Hard to believe that March is about over, based on our weather here is east central Illinois, you would never know it. Lots of activity of Fridays thread, which is always a good thing, let's see how we did. Friday: I survived. Everything went as planned and we are now in our new era at Athearn. Saturday: I slept in then got ready for the hour plus drive to Angela's grandmas. We had a nice small get together with family and enjoyed each other's company. We got home before dark, and I worked on track plans. Too cold to work on the NTrak module. Sunday: I got up my usual weekend time and got ready. My buddy Steve was at the house by 10:00 and we went to the Lincoln Square show in Urbana. I got to meet Mr. Trainiac and his fellow FreeMo modelers as well as catch up with some old friends. We stayed until 1:00 then met the future Mrs. at a local pub for a round and some lunch. Once finished, Steve had not seen the Monticello RR Museum in a while, so we took a brief tour despite the cold, windy temps. We came back to my place where we talked about the NTrak module and my Proto Throttle then he headed home. The rest of my day was spent looking and working on track plans. Then the weekend was over. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 1st of April. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Good mornin to Y'all, -- Monday already -- damn!! Well, I managed to sneak in a bit of MRRing. I swapped drivers on two Kato GS-4's and did some more detail painting on them. (I Neolubed the side rods) I also reworked my GS-5's draw bar electrical connection. Went from a single "wiper" to dual. Much - much better. That's about it -- Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Monday!? Are you kidding me. Where did the weekend go? Who stole the weekend? Anyway I didn't get to painting anything. Then again I didn't paint moose either. I did work on a couple designs for a 2-ft skyscraper made from cardstock and reinforced with various materials
Monday greetings all. This weekend was, for lack of a better word, WEIRD. It went exactly as planned. Early Saturday AM I got the back drop wing-walls cut, fitted, painted, and then secured at each side of the river gorge. After watching basketball mid-day, I went up to the workshop, got out my molds, and cast rocks. They hardened and I got them painted before dinner. Let them all dry well overnight. Fortunately, I had the exact right amount of hydrocal to make the castings. I ordered another 10 pounds on-line yesterday. Sunday, I spent most of the day arranging the rock castings like I wanted and got them all glued in. Then I formed sculptamold around them to seal any gaps. Then I touched up the base paint, cleaned the floor and it was time for dinner. Anyway, the first 2 shots are "before-after". The next 2 are close ups of where this is going. BEFORE: AFTER:
Reworked an N Scale Kato #4 turnout for better reliability and discovered an unassociated block wiring conflict (I'm a DC guy) which I think I found the source of. After cutting two wires later today, I'll know.
Not much accomplished. Work and tired, again. I did manage to decal another caboose, and start in on doing a critter. But that stalled when I dozed off while waiting for the decals to set. Railway Recollections HOn30 caboose shell with added details, etc, etc:
Great weekend running trains with friends in Wendover UT at the Historic Wendover Airbase Museum. Only four of us brought modules. The set up was approx 37 x 63 feet. The museum loved having us there and invited us back again next year. The four of us were from Utah Free-moN, N-Land Pacific Free-moN out of LA, and Mojave Free-moN from Las Vegas. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Friday: I did *tried* to work on my wife's mountain bike. I pulled a bent valve core out and went to the bike shop but, since I got there at 11:00 and they don't open until 12:00, I went home and had lunch. When I returned after lunch it still wasn't open and there was a sign in the window that said "Closed Today." To be fair, I saw the sign in the window on the first trip but I wasn't sure if "today" meant Thursday or if it meant Friday. In any case, since they weren't open, I found the parts that I needed, ordered them on Amazon, and had 20 of them, plus a core wrench, for less than nine dollars, in my hands by Saturday afternoon. After ordering the bike parts I finished wading through our Amazon and credit card purchases for the year, sorted out the relevant tax deductible ones, and drove our pile-o-stuff to our tax guy (about a half hour away). Saturday: I installed the new valve core on my wife's bike, filled it, and mine, with air, and now we'll watch to see how they hold up. If hers holds, and mine doesn't, all four tires will get new cores. I also spent several hours fussing with my shop computer and JMRI. I can get the computer to "talk" to the Digitrax throttle but can't get JMRI to read the decoder. I got far enough down that rabbit hole that I'm pretty sure the issue is that, being new to JMRI, I don't have everything set up quite right yet so I have more exploring to do to climb that learning curve. Sunday: Started early with church, of course, since I'm usually up by 5:30am and in my office sometime after 7:00. After church my wife and I ate a carry-out meatloaf dinner that our church ladies had made as a fund-raiser and then I was off to the train club. Once there, as the new treasurer, I spent several hours trying to get all of the club bookkeeping records caught up since November. All of the receipts were there, but nothing had been entered into the ledger since the end of November when the former treasurer was hospitalized with Covid-19. The next step is to get all the paperwork processed with the bank so I can write checks and pay bills, and at that point we will try to figure out/interpret how the ledger is supposed to match the bank statements. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to fuss with JMRI some more this week and figure out how to get the computer, throttle, and decoder to all play nice with one another.
Thanks! I am happy with the outcome, and also quite pleased with the decals. Made for me by a fellow Moose2013 told me about.
Two shows going on this weekend, that's great to see. Nothing close to me yet, hopefully soon. Had a good productive weekend on the layout here. Made progress on the river banks on the smaller of the pair of layout sections I am currently working on. Finally received the ballast I ordered for both these sections. For the rear track in the photo above I kit bashed an Atlas girder bridge. And finally started to finish the pair of tunnel portals that will be needed for this section. Here adding the wing walls to the Southern Pacific portal.
Good morning from cloudy, cold and snowy Northeast Ohio! Friday, I managed to paint a 40' Boxcar prior to going to bowling, which was good for two games, but then splits came into being. Wife's medical tests were inconclusive, will see what the doctors want next. Got to the hobby shop and picked up some more supplies, as the owner is retiring and I don't know where I will get paint and other things in the future. Saturday, had our club meeting in the morning, and I sort of rested in the afternoon, then we went to dinner with a couple of friends and had a good time. Later I got half the decals done on a 40' Boxcar and a 2003CF Covered Hopper. Sunday, did the laundry and between loads I managed to paint the top ends on a 86' Hi-Cube and 3 Intermodal 40' Trailers. Finished decaling the boxcar and covered hopper, then I repaired the coupler on a club car by cutting away the cast on pocket which was trashed and installed a new Kadee pocket. Also did a lot of work on a Red Caboose PC&F R70-15 Reefer kit. See you all later!
Yep. Busy ones here. Stuff looks great! Also, let's stop with the snow. I got all end slope sheets installed and am at sixty percent completion of center slope sheets. Then on to car end sheets and beam cover sheets. The fun never stops! Have a great and safe week.
Moose did something... Friday: Designed & fabricated most of the detail parts for the freight house. Saturday: Managed to get out of doing yard work -- it's piling up! Started the process of finally developing a definite concept for the yard. Sunday: Continued avoiding yard work. Moose will regret that in the coming days! Nearly completed the concept for the yard. Thanks to the awesome suggestions of folks here [and another forum], Moose has made a lot of progress how the yard will finally look. It will involve discarding most of the removable sections where the town is located and building new sections to expand the town and incorporate the west end of a major warehouse in the yard. Moose feeling good that the yard and town are finally coming together after years of contemplation...
It's a good thing I still don't live in Alaska, you would have snow falling until May and starting again in September, along with Ice Fog! Rick Jesionnowsk
Pulled off my weekend plans for the most part. Did finish installing the metal wheels and test running the cars. No issues which is a good thing. Started cleaning up the old jewel cases I found. Turned out to be a tougher project than I thought but made decent progress. Finished all the non work items I had planned plus had to replace a light fixture that wasn't planned. All in all, a decent weekend that like most other noted, went by way too fast. Hope you all have a great week!!!!!
I got the floor and rugs deep cleaned in our bedroom. I also got a little bit of the laundry done. On the layout I added a couple more rail joiner feeders and wired them to the bus line. In doing so I had to reconfigure some of the roadbed and track. I had to glue down some areas. On the work bench I mostly finished the hotdog stand.
Moose update to weekend update: Mrs Moose finished painting the wee details on six reefers. Yea! Moose now hard at work trying to design a brewery and beer distribution facility to fill a empty space in the yard. It's a bit troublesome as the available space is oddly shaped and accommodating an adjacent road is proving to be a pain in the hiney...
