Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Let's dive in! Saturday: As planned, or not planned, I got up from a nice winters nap and started the day by brewing up a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. I then wandered into the train room. My N scale shadowbox project has sat dormant for almost a year and since it was too cold to work in the garage for the backdrop of the HO layout, I worked on the N scale layout. Friday, I had covered one of the two three foot long, former T-Trak modules with 1/8-inch cork sheet. I used the scrap cork from the roll to cover the second and tweaked the track plan ever so much after looking at two new books I purchased about the B&M. The day went by fast and soon it was time to take the wife out for a nice quiet dinner. We had a nice time and talked a lot about some planning for the next few years before heading home and retiring for the evening. Sunday: I slept in, made a pot of coffee on the stove and had breakfast. The wife indicated that the router would need to be replaced. Imagine my shock, I thought it was a buy it once and you're done. Ah not so with a digital universe. So, after working on the N scale layout for a bit we went to the big box electronics store, got sticker shock for said digital thinga ma jig, went home, installed it and had internet working very nice again. Back to the layout and I carefully laid track on the module, including installing a servo turnout control using a slightly different method than I had used in the past. By supper I had track drying. It may not look like much, but I want the turnouts to be flawless in operation, so I spent a lot of time on installing and checking the Tam valley servo controls and the Micro Engineering turnouts. A good weekend overall. So how about you? What did you accomplish in the train room or shop? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday, January 27th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Well -- it was a busy weekend really -- a lot of it was spent on modeling and creating the livery for 89 foot high cube box cars -- I essentially digitally kitbashed them from a 60 foot high cube. lots of cutting and pasting to get it looking right This upcoming week, I want to work on getting more cars and liveries made, and I want to spend some time running trains! TIM
Good mornin to Y'all -- Happy Monday We had a wonderful anniversary weekend. Saturday evening we went to dinner at Kabuki's (Sushi) Sunday (Our anniversary) Breakfast as our favorite local diner - Uncle Pete's. Then back to chores. On the MRRing front. Saturday mornin: Clear coated the FA/FB's. (Then put away Christmas and got the deck ready for coat number 2) Sunday: Started adding windows to the FA's - And - put the second coating on the deck. Y'all have a great week, Wolf
Happy Monday. Was mostly a modeling weekend in the attic and at the workbench. Saturday: Late Friday, UPS delivered the engraved labels I had ordered about a week before. So Saturday AM (as advertised on the Friday thread), I walked around w/ my coffee and decided exactly how I would place them. Got maybe 10 put in and ran trains. I realized also I could use a few more, so I ordered them as well. Awesome day. Sunday: I spent all day at the work bench soldering switches, each w/ a green LED and yellow LED along w/ power-in leads and power-out leads to the Tortoise machines. I wound up increasing the resistance of the resistors due to the big batch of LED's I got off of Amazon were bright little suckers. A couple of labels I put in:
I had a productive weekend around the house. We got all the Christmas decorations down and away except for the tree. It is taking us longer than normal to put things away due to both my wife and I having issues with our backs. Now that we both have had some treatments things are looking up and we are able to do more. I had to take apart our rug cleaner and perform a heavy-duty cleaning on it. This meant that I also had to do a heavy-duty cleaning on the kitchen sink and counters afterward. We introduced our robot vacuum to our bedroom. It did well. It found a slipper that had been missing for a year a more. I also had a productive time with the trains. I checked and tuned up about a third of my boxcar collection. I began organizing it. The Athearn blue box kit cars took the longest as I usually had too add weight to them and washers to the trucks to make the couplers match the coupler gauge. There were a bunch of kits I built a few months ago that I needed to add metal wheels. When I built them, I was out of metal wheels. I am again out of metal wheels and waiting for resupply to arrive this week along with Kadee washers. Wolf - Congratulations on your anniversary.
This weekend I spent working on my CP locomotives, some well cars, and containers. Weathering and some graffiti. I started some of these last weekend. 1) 2x different sets of Kato 53’ Maxi-IV well cars 2) 3x JTC 53’ well cars 3) 2x Fox Valley locomotives Not pictured-orange paint and decals applied for CP 8781 (Hapag-Lloyd unit). I’ve got a busy couple of days but later this week I will post close ups in my WC Waukesha Sub thread. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Friday bowling was mediocre at best for me and the team. I managed before bowling to get one side of a 40’ boxcar decaled and applied a gloss coat to a painted gon kit along with two silver roofs on some boxcars. Saturday, went to the club for our monthly meeting followed by an ops session on the layout. Later took the better half out to dinner and later continued work on the 40’ boxcar and started on the gon I had painted. I also did some more work on the Proto 2000 Covered Hopper kit. Sunday, meeting for the State Bowling Championship was canceled as the big wig’s from Columbus could not get here due to the snow we got yesterday. So I did the laundry and finished decaling the cars and got the covered hopper kit to the point of bending and installing the risers for the Plano roowalk. Rick Jesionowski
Good morning all, On Friday got all the AsiaNrail modules and stuff put away and ready for our exhibit in April. The remote sensor device I built could be a bit fragile. I did not want to toss it into the bin with all the other electrical stuff, so it first goes into its own MT runner pack box for protection. Saturday morning was spent making more arrangements for our upcoming trip. The shuttle service that we used in the past to get to the airport has changed so I had to sign up with Uber. Have never used it before so hopefully it will be OK. After all that I needed to relax and went out to the train room to run trains. Had 4 freights running one at a time for a couple hours through the auto sequencer then got them all out at the same time, it was a great run. The fix I had done a few months ago on the auto sequencer by bending the sensor stands over at an angle seems to have done the trick as it worked flawlessly. On Sunday I took advantage of the dry weather and got some more yard cleanup done. Then I set my sights on getting some tempered hard board around the upper helix so I can start with hillside and tunnel portals on that east end of the layout. By afternoon the main piece was clamped into place while the glue was drying. Then as we say, the weekend was over. But I was happy with what I got done.
Not a lot accomplished. Packed away a few Christmas decorations. Read some of the V&O book. Watched an NFL playoff game, until I fell asleep. Decided how I will paint my engine house- Just a utilitarian gray, with a bit of black trim. Did some searching for a good source of Kato aftermarket chassis sales, hoping for a Stateside supplier. Then it was suddenly Monday, yet again. Argh.
Dag'gum'it, another weekend, another set of grand plans not entirely realized... Friday: Managed to get to the Seattle home remodeling show. Was rather a small event with no vendors of particular interest to da Mooses. Had lunch in Seattle and headed home. Dived into web-searching for photos for an SP&S D-5 locomotive bash. Saturday: Da Mooses weren't much up for more crowds after dealing with crowds in Seattle the day before, so Da Mooses gave the Great Train Show in Puyallup a miss. Moose saving up train hobby money for the big train show & swap meet in Monroe next month, so wasn't too upset with saving the $30 entry fee to the Great Train Show. Started stripping paint from locomotive & tender shells in preparation for a number of up-coming minor projects. Worked a little bit on the GN A-9 locomotive bash, but stopped to give it some reconsideration. The dimensions for the cab seem too large when visually compared to other larger locomotives' cabs -- might have to start all over again. Watched the AFC & NFC playoffs sans Seahawks Sunday: Continued web-searching for more photos of the SP&S D-5 locomotive. Considered doing a D-1, D-3 or D-7 instead, but Moose no wanna mess with completely cutting up the existing metal locomotive shell that all the other SP&S classes would require, so Moose now settling for "close enough" with a D-5. Became frustrated trying to find better photos of the SP&S D-5 tender, could only find two grainy photos, so decided to do a semi-foobie tender based on what the tender likely looked like -- trouble with doing a scratch build or bash of something of which there was only one single prototype example that was subsequently cut up 85 years ago... Watched the AFC & NFC playoffs sans Seahawks
I started Saturday morning with a Plan A and a Plan B. Neither happened. I had to miss out on the "Wedding Showcase" on Sunday. All was not lost. The changes meant a bit more time at the hobby. Good thing, too. Milling plastic is a slow process. Too fast and it melts. Too big a bite and it distorts. I completed the test driver successfully. The next step is making an insert to fill the space. Then a second test driver to check improvements before subjecting the real thing to the cutting tool. Stay safe,
My weekend went almost as I expected... but with even less train stuff. Friday, I did homework, then a funeral service for a cousin in Youngstown, then more homework. Read a couple hundred pages, but it was all interesting stuff (to me). Saturday, More reading... and an unexpected headache/borderline migraine. Didn't get much homework done in the morning and spent a fair amount of time just sleeping in my recliner. Cancelled our participation in my Mother-in-law's birthday lunch at Red Robin but started feeling better by dinnertime and go busy reading. Sunday was church, but I did not go to the Sebring Model Railroad Club, and instead we celebrated a Chinese New Year lunch with our daughter (who is Chinese) and son-in-law. Afterwards... you guessed it... more homework. I got all the reading done, as well as my online reflection, but only managed to watch about half of the recommended videos. The only train related thing that happened all week was the delivery of two packages of alligator clips that I intend to use to test my new DCC decoders to insure that they are working before I solder on them. Then I will know for sure whether I just had a bad one, or if I was doing something to damage them. As we prepare for a trip to Texas for our son's wedding this weekend, I doubt any hobby stuff will get attention until next week.
Crisp looking turnout. Eighty-nine-foot boxcar! A long one. Gotta' love FA/FB's Cool labels! Slipper missing over a year! It seems like I can barely "contain" myself. Did someone day "laundry"... Staging tracks look sharp. I like "flawless"! I hate "sudden Mondays"... "Semi-foobie"...(me not know). Sometimes you need "Plan C". Piles of home work. Yesterday I realized that no stirrup steps were installed. Not good. Hard on scale railroad workers. Started making them earlier today. Should not take long (I hope!). Yesterday I began organizing the next set of projects. This will include a new town module. I plan on working on trees this week. All be fun and safe.
I set out to have the first level on this helix set. I had to make a small adjustment from a miss calculation, but the subroadbed and a bit of track are in. I only have track for two more levels so I guess Ill be ordering a case of flextrack soon.
Happy Monday all! The weekend was about as expected. Traveling and some railfanning on Saturday. Still got home at a decent time and got a jump on the laundry. Slept in a little later than normal on Sunday. After lunch, more laundry and helping with some stuff around the house. Did get a little time to work on Some M/T Auto Frame loads for a flat car. Basically got the top and bottom wood cribbing attached to the stacks of frames. Next up will be to paint the etched metal chains and attach those. Slow but steady progress. Hope you all have a great week!
