Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Let's get started. Saturday: With the dealership closing at 4:00, the day went by fast. I took it easy with Angela and Jared, enjoying a pizza and a Christmas movie to end my day. Sunday: I slept in but didn't waste any time to get the Christmas train running. The MTH Railking SW9 that I use every year to pull the Christmas Train was the first on the list. I needed to take off the body shell, clean the wheels, lube up the gear boxes and lightly apply oil to key spots. Next I worked out the one short I had in the track work, hooked everything up and to my happiness, we had a Christmas Train. Now I just need to find the 2018 and 2019 MTH box cars. With that out of the way, I spent the rest of the afternoon, cleaning the house and finishing up the decorating. I finished the evening with some Angela made beef stew and one of my favorite Christmas movies, A Christmas Story. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll reassemble again on Friday the 20th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe and as always... High Greens!
I had a very productive weekend. Helped the missus with our Christmas decorations. And --- I got most of the decaling done on my F3 set (Nose medallions are left) Next up -- add a few details and some touch up painting Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Friday - Got intended amount of framework finished and foam down on 1/2 of that. Saturday and Sunday - worked Monday - Might get rest of foam down Tuesday - Should get temporary track down.
Didn't expect to get any train room time this past weekend but to my surprise, managed to fit in a little. Was in TN on Saturday and had a work function Sunday afternoon. Mid day Sunday was supposed to be some errands for the wife but she decided they could wait. Headed down to the train room before she changed her mind, turned on a train video, the Belen NM railcam, and fired up a train on the layout. Cleaned up a bit of ground cover I was working on and cleaned out one side of the closet to finally get started on the storage shelves in there. That will give me some space to set out things I still have in boxes and places to move things off the workbench while glue or paint is drying on projects.
Well, as planned: I'm working on my 3rd NP Standard Depot in Z. It's a First Class Single Level combination depot. This time I am trying something new, a removable structure concept, held in place with 6x3mm super magnets. Lighting will be wired internally to copper tape, and magnets will align the structure to flathead screws templated to the layout so the copper tape aligns over copper tape on a layout for electrical pickup. Here is the status: I will use 1/2" copper tape for electrical connectiosn on the layout and countersunk screws for the magnets to align the structures with. The structure will only have visible copper tape on the bottom to power it's lighting. The board below is just to test electrical. When the structure in placed on the layout, magnets will hold it properly aligned to the copper layout contacts. This is my 3rd NP depot, an NP First Class depot in Z Scale, modeled after Battle Lake MN:
Family Christmas party was Saturday, we had 28 folks here. Prepping for that Saturday AM, and cleaning up Saturday night and Sunday exhausted the weekend. I DID take a few people up to the attic to see the layout, impromtu tours if you will. I did manage some "politicking" though. My nephew and his wife drove down from Virginia for the affair. He is a commercial printer and has a pretty good operation. He has agreed to print my control panels. He's going to use the same material used to print camouflage on trucks and stuff. I will then laminate it on masonite hardboard or some similar sheet stock. He was "in to" the layout and is looking forward to getting my first file. I have one panel drawing and complete in AutoCad and have to convert it to an MPS file. So... even though I did not do any railroading, I did some railroading.
