Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Saturday: The weather wasn't as bad as predicted but it was cold! We had our sales meeting across the street so we could enjoy breakfast, nice! The day went by quickly and I was soon home. As predicted, I took it easy and went to bed early. Sunday: I actually got a bit of work done on the B&M layout. I started working on the CTC panel and determined I will do something a bit different from my previous design on the City Job. The big project this weekend however was the start of "The great purge of 2020." I started arranging my stacks or mounds of stuff and will start eBay as well as other selling sites to start selling off old or no longer wanted items. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 24th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
I had a fairly productive modeling weekend. As well as a date night -- to celebrate our upcoming 38th wedding anniversary (01/22). Saturday: Prepped my friends BLI SW7/9 for paint. Started by road name removal. For his two E8's, I removed the dynamic brake fans and filled in the spot with styrene. I tinkered with a turnout that had been giving me grief. I tested it for continuity and voltage -- all was good. So, WTH-? Any way - I gave it a good cleaning- it seems to be fine. Then I cleaned the rest of the main line and ran a couple of trains (For about an hour). I then started to rebuild my roster in JMRI. On Dec. 23rd our computer decided it was time to go. Thankfully, I had most of my stuff backed up. Sunday: Painted my friends switcher. I also set up my new X-Y table on my drill press. Hopefully, any future decoder installs will be neater. (For the non-DCC framed locomotives). And --- I ran some trains. Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Over the weekend, I spent a good bit of time working on the layout putting down grass where the church will go, dirt under the highway bridge and for the construction site scene that is coming, pouring some more of the pad for the cement plant, putting down some general ground cover, cleaning up some ground cover messes I made last week, and even put a road crew to work. Here are a couple of pics and there are alot more in the N scale JPT sub thread. Happy Monday everyone!
Worked on the passing siding all weekend that I actually framed in last weekend. This will hold up to a 38 car train plus engines. Last thing I got done was put 2 trains on same track and let an empty coal unit train take the siding while a priority freight took the main track. The tunnel portals for the siding take it under what will be the coal branch. The far riser to the right in pictures 3, 4, 5 actually will curve back over (high) where the siding is. Sequential photos of the work are:
On Thursday I wanted to start building some teepees for my old west module but dealt with a dead battery instead. Saturday I spent a few hours at the train show in Lehi UT. I found a couple of N scale rail cars that will work on the two modules I am building. I helped out at the Division NMRA table as well. Later that day I glued down the foam board and started the track work. I was able to lay the cork road bed as well. Nothing like a train show to get one motivated. Sunday I finished the cork road bed and then laid out paper cut outs of the structures I want timeout on it. Made a sketch on paper to show what I wanted to do. Then I got my wife involved. The structures pretty much doubled in quantity, more animals wil be placed on it as well. So now I have a $362 order to RSlaser kits with 13 kits coming. I also have to hit the LHS to get some critters and scratch building supplies. I will be scratch building a small station as well. I did a mock-up of the teepee I want to build out of paper. Originally I thought toothpicks would work for the main supports. It’s small than I thought. I might be using wire instead. Now I need to solder feeder wires and lay track. Once wiring is done the scenery is gonna fly..
This weekend, I struggled with the T-Trak-Z module standard to come up with a plan that would get all the elements I needed to model the Lester WA ghost town as it was in 1950. All this with the constraints being that the modules need to fit on a standard 96" x 30" banquet table at train shows as well as the modules being able to be cut on my laser with an 18" x 12" cutting table. This plan eats up 93" x 27". There was one problem module, which in order to include the turntable and roundhouse, was too large to be cut on my laser, so I made Finger Joint splices to the table top, and used Box Joint splices to the left and right side pieces. I plan on cutting the parts for the turntable module this week to see if I did it right, but according to plan, the puzzle piece fit should hold all the spliced parts together while the glue dries, and only masking tape is required keep them in alignment.
Progress has been s l o w . Helped family member move last week. Developed a sore foot. Took some ibuprofen and took it easy. Got some turnout repositioning work done. Still not where I want to be. But I persist.
Worked on the Moore's warehouse kit. Got the walls together and added all the capstones. Also worked on a CAD project still under development.
