The first day of summer came in on Saturday. What did you do to welcome the season in? As stated earlier, I'm in the middle of model airplane season for work so no modeling of the railroad kind was done, save on-line auctions. I will be making a trip to my native home soon however, and hope to do a little New England Railroading. So how about you? What did you get done on your model railroad this past weekend? Bench work, track work, scenery or painting, let us know. We'll all come back on Friday the 27th and see how we all did. Until then, have a great week and... High Greens!
Not much. I did finish up that last scene on Phase 2 of my layout, with this Preiser woodcutter doing his thing: I've still got a couple of grade crossings to clean up, and I'd like to add some crossing flashers, too, but the scenery is effectively done. I sat down with XtrakCad for a a while and did some measurements to refine the design for Phase 3. I'll hopefully be cutting wood of my own before the week is out.
Packed up all remaining HO cars and structures (except for a few I'm going to get rid of). Still have a few random tools and parts that need packed before dismantling the layout. I've settled on a plan for the 32"x24"x48" end section of the layout I'm need to rebuild that will make the existing layout section more functional, but I get this little voice in the back fo my head saying I need to create more design options and play with XtrackCAD a little more. I have a 32"x7" Rolling Mill I assembled and modified a couple years ago for the old layout, but never got to use it. I don't think I'll get to use it at all, which is a shame being such a nice, yet useless structure. Maybe I can carefully disassemble and scratch something smaller. I also put my few N Scale cars I collected over the last few months on the Swap Meet, hope to generate some cash for the rebuild.
I found a couple of books at the local flea market - non-train fleas, that is - Portrait Of The Rails, by John Ball Jr, and Railways Then And Now by O S Nock. The first one is chock full of very good photos of steam and diesel power. And I bought a new(er) car - the old 97 Crown Vic was getting a bit too long in the tooth (meaning expensive serial problems) so I got a 2007 Crown Vic to replace her. I need something nice to carry my trains home! And I took a train to pick her up - it was pulled by one of the new ALP45DP dual-power locos. There are two Cat 3512 diesels for running when overhead catenary isn't around. I was surprised at how quiet it was running on the diesels.
Nothing much accomplished. I finished up my decal idea, got a quote and sent off my hard earned pennies. Looking forward to receiving my order and getting busy applying these to (HOn30) rolling stock.
The train show was a non-event, don't know what went wrong. (sad face) I got some inspiration at the 3 letter hardware store for the door hinges on the roundhouse, also a garage sale sign for sheet plastic, some glue, exacto blades, hopefully be more productive this week. Bobby
HO, Not having a lot of luck moving the HO stuff out for a move to another scale. I think I came up with a solution that will make my main yard that I already have mostly complete, functional. It all still has to come out of the closet so I can build storage shelves, but things will generally remain the same.
