MODELING It's Monday, January 9th, 2023: Weekend Modeling Accomplishments

After a long week, I got to do some modeling. I have a bunch of half finished projects on the bookshelf that serves as workbench overflow/storage, and ended up tackling the following:

1) Two 64’ Trinity Reefers, relettered for Wisconsin Central instead of CEFX. Also my 2nd and 3rd attempt at weathering with oils.

2) Finally finished my last two paint jobs on my Dash 8s. I bought 5 awhile back. Three were patched from BNSF to WC, two of those with burn marks on the hood. The remaining three were painted in a fantasy WC scheme, based of their GP40 scheme.

A little more detail and more photos are in my WC Waukesha sub thread.

 

Good morning all. This weekend was in both the work shop and the train room.

• Completed all of the beams in the ITLA elevated system kit. Now comes the bracing and details along w/ the columns. That will take some doing as I have to match the height to 2nd level dock doors at the LCL warehouse.
• Also spent time at the layout running trains putting my wiring adjustments of the last couple of weeks through the paces. All is well. Below is a shot of a coal drag that was running late yesterday PM.

Have a good week all and stay warm!

 

It was a good weekend here -- I spent a lot of time at the computer getting Liveries done with individual car numbers -- the process doesnt take real long per car but it is kinda tedious and tends to make me go googly eyed after a while. Once I got that done and got the cars input into JMRI, I was able to build the first train from the storage tracks to Walsenburg, and line it up and run it -- its currently sitting in walsenburg and waiting for the yard job to break it down onto storage tracks.

This coming week, I'll be continuing to set up routes and trains to cover them in JMRI and I hope to get this train sorted and bring in another as well to get the layout populated

Have a great week
TIM

 

I did not get much done this weekend. My back and knees were giving me pain issues and as a result my mobility was limited as well as picking up anything heavy. We will have to start on the decorations during the week. Even moving laundry baskets around was on the difficult side. This coming Friday I am scheduled to get an injection in my back which I am hopeful will less the pain and mobility issues I have been experiencing lately.

Before the back and knees acted up I did run some trains. I tested my new Chessie Walthers Mainline SD50’s. These are DCC so for me to do a run by I have to do some DCC programing for the first time. I was able to assign addresses to the two locomotives and for the first time ever I had two locomotives running independently on the layout. Unfortunately, I did not get to experiment with creating a consist before the back started. I did also get a chance to check and tune up seven open hoppers. I have about 15 to go before all the open hoppers are done.

 

Good morning all,

It's rained almost constantly over the weekend so I never even went out into the yard to clean up. It's been so windy that I think anything that could be blown off the trees already has. Some power outages and flooding in our region but we are OK here.

The serial staging control board got installed and tested. It does work with one train on the east end loop and will work with a second after I get a detector set up on the helix. At about the same time as I was celebrating that accomplishment, problems cropped up in both staging yards on the west end of the layout. In one yard I found a loose wire connection to correct it's problem and on the other it appears that the Digitrax DS64 that controls the routes does not want to take commands from the inputs. So for now I am selecting routes from the throttle and have put labels on the control panel to remind me of the addresses.




I also did some work on the point to point control system for modular layouts. The box I had ordered came in so I got started mounting the components in it.



Also this weekend the registration opened up for next June's N Scale convention in Reno so I got signed up and booked my hotel room. Then worked with one of the other members of our Ntrak group over the phone and E-mail on plans for our part of the large Ntrak layout.

Wishing you all a great week !

 

Good mornin to Y'all -- the first of Jan. is already in the books -- wow.

So, I was not able to MRR this past weekend.

However, the deck is now patched and the first coast of rubber sealant is down. Hopefully we are protected from the next rain storm. (Supposedly tonight and tomorrow) --

Y'all have a great week,
Wolf

 

The upper tracks of the Helix have now a track superelevation.
The Upper Level is in progress.
Wire soldered to the rails for track power.

 

This was my last free weekend before my class starts for Spring semester Monday, so I had a list of chores, as well as train stuff, that I hoped to get done.

Friday, I did laundry, had the robot vacuum the first floor, made sure that all my books for class had arrived, took the dogs for a 2.5 mile walk, and tried to find the link for the Zoom meeting that will be our class on Monday (I looked but didn't find it). I also completed my DCC conversion of the blue box Conrail loco that's been on my workbench. Sort of. All the wiring is done and three LEDs are mounted and wired... but I can't get it to work. I can read and write to al the CVs but when I put it on the operating track, nada, zip, nothing. The base station recognizes that its there, but it doesn't move. I tried two different decoders with the same result. That said, both decoders are from a lot that I picked up at our train club from an estate. I bought a dozen or so decoders (90's era) loose in a ziplock bag so my confidence level isn't too high that either of them are fully operational. Next, I'll do a little more debugging and then try a new store bought decoder.

Saturday, my wife and I had a board meeting for our Liberia Farmer to Farmer mission in Akron. The good news is that our 501c3 application has been approved and we are no longer dependent on running donations through a church or conference office. The bad news is that now we need to get serious about fundraising because we're $100k into building a new high school in Liberia, and still need to raise another $40k to finish construction, and then more to hire staff. Worse, the middle school is using a bunch of the classrooms in the partially finished high school, so once we start getting students in the high school, we need to build a middle school (we already built an elementary school). In any case, we spent three hours discussing strategy and planning, etc. On the way home, we met our daughter at Sam's Club (because she got a membership as a gift from her in-laws), and on the way home from Sam's, stopped at the hospital to visit with one of our church friends who had some sort of sudden illness. Infection of some sort was suspected and he was responding well to antibiotics, so after an hour or so, we finally made it home for a late dinner.

Sunday, was church, followed by our monthly business meeting at the Sebring Model Railroad Club. Attendance was low, probably due to many of our members attending the train show in Salem a half hour away. I took cash with me in case I had time to dash over to the show after our meeting, but, as I suspected, being the first meeting of the year, I had a line of folks wanting to pay dues and by the time I got that done, plus unpacking a few tools I brought over from my Dad's train room, it was too late to head over to the show. My wife was attending a training event at the equestrian center where she works so I socialized and didn't rush home. I headed home around 5:00 pm, stopped to pick up a book at church that a friend wanted to borrow, and got home just before my wife. We had dinner and, while I had time to tinker with my DCC project, I just wasn't in the mood. Instead, I opened up a $3.00 yardsale Dremel tool that was frozen up. Everything looked okay electrically, but turned with great difficulty. A little 3-in-1 oil on the bearing ends, and it freed up nicely. So now I have another working Dremel (for $3). Yay! After that, just a little television and off to bed.

Thus endeth my weekend.

 

I didn't make it to the craft store Friday after work so my plans for the weekend started out behind. I did get to go Saturday but the wife came up with several other errands she wanted to do so I only had time to mount the wood deck on the bulkhead flat Saturday evening. While it looks like it will be good, I didn't make it back down on Sunday to see how it worked. I also didn't get to work on the auto frames load i had planned to start on. On the plus side, did get all our laundry caught up and we managed to get all the Christmas taken down and stored away. Now it's back to work.

Hope you all have a great week.

 

Friday night bowling went well enough but the 9 splits made for some reduced scoring even with the strikes I had.

Saturday was a fun time at the club, I took a train with only 40 and 50 foot boxcars in about 6 different DT&I color schemes. Later in the day I did some decal work on a DT&I caboose and a NP boxcar.

Sunday took down the indoor Christmas decorations and packed them away. As a reminder of our years in Alaska I leave up the outdoor lights as long as possible to relieve the winter gloom. Finished up the decal’s and went back to work on a boxcar kit now that I have the Moloco ACF end of car cushion draft gear.

Rick Jesionowski

 

Mini Christmas! Cool! Fine lookin' rust. 2nd level dock doors. Unusual... Computer liveries...the latest! Beware "googly eyes". @Tompm, I hope you are back to normal soon. Impressive circuitry. Looks like next weekend is on tap for some to MRR. Superelevation looks super! (I thought of that by myself. Okay, I'll stop) $3 Dremel! (If only you could get the robot to do laundry. ) Sometimes wives are very creative. (Looks like we need another "laundry robot".) Down with gloom! I did get the center and beam slope sheets in as mentioned before. Wouldn't you know it. I came up with a better way to do it right after I finished it. The new method will eliminate one component and two cuts. Right now I am working on running gear. I haven't done any in so long that I had to consult my notes. All have a safe and warm week.

 

The beginning of a helix.

 

Went to a train show in Charleston, SC and saw some Z (top photo) and N. Both layouts ran flawlessly. I am amazed at the excellence I'm seeing in Z Scale at various shows. On the N Scale layout, I thought those MILW cars were pretty neat.