Well another weekend is in the books. How did you fare? Technically, my weekend is still here as I still have a day off today, though I'll make up for it by working this coming Saturday. The joys of retail... Saturday was a real treat. I woke up at 3:00 AM, hit the road by 4:30 and picked up my Railfan friend Brian at 5:20 then headed to Toluca IL. We stopped into our favorite Railfan Breakfast place, the Supreme House of Cheese for some home made donuts and egg, cheese and bacon sandwiches before hitting the main. We were treated to great weather with temps in the 70's and ending with a temp of 82 and full sun. We caught train after train all morning and afternoon. My best photo was taken at the famous Houlihan Curve with a brace of two BNSF, one CitiRail and one NS engine with a set of auto racks. The catch of the day however was an old white face SD60M still in Cascade Green and in great shape, never thought those would be so rare! The day ended in Galesburg at our favorite railside diner, the Taco Hideout for some fried tacos then some ice cream at the nearby Kastle Kream. A great day. Yesterday was more relaxed but the two GP38's are ready for the spray booth. Today I plan on getting the paint and maybe the decals on them. I also need to work on my T-Trak module and some writing. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 8th and do it all over again. Until then, have a happy and safe week and... High Greens!
The roadbed is all glued down from the throat of the staging yard at one end of Phase 3 all the way down to the turntable at the other end, and the track crew has the track glued in place over halfway. There are 5 tracks running down this 17 inch wide shelf. The 4 close to the wall will eventually have a removable scenic liftoff over them, but the outer track is a branch line down to an old Revell station I've restored and dressed up a bit. The turntable will let me turn the engine and run it back to the other end of the train via a runaround track. It's time to clean up the train room. I've been doing lots of projects all winter, and the place is a mess.
Well I got a little done on my list, ran over to the hobby store and they did a major clean up and organizing in there and really got it fixed up! Really nice! I picked up some hydrocal and some assorted landscape materials and was able to pour three batches of molds. This is the first time using these molds and it was pretty easy. This is the area that I will be re working, not at all happy the way it looks now: Here are some of the new rocks that are going in, also will be adding more grass and trees, trying to look like some of the rock walls around here: For an added bonus, I got my work space cleaned up:
With the decals I found at the Ottawa Train Expo the previous weekend, I was able to start decorating the Proto GP18 for GTW 4703. The decals are on the long and short hoods, next are the road numbers on the cab sides, and the striping along the sills and pilots. I got that done despite a beautiful sunny weekend with more than one walk and some general soaking up of solar photons. Oh, that feels good!
Well, I'd intended to do some things on a T-Trak module. So I primered a backdrop. But then I went astray. I discovered on HOn30 critter had a bad coupler and changed that. Then I began playing with a Funaro & Camerlengo HOn30 gondola I thought was finished. I knew it was low for the coupler, but it was so low as to be unusable. So spent some time adjusting that. Then I discovered the truck swing was way less than folks had advised me, using the MT 1015 couplers. So I was lucky enough to find a package of 1023 RDA in my mess, and changed to those. Now the truck swing is where it should be. I am still puzzling over finding how the sworn "1015 works better than a 1023" was completely the opposite of fact.
Western Pacific 660, just finished. Second of two braced WP 'woodies'. Built from a Model Power BW caboose.
Marty, Nicely done! I have always loved those WP caboose style. Someday I will get around to building one. Keep up the great work and see you in Sacramento. Rick
