Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Lets get started. Saturday: Work. Sunday: I did not go to the train show. Saturday wore me out being in the heat all day dealing with tire kickers. Instead, I worked on my research in trying to find a suitable area in which to model. Penacook is still in the lead but I need more info regarding track placement. I spent most of the day going through my many B&M books, Google Earth and Sandborn Fire Maps. By evening, Angela wanted out of the house, so we took Jess out sans top and went to grab a bite to eat and enjoyed the top down weather. Once home, I ran a local on the layout and called it a day. So how about you? What did you accomplish? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 31st, the last day of July 2020 to start the process all over again. Until then, continue to be safe, be healthy and as always... High Greens!
Man that was quick! Where did the weekend go? Saturday morning, I spent some time helping the wife move a bunch of stuff around. Saturday afternoon, I placed the scenic divide in place for a test fit. It still needs a little trimmed off the bottom but is in for now. Doesn't look bad but I think I am going to have to find some better fitting backgrounds. From there, I pulled out a couple of M/T sets that needed decals and got to work on them. Sunday was a planned trip to Chattanooga that didn't happen. The wife was feeling a bit sore from all the shuffling of stuff and my knee was feeling it pretty good too so we got to stay home. With some extra free time, I finished up the decal work and applied a clear coat when done. Piddled with a could of other little projects as well. All in all, a decent weekend. Hope you all have a great week.
My weekend didn't go quite as planned - my lower back is killing me!! Damn!! However, I made some progress on my SW8 and SW900 project. One more weekend - I hope. I started on phase 1 of downtown Oxnard - prepped the buildings for window treatments. Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
I didn't do any modeling this weekend. I did go to the show that Jim talked about. It was good for HO'ers. As a N scaler I was let down. One vendor had a handful of cars at list price and none of which I was interested in. I did buy a couple of Walthers house kits and several old magazines to use as modeling references. Did a bit of cooking. Yogurt, granola, bread, made from scratch breakfast sausage and hamburgers/Provolone cheese with homegrown tomatoes. Nothing beats the taste of a do it yourself tomato. A fellow rail museum member was able to find a picture for me that I will use to have some decals made. That made my day as I had been searching high and low with no success. Until next time Be well
Either you paused to take a deep breath, or you blinked. One or the other was enough to use up the two seconds allotted for your time off.
Dusted off my benchwork drawings to refresh my mind as to what lumber I'll need to buy. We went out in Sunday's heat to kick a few tires, wanting only to snap a few photos. I was amazed to find that a few Dealers were actually open on Sundays. I hadn't realized that car selling had become a 7 Day-A-Week business.
Taking it easy this weekend. Nothing to do outside. Summer and once out of the sixties, (I hate summer), too warm for me. Fighting a herniating disk in back which makes breathing rather uninteresting.... Started cutting some glazing for a critter cab's windows. Finally found my last little stash of detail parts, which included a much needed headlight. Mostly just relaxed as much as possible and watched several favorite (non-RR) videos.
I was hoping that my Tangent Roma Wines tank car would show but it hasn't. I did get a better toy in the mail. My Bachmann Spectrum 4-4-0 came on Sunday and it is really, really nice. Here it is with my Bachmann ten wheeler. I can't wait to start on my switching layout!
Well. I worked on some miscellaneous scenery moving along a couple of buildings. Also cleaned up the trainroom a bit. And, dare I say it, I actually ran trains. Here's a shot of 2 Geep9's carrying a load of empties west bound meeting an east bound boxcar freight pulled by a pair of GP7's.
I got the last of the locos off the layout and stored. I found two flatcars with trailers that I need to store. There are a couple of odd pieces of rolling stock I need to figure out what to do with now.
While waiting for a crane to arrive (!), I have plowed into some more buildings. This is the Walthers Lumber wholesaler kit that will be reengineered into an HVAC and sheet metal shop complex: And these are the wall sections I am assembling and detailing from a Walthers modern concrete warehouse kit. I just laid out the long walls and sides/ends for the photograph. They will become two side by side buildings between the track and the wall. One will house an adult beverage distributor, the other remains to be names.
I mostly began fabricating a parts backstock for the next phases of rolling stock construction. I also did a little trouble shooting/spot repairs for the last batch of boxcars recently completed. This A.M., more parts making.
Since I just finished a month long modeling blitz I didn’t do much this weekend. I did play with my new throttle a bit. Nice learning curve there. Then I started looking into scratch building of cars. I found I enjoyed doing the old west module in N scale and now I want to do something in HO. I have a great book on modeling the civil war so why not? In the book are some plans for several cars. Looks to be drawn in O so I will need to do some conversions. Plans are to build a flat car or gondola, box car, passenger car, and a way car. Load will be a couple of cannon on the flat with a few Union soldiers standing guard throughout the train. I have the Jupiter and 119 I can use. My wife said those aren’t civil war. So I smiled and said looks like I will have to buy a new engine then. I got flipped off. so currently gathering plans and making a materials list.
Saturday went as planned starting at 4 am lighting the smoker and putting a couple briskets on. Friends trickled in throughout the day and dinner went on as planned. A lot of cornhole was played and perhaps too many adult beverages. We ended the evening sitting around the campfire until 1 am and I was tired. Unfortunately I felt kinda crappy Sunday (perhaps from overindulgence of adult beverages) so I failed to work on the benchwork I started. Hopefully it will get a little less humid this week and I can put in some time after work on the benchwork.
I had started with plans to build a couple caboose kits, but sitting there I lost interest. I switched gears and setup the T-Trak-Z modules I had built on a banquet table: Next I decided to start cutting parts for the remaining modules starting with this corner module on the left: And today I finished cutting the 4 staging yard modules on the other side: I still have to cut most of the parts for 2 more corner modules for the 8 foot loop of modules.
What method do you use for joining your modules? Does Z have a similar track to N Unitrack, whereby the joiners do that job?
I have gone down a dark path. Yesterday, I was going through some of my old photos, and I came across my photos of Southern Pacific SD9s that I had taken way back when (some of them are here on TB). I did some poking around on the interwebs and found a photo of SP SD9 4340 in Tracy, Ca. which is not too far from Stockton where I'm planning on locating my switching layout. More poking around and I found an HO Broadway Limited SP scarlet and gray SD9. I've watched a coupe of reviews and it sounds amazing! I had to have it, so... It'll need it's iconic SP light package and a renumbering, but I can do that later.
