to create mock-ups to verify the designs... Now to find Moose's left-hoofed safety scissors...
It was a lazy week for me. Oh well, there's not much else to do. Only two of my motorcycles got winter storage. A Honda 883 K5 and Yamaha 650 Twin. Both Customs. The three Harleys before never slept, nor the Yamaha and Hondas after. Now it's just an electric mountain bike that works well in the snow.
