Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and that cold blast for some of us, was the last of this year. We can hope. Let's see how we did. Saturday: As predicted, the weather was horrible. We were back to January temps by 8:00am so working in the garage at 13 degrees wasn't going to happen. I did glue one of the NTrak legs together before the cold overwhelmed me. We did not do much as it was so cold. Both Ang and I had encountered long stressful work weeks, so we mainly rested most of the day. Sunday: Fortunately, I had remembered to set my clock forward, or what I call, normal time and was up at 5:30 to take care of the dogs and get cleaned up. I met my buddy Steve and we traveled together down to Springfield IL for the train show. We made great time and got in as the show was starting. It was nice to be back at a show again and see some familiar faces. I ran in to Trainboards own Dave (PPUIN) and talked to him for a bit about his projects and generally had a great time. I ended up picking up a Trainworx NYC trailer in N for the shadowbox layout and an older HO Roundhouse North Stratford Railroad boxcar for my collection. After the show, we ended up going to the hobby shop and were very happy to find them open. I was amazed at the selection of items they had including scratch building supplies in both N and HO. So, I picked up some loading doors, detail parts and a new PC HO scale box car. I also picked up their card for the hours so I could return again. After some BBQ, we headed back to our homes. It had warmed up to 55 so I opened the garage and set to work on the module, finishing the rest of the frame as well as the third of four legs before calling it a night. Sunday was the overall winner this weekend. So, what about you? What did you get accomplished this weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 18th and do it all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy, enjoy a great St. Pattrick's Day and... High Greens!
Did not do much around the house this weekend. The wife's back was bothering her so that limited wat she could help with. Hoping therapy helps he today. Took a trip to Delaware to get gas on Friday. Delaware's prices are 25 to 30 cents cheaper than Pennsylvania so it worth the trip. Saturday's horrible weather kept us home. Daylight Saving Times always throws off our sleep patterns and we overslept Sunday as a result. We did some laundry and put a few things away that had been sitting out for a while. I had a good weekend tuning up cars. I painted/weathered 80 metal wheel sets, enough for 20 cars. I tuned up 21 cars. The Athearn blue box cars made up the majority and they needed metal wheels and a screw added to the coupler clips. The Roundhouse and Mantua cars just needed metal wheels. I still have four Accurail cars to finish and an Athearn blue box boxcar I need to weather the trucks. It had metal trucks which I replaced.
I got the layout cleaned up for my sister's visit tomorrow. Trying to running smoothly but that's really about all
Good mornin to Y'all My weekend went about as I thought - Saturday - the kid's birthday party went very well. All of the kids had a blast. Sunday - changed decoders in my GS-5 - went from a 2 function to 3. Now she has an operating oscillating signal light in the upper light housing. That's about it Hope Y'all had a great weekend Wolf
Moose is slooow... Saturday: Virtually attended an NMRA layout tour. A first for this lone Moose. Quite interesting and looking forward to more in the future. Spent the rest of the day in the yard with Mrs Moose, yeah, including figuring out what da Mooses will need to do to the yard to park a wee camper trailer there come next year. Lots of digging plants up, chopping a tree down, building a fence... Groan. Sunday: Finished painting some wee background hills beyond the town yard. Mrs Moose really likes the color of the new hills, so she now wants to repaint the surrounding layout landscape to be similarly painted, sooo, yeah, that'll slow down progress on the layout until she finds time to do that. It'll look a lot better when she's done, sooo patience, patience. Wait, Moose not a doctor , Moose no have patience... Cleaned up the metal window bits for a train station kit and started to paint them. Mrs Moose finished painting the wee details on six reefers, so those will be getting decals in the coming weeks... Hope everyone else has had a good weekend!
Happy Monday all. This weekend went "sort of" like I thought. Never made it into the train room for "work/project" purposes. What modeling time I spent was all in the work shop pulling out about a dozen engines and assessing them. I picked about 8 that I am going to upgrade with decoders. Some w/ sound, some with mobile-only decoders. 2 of the engines are not in the picture. Those are 2 C&O RDC Budd Diesel Rail passenger units. They run really well, just need decoders. I also went through my parts and and have enough spare, new railing parts for a couple of the RS units that need them. I've opened all up and check the motors. They are in great shape. So, I essentially spent the weekend with the project of organizing loco's for a future project. Such is the life of model railroading!! Everyone have a great week.
Got next-to-nothing done on the layout, but I did confirm that an expansion of my engine terminal would be a good thing in exchange for a loss of space in the freight yard. As such, I ordered a pair of switches that I'll need to make the change. Enjoyed four hours of railfanning yesterday in beautiful cold and crisp weather, catching one train on CSX and three on NS. Gasoline is expensive, but my li'l VW gets near 35 MPG easy while railfanning. Nonetheless, I'm not as likely to jump in the car these days unless I have reliable knowledge of a train's location.
Friday: I tinkered with my shop computer, connected the LocoBuffer from RR-Cirkits for the first time and finished the installation of JMRI. I then worked at isolating the motor to the locomotive that I intend to convert to DCC, and alligator clipped enough wires to try reading CV values from the "unknown" decoder I bought (cheap). JMRI didn't want to read the manufacturer's ID at CV8 at all, and when I read CV8 from my Digitrax controller it read back a value of zero. Out of curiosity, I then tried to read the value for the "long address" and it returned "9999." It's quite curious, particularly since I have no experience at all with JMRI. So, this week I will likely try reading some values from a locomotive that already runs just to gain experience and confidence before I delve deeper into this particular problem. My guess is that, if everything is working properly, I may eventually use by Digitrax control station to (try to) change CV8 to "JMRI" (18) or something just so that the JMRI program can read it better than a value of zero. Saturday: I drove up to Akron, Ohio (about 45 minutes) to attend the funeral of a colleague and member of our congregation, had lunch with the family, and came home with the beginnings of a migraine. Took Advil and sinus meds and headed for bed. Several hours later things were worse and my wife offered me one of her migraine pills. I hesitated, but by headache convinced me in short order to give it a try. Then back to bed until almost 9:00 pm, woke up MUCH improved, got up for an hour or two, set my clock ahead an hour, and went to bed. So, not much accomplished. Sunday: Up and going early to prepare for church in the morning, then a quick lunch and off to the Sebring Model Railroad Club. Almost no one was there at first, so I got started cutting foam to mock-up the dock extensions in our new harbor, then laid down some cork roadbed and track. The next step is for club members to decide exactly where they want the docks to be placed (now that they can better "see" what they will look like). Once that's decided, we can start gluing things down, laying track, switches, and installing switch motors. I left the club a little early to go home, change clothes, and escort my wife to the volunteer appreciation dinner for Pegasus Farms, the therapeutic riding center where she volunteers three days each week.
Hobby shop AND Barbeque! Don't get much better than that. Folks on here seem busy. Getting a lot done. Saturday for me headed toward being a basket case. But we got stuff turned around. I have been doing a few slope sheets at a time. Last week's chore duty has set me up for doing more on the model railroad this week. Regards to all!
Plenty of good things being reported for the weekend. Made some good progress myself. Friday: The PC power supply arrived. Swapped it in for the old one and... immediate improvement. (Has continued to work as intended all weekend.) Mounted some "guides" on a particle board base to stabilize the laser engraver. Return to that later. I needed to discharge the batteries for my Dremel in order to check the charge time in the new charger. Decided to tape some resistor on the pack instead of wasting bearing life letting the tool run. Return to that later, too. Saturday: Breakfast and soccer on TV with our son. Checked the batteries. Still discharging. Off to my brother's house to visit with my niece and her kids. Great fun. Checked the batteries. Still discharging. Sunday: Tinkered with a file to test the laser. Cut some cardstock. Looks like the air assist is getting the job done. I have accomplished more in less than a month on this engraver than the six months at the Makerspace. Checked the batteries. Finally discharged. Pictures or it never happened, right? Here's the charger attached to PC: It should rotate if you look at the full size image. I really need to change the labeling on the charger. It did take several hours to complete the charge, but the new batteries have much better capacity and are easily replaced, at least for the near future. Beside I have a second battery pack case. Having tested the laser operation I decided it was time to actually make something. I had learned enough about the software to create these: Which are more interesting as: window shades in a coach. So feeling good about the modeling this weekend. Still more to do. Like a layout, it is never truly done. Stay safe,
Friday, bowled another 600 series also found out I have mitral regurgitation so I have a cardiologist visit scheduled for April. Saturday went to the club and mostly had a bull session with fellow members. Built another Walthers 89’ intermodal flat car along with starting another Details West FGE RBL. Sunday: Did the laundry and managed to paint the above flat along with three covered hopper cars. Also worked on decaling the Tichy covered hopper and a different Details West FGE RBL. Rick Jesionowski
Had to work over the weekend. Nothing done except for 5 HO rolling stock kits and assembled a sound card. I am now in prep mode for a show next week. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well, I wish I could say we had a great weekend in the train barn here. Had an op session here this past weekend with a few regulars showing up. All was going well, we had a local switching 30-40 cars at Dougherty off MT2. He was in his space switching up a storm, but for some reason he was standing on a foot stool, really no reason to do that, he plenty tall enough to see all movements. Then, he the just stepped of the stool like he was standing on the floor, and went down like a sack of concrete, didnt take long to see he was in a lot of pain, we had a chair on castor wheels, we got him in it and rolled him up and down and around to the entry door, into the back part of the crew cab and to the hospital. Turns out he broke his hip!! That was the end of the fun for us, he feels terrible about it, but it was just one of those things that could have happened to anyone. If there is a silver lining to any of this, he had surgery 0530 03/14 and got a couple pins in his hip and is already on a walker and has had 5-6 short walks already, hopefully home by the weekend. "New Rule" no more standing on foot stools to switch. We will have him back running an engine in a few weeks. I might go to Wally World and get a couple rolls of bubble wrap for him. Don't want any more excitement like that anymore!
Well, battling a stubborn sinus infection, plus had to work overtime and an extra day. We have not done an inventory for the past two years, due to the viral thing. So we are out of sorts and need to get everything back in snyc, before this event. As business has increased greatly in this time period, it is turning out to be a bigger challenge than anticipated. Rats. On to next weekend!
Well I finished going through my three train totes and some other boxes and such, throwing things away, organizing, etc... Started to clean up some wiring under one base, but got tired and lazy, and will have to work on it slowly over time.
Continued working on benchwork this weekend. Slow process but have finally got all the framing parts sliced and diced. Before I consider going the plywood route again, I'm going to do some more tuning on the bandsaw. Now have the wiring holes laid out and am ready to bore them. It's just good to have things finally moving.
