Monday is here again. How did you do? Friday was a nice, quiet and relaxing day. I spent the morning working on a fully detailed Maine Central GP38 I have had in my list of must do engines. I got about halfway done with the grabs, lift rings and fans when I realized I only had enough decals to do one locomotive. A trip to Microscale showed me that I will not be painting up any more Harvest Gold Maine Central locomotives anytime soon. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to laying track on my module. I didn't get all of it done but a large chunck of it and a quick test showed that the track was performing well. Saturday was work and Sunday was spent with the family and watching New England work their way to the Super Bowl. I'll probably be the most hated man at work today as the midwest is tired of the Pats, but once a New Englander, always a New Englander. So how about you? How did you fare this weekend? Did you get some bench work built, some track laid or some trees assembled? Let us know! We'll come back here on Friday the 23rd and start the weekend all over again. Until then, have a happy and safe work week and... ​High Greens!
Busy weekend (still going since I have an extra day off as well as the kids are out of school as well) for me. Train show Saturday turned expensive as I found stuff I wasn't looking for then stopped at a LHS on the way home and picked up a couple of things needed for my current project of a roundhouse. My son started building another structure kit an should have it done by tonight. My daughter is getting into the foray now and building some high tension power towers. I finished my roundhouse. Now on to the next project. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
The control panel for the staging yard is all wired up and installed. Mostly, it's a "display" panel, since the turnouts are all run from a stationary decoder and have no toggles, but there are 4 kill switches for the 4 long staging yard tracks. The "display" part is red/green LEDs for each of the turnouts. I located the "Coppertone Girl" sign from Miller Engineering. That will go on top of that structure that I'm working on. First, though, I'll need a power supply for the lights on Phase 3.
I was running one of my old Arnold S-2 switchers when the headlight that I added 20 years ago finally burned out. I had built up a circuit using small LM-317 1.5 volt regulators and Mintronixs grain of wheat bulbs. I had to drill and mill the metal chassis to install the bulbs in the nose and the back of the cab but it worked well all these years. Well, time to upgrade technology. I replaced the bulbs with tiny "Sunny White" LEDs, a couple of resisters, capacitors and high speed Schottky diodes to eat any back EMF spikes. Looks good. I dragged out another S-2 that I acquired a few years ago. Looks like all the axle gears are split, as usual. I have a couple of broken Kato PA trucks that have gears which I use to replace them after cutting the plastic shafts off each end. They have 16 teeth as opposed to the Arnold 15 tooth gears but that has never been a problem.
I pulled up all rail and ties from the old yard and began removing ballast and glue from the lauan roadbed with 91% alcohol. Also sanded the roadbed down with sandpaper. Still a little more sanding and ballast removal to do before any track work. I need to create some mock ups from structure dimensions. I have an idea for the coatings plant in terms of structures, but I haven't purchased anything yet.
I re-laid a piece of roadbed for the reverse loop of my layout with the help of my fiance. Hopefully the track likes the curves better, but it already looked better. I will try to lay the track and post pictures tonight.
I went to a small hobby show in Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa, on Saturday. On the way, the temperature outside the car bottomed out at -30C - pretty...fresh? I did find a Kato GP35 that I'll repaint as CN 4000, to replace an old, growling Athearn which was among my first repaint jobs. Oddly enough, before I left for the show, I thought, maybe I should look for a Kato to replace the old one... Well, I did! I also bought a couple of books on CN passenger trains. Very interesting look into the history of passenger service on Canadian National, as well as its predecessors and successor VIA. The trip also got me out of the house on a nice and sunny (but bleeping cold) day.
