Judging by the input on Friday's Weekend Modeling Plans thread, I'd say we all had a busy weekend at the work bench and or layout. Saturday was as predicted, I went to Menards and after a bit of searching due to a store remodeling, I finally found a slightly damaged 36X80 hollow core door for the slot car track. Next I walked over to the lumbar and was pleasantly surprised to find the lumbar I use for the Galesburg Modules was on sale. Needless to say, I got enough to build at least one module. I hope to start that project in the next coming weeks. Once home, it was time to fire up the airbrush. I finally have the decals done on the D&RGW GP30. I ended up re-doing the long hood end because I was not happy with the position of the stripes. I'm now glad I did that. I also worked on a friends SP U-boat. After closing up the shop for the weekend, I indulged my sweetheart a bit by taking her out for dinner and going to see that new Star Wars movie which we both enjoyed immensely. Sunday was the weekly domestic duties day, some shopping and laundry, but we managed to get all of this done my early afternoon. I ended the Sunday afternoon by putting the slot car table together and playing with track designs until bed time. All in all, a nice relaxing weekend. So how about you? How did you do on your list? Let us know with an image or two. We'll be coming back on, uh oh! Friday the 13th! Until then, work safely, have fun and as always... High Greens!
As planned, made good progress on the Central Valley bridge I'm building. Also got another 5 tortoise machines mounted. NC State basektball turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, so I cut it off and managed to clean out my workshop. Tried tracing out my issue w/ the DB150 to no success. But did run a few trains and tested some engines I've had stored for a while.
I stripped an MTL SW1500 to repaint in KCS white - since it looks like they won't ever get to that scheme. Now to get it primed . . . . .
Well, Saturday morning we got Christmas put away .. that's a first. It usually takes until sometime in February - LOl!! After that, I was able to get to work. I striped Saticoy's streets. Yesterday I got to work on 3 pairs of wigwag signals and a pair of operable crossing gates. So, hopefully - this coming up weekend I can install them all. Thanks, Wolf
I did what I set out to do. I painted my planes fire and rescue diorama and got some ground foam down as well as the runway. My daughter started painting foam on the layout where this will sit. All that is left is to plant some trees then ballast track and lay some ground foam on the main board. My daughter really got into painting
Before the holidays I had finished ballasting my layout, but a few brief runs showed me that the ballasting job introduced some issues that weren't there when I laid the track (and tested the heck out of). This weekend, I finally got some time to shuffle some engines and really take a close look at the track with my magnifier. Much time was spent with a wooden skewer and tweezers, clearing excess bits of ballast from the inside of the rails. I'm about three-fourths done, and things are running much more smoothly than they were.
loose ballast + points = swearwords. The weather stayed reasonable, so I spent my weekend in the garage as expected. First I spent a unit of time mulling Sector Plate vs Selector track (move all the staging tracks with trains on them, or move just the arrival track with no trains on it). Either could be fun. | | (click to embiggen) The left picture is Selector track and it's flipped left/right compared to the right picture (sorry) - it shows helix on the left and staging on the right. The right picture is Sector Plate in place, around the right way - the metal bar pivots like a turntable while the approach track, shown with some temporary flex track is fixed in place and the angled timber upstanding is a helix support, showing the space. (so a Selector track has the metal bar fixed and the flextrack moving instead) So yeah, I got bored with that and made my half-metre compass from aluminum channel and a hacksaw, what for drawing big circles and then spent the second part of the weekend drawing 1:1 scale track plans of the staging deck on paper. Unfortunately, pencil on paper does not photograph, so I will have to go over this with ink if I want anything anyone can actually see (click to embiggen) Assuming I've got the table legs in the right place, it looks possible to get the reverted loop around the helix - just like the computer plan says. Always nice when the pixel version matches the real world.
Well, I went to the Great Train Expo in Sacramento Sunday. I don't know what was more exciting, the show itself or the drive! Some of you might have seen that Northern California had a pretty big storm on Sunday. It was pretty much a white knuckle drive the whole way, but it worth it! I bought a few things at the show, but this is by far my favorite! It's an Atlas N scale Southern Pacific SD9. When I was younger and living in San Jose, Ca., I saw SP's Cadillacs all the time so when I saw this for sale, I had to get it. 001 by WPZephyrFan posted Jan 9, 2017 at 11:29 AM
I took this photo way back when at SP's Santa Clara yards: Probably my favorite photo that I've taken. SP SD9s in Santa Clara, Ca. I love SP's old Cadillacs! by WPZephyrFan posted Jun 7, 2010 at 2:15 PM
She was painting the area that the diorama will drop into. All that is left is ballast and ground foam with a few trees.
