MODELING It's Monday, June 9th, 2025: Weekend Modeling Accomplishments

Good mornin to Y'all and happy Monday,

Hope Y'all had a great, productive and very safe weekend.

As for me - the packing continued and is just about done. With 3 weeks to go until our move's D-Day.
Messed with my Firebird. She is about ready for the long ride to So-Hi, Az.

Y'all have a great week - stay safe.

Best regards,
Wolf

 

Happy Monday everyone, hope everyone had a good weekend.

This weekend I spent a lot of time in the work shop. Got most of what I wanted done. Didn't touch the LCL building, but I did get the GP9's outfitted with grabs, correct horns, and lift rings. Spent a lot of time researching the C&O geeps before I started carving off the bell. Seems that in the early 50's, the C&O left the factory bells on most of the geeps with only a few (I could find) replaced with hood/nose bells. I looked at a ton of photo's on the C&O HIstorical Society archive pages. This meant I could leave the bells where they were and that helped my progress.

Also spent time getting in 2 sound decoders for the RS-3's I've had sitting around in a box. The C&O only had 2 RS-3's, (5600 and 5601). That pair lasted from about '50/'51 until they were sold in '68. Not a bad run. So I was really glad to get this pair as part of my engine roster. I programmed the horn to the Nathan P-5 and the prime mover to an Alco 244 which matched the 1600HP RS-3's. Got the master volume set where I wanted and "voila", they worked. Here they are sitting at MN Cabin in Monterey waiting for their first assignment.

@dti406 ... Wishing you "all greens" on your CAT scan result.

Have a great week all and stay cool.

 

We are back to Monday.
Hope you all had a good weekend. Seems like I spent a lot of time in the train room without a lot to show for it. Did finish the paint and decal work on a pair of tank cars, made a little progress on the road redo, and started on a little semi temporary layout addition. Feels like I am all over the place on projects but it’s keeping things interesting I guess.

On a personal note, I was reminded this morning that Wednesday will be my official 30 year work anniversary. Only been here 29 years 364 days too long.

Hope you all have a great week.

 

Well due to the health issues I have been having I did not do any modeling this weekend except to go to the club and run trains.

They ran another blood test that I got the results on Friday it was called a C-Reactive Protein and reading about it my results were 3 times the worst amount that should be. It is the number of cells produced by the liver to combat infection or inflammation. So they scheduled CAT scan for this morning.

Rick Jesionowski

 

Good morning everyone,

With good weather this weekend I worked on a bunch of repairs to the drip irrigation systems in the back yard as well as other general yard work and house cleaning. In the train room I did run some operations on the layout and tinkered with another oil well. This one was something I scratch built many years ago before the Walthers models came out.




The high point modeling wise this weekend was the arrival of the ATSF El Capitan set I won on the auction site. It got some running time on the layout and ran flawlessly.

 

Hoping for positive news on your health issue @dti406 .

Air quality advisories all weekend but we still got in a fair amount of yard work because the monthly pickup of brush in our part of town starts today. If no pickup today may sneak out for a "bonus round" of cutting and hacking after work.

Meanwhile, though I said I wanted to work on the corner of the layout in Friday's thread, I "squirrelled"...

A sheet of Plastruct O Scale "asphalt shingles" looked to me like N Scale Rather Large Granite Blocks, good for the retaining wall needed along the view block behind the interchange yard I'm working on. So a fair amount of Rare! Hard to Find! Polly Scale "Grimy Black" paint and here's what we have. I like that the paint didn't coat evenly which brings some variety to what would be an otherwise very plain wall.

 

The forecast for Friday was rain by noon, so I was up and out of the house and headed for my parents' house before 9:00 with the box trailer behind me. Since my older brother has been harassing me for not calling him to help me when I and loading things out of our folks' house, I texted to see if he was busy and could help me load a particularly large and heavy chest of drawers. As luck would have it, he was in the waiting room for a colonoscopy so I was on my own. I did try lifting one end of the dresser to see if I might manage it if I took all the drawers out, but it was immediately apparent that although I might be a little crazy, I am not *that* crazy. That thing is HEAVY. In any case, I got the last of the piles out of our parents' basement and most of what I had staged in the garage loaded into the trailer before noon. It was drizzling as I pulled out (and my brother's colonoscopy was clear) but it didn't really rain for several more hours. If I can get the trailer UNloaded this week, one more load should empty the house before the auction on the 23rd. In the evening we put some rice in the rice cooker and picked up various carryout meats from the local Chinese buffet.

Saturday my wife and I once again headed for the equestrian ministry that we support to assist with their Kidz Club. My wife was busy in the arena giving lessons for most of the day but I did not have much to do. On the other hand, even doing "not much" I still managed to walk several miles. By the time we got home we were tired and a bit dehydrated so we mostly just sat on the sofa and recliner for the evening and had leftover Chinese food for dinner.

As always, on Sunday I was up early and headed to church. Afterward, we went home, had a quick lunch, took a short nap, and then I headed for the train club for an hour or so. Nothing much was accomplished but I did get to talk to several folks I hadn't seen in a few weeks. From there, I stopped at the nearby care center to visit my friend (also from the train club) as well as a colleague in ministry who recently suffered a bad fall. I was home in time for a dinner of stuffed baked potato and then wound things down reading and playing games on my phone until bedtime.

This week, starting Wednesday, I travel daily to Wooster (about an hour drive) to our church's Annual Conference, a meeting of all the pastors and representative laity from all the United Methodist Churches in East Ohio. Bleah. Boring business meetings from Wednesday through Saturday. Then Sunday, I meet the scout troop at church to leave for a week of scout camp.

 

I didn't get nearly as much done over the weekend as I would have liked but I did get some parts done on the building which is helpful.


I ended up getting this end of the building basically done, custom trim work and shingles installed around the window opening with window parts and glazing installed. This is one of four upstairs windows to be completed to this state. I may need to go through and give it one more coating of siding brown on all three windows and trim work though.



I also worked on coloring the bulk of the roof using (in order): grey (primer), Tuscon brown, engine grime black, reefer white, reefer red, engine grime black (used to tone down redish tint). I skipped the left side of the lower roof as I need to cut one row of shingles off and add a small wooden ramp upwards with three shingles glued in where the single was removed, I'll try to complete this later today if time permits. I also need to replace one triangle piece of the roof sections in the double height area as it ended up being just a tad short for the valley seam for my liking. I may need to also cut a new section of shingles for right above the lower roof where it intercepts the taller roof. I ended up cutting that piece down slightly and it ended up a mess so I scrapped it. Any new shingle pieces will be taken outside with the grey primer paint and given a coat to start them with and then installed and painted to match other sections as close as possible.

One item has now been mostly dropped from the TODO list on this building at least but a couple more will likely be added. Up next is going to be fixing shingles and lighting related work as the small wires coming from the LEDs are just too small to connect to anything so I'll join them under the basement and add new wires for connecting to light circuits. I'll share more on that once I have the PCB bits in place.

Oh and I also received the new throttles which I'll be assembling for the NMRA National Show next month:

These will also be FCC ready as part of this update.

 

More sheet metal work on the Thai Hunslet 0-6-0DH



Kev

 

Yep. Going outside is good for your health. Packing, and more packing. Those RS-3's look like jewels! Congrats on work anniversary. (Even though too long. ) Keeping fingers crossed about CAT scan and remedy. El Capitan rules! Here's to "grimy black". Visiting at the train club sounds nice. Building details look super! Sheet metal work is coming along. Around here the last cow building effort continued to haunt me. I hate it when that happens. I am so glad I am not obsessive. I did take a step back Sunday and did no model railroading/cow building, etc. Today, I think I am on the right hoof. Have a good and healthy and productive week.

 

I was able to get some roadbed and track down in the Old Colton area. None of it is operational with turnout controls or feeders, but it gives somewhat of an idea of what I am shooting for. I have yet to even roll a car through it, but once the flextrack shows up I will complete the area. A rough trackplan is included for some clarity. This will be so cool once a backdrop is in place.

I have determined that I need mobile work stations of sorts. Currently the layout is used for supply and tool areas, but I am closing in on most available space. I have some storage totes for under the layout and have them on small furniture dollies. I am thinking of making a simple top for them so I could roll the work station anywhere, then put it back under the layout easily. I just talked myself into it.

 

Since I changed work assignments things have been crazy and different. I went from a project where there were 29 inspectors and construction managers to one that has only a construction manager and me. Trust me, I like this set up. At the previous job the office drama made it difficult to work. As my supervisor said, “too many busy bodies” when I spoke to him about the situation. I felt like I was in middle school. The job is just starting. The first day the contractor worked was last Wednesday. The biggest problem right now is that we don’t have an office, so I am working out of my car. Doing computer work is difficult at best. As a result, I need to do my computer work at home which takes up time. I do get paid for this time, but it hurts my personal computer time.

This weekend we did some gardening and ran a few errands. This took up most of Saturday. Sunday, we had some left-over gardening to finish.

I did get to run my new Western Maryland Bachmann BL2 through a break in session. I also organized some new rolling stock and tuned up a few cars.

 

My boss has an expression that's quite evocative: "Adult day care".

 

Rain and coolness in the summer time also have their good sides.

 

Here too. Endless road work, some poorly kept lawns that are growing more dust than grass (there are a couple across the street from my place... every time the landscapers come and mow the lawn/mow the dust, they throw huge clouds of dirt and dust into the air), several construction sites (one has been driving piles for at least two months), and wind carrying dust in from neighboring towns...

I don't wash my car anymore, I just rinse it off with a pressure washer once a week so it looks less dirty. If it isn't the tree pollen, it's dust.