Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and @MetraMan01, we all hope you are getting better. Let's dive in. Saturday: As planned, I got up at 6:00am and got ready for a busy day. After getting cleaned up and caffeine stimulated up, I made my way to Normal Illinois for our operations session. We had three other guys from the Horizon Service Center join me, two who work on Athearn repairs and one who works on RC. I was paired with the lead Athearn tech, and we did two jobs before breaking for the afternoon. I love operations, so it was a fun time. Once the clock struck noon, I had to drive back home, change and head to Angela's dads. We got there about 2:00pm. I finished my carb rebuild and we assembled all the last bits on the engine for a test. My father-in-law still had to paint the valve cover and air cleaner at this point. We were more than happy when the Falcon fired right up with zero hesitation and no longer sounding like a tractor. While we could not call the job done (the engine paint has to cure with a number of heat settings determined by how long the car is run), we celebrated with a dinner before heading home. Sunday: We slept in and this morning I had coffee. Once we were ready, when went to the Christmas show in Bloomington. There was a lot of neat stuff but nothing we had to have. We did pick up some turkey spice for when I smoke the Thanksgiving turkey and Ang had a sweet tooth, so we supported a local candy maker in purchasing a few chocolate covered cookies. After the show, Ang surprised me with lunch at a new to us Chinese restaurant. It was very good and will be on our list from now on. From there, we stopped to look at a few houses on the market but didn't really care for the ones offered. (They never look as good in person compared to the listings). Deciding that we will have to wait until spring we went home. I did little in the workshop. No real progress on my layout but I did get a few things like shelves put up. And as always, the weekend came crashing down as we got ready for bed. So how about you? What did you get done? Let us know. We'll do it all over again on Friday, the 17th. Until then, have a good week, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Good mornin to Y'all Hope Y'all had a great weekend As far as MRRing - mine was a bust. However, our yard looks great. Y'all have a great week, Wolf
It was a good and bad weekend. On the good side we got the Thanksgiving decorations put up. We did some house cleaning, and I started the laundry for the week. On Saturday we took a trip to see Koziar’s Christmas Village in Bernville, PA which is northeast of Reading. It is an outdoor Christmas light display and was pretty impressive and fun. The trip was also a test for my wife as it was the first local excursion she has taken in many months and possibly a year or more. She used the wheelchair mainly but that was due to the crowd. She did walk around the stores and some of the indoor displays. On Sunday she went to Target with my daughter. She used the store provided scooter, but she is beginning to lose her fear of going out. Sunday for me, however, was not a good day. I was helping my wife put some clothing away in the closet and apparently turned the wrong way and set off my hip. The pain was nasty, and I had to take it easy for the rest of the day. When they went to Target, I stayed home. No carrying laundry baskets or putting decoration bins back into the basement for me. The only train stuff I got done was inputting some new rolling stock into my inventory program. I have finally decided I am going to work on another building for the downtown area.
Greetings from a chilly but beautiful day in McLean, VA. Friday: Primary Goal: 'Anti-Gravity' Built 'Anti-Gravity' device on edge of layout to preclude equipment from taking mortal high dive. Done! Made a crude fence from corrugated cardboard and cooking skewers. Will do a brief over view of it. Jury-Rigged: Physically wired the bobber caboose to a boxcar. Ran the wire from bobber coupler to axil of boxcar. Runs smoothly even when being backed through 2 turnouts. The bobber is a family heirloom that goes back to 1959 or '60. Saturday: Primary Goal: Build arched bridge. Total fail on an arched bridge construction. Discovered: Back Splash tiles make great tack hammers for driving wood skewers through foam. Discovered: Mesh backing on back splash tiles should work as 'fencing' in HO scale. Started designs of simpler bridges. Painted Anti-Gravity Fence and several 'buildings' white. Sunday: Primary Goal: 'The Black Bridge' Built "The Black Bridge" from foam packing materiel Continued: Bridge designs Started: 'Power Mountain' Shell of a mountain which hides my baby blue power supply from the casual visitors observation. Have decided to extend it over the tracks used by the mysterious 'Grandure Car Works'. A few other quicky projects such as 'end of track' makers. Enjoy the week.
Good morning Trainboarders. Weekend was great! As thought, I spent considerable time in both the train room and the workshop taking care of scenery and miscellaneous things for scenery, etc was we barrel towards the holidays. Also it was a very good sports weekend. NC State beat Wake Forest in football, the men's basketball team had a good win Friday night, and yesterday I watched the NC State women's team get a very impressive and solid win against the #2 ranked UCONN women's Huskies. On the layout I put in miscellaneous underbrush and trees. Here's a sample of some of the armature trees from Scenery Express I "planted" yesterday. Have a good week all.
As a Federal Employee I was off on Friday for the official marking of Veterans Day. A hearty thank you to all the Trainboard'ers who served. Once the kids were on the school bus the wife and I headed to my folks house in Baton Rouge. Dad recently fell and cracked a hip, so the to do list wasn't getting Ta Done! That solved I also hauled back another 6 boxes of model train supplies from my uncle's estate. Saturday saw me marching in our town's Veterans Day parade with our Scouts BSA Troop and our Cub Scout Pack as I have a kid in each now. Then an unplanned trip to Slidell to take my daughter her work keys (!) resulted in a successful railfan catch of a GREX powered tie train on the NS. Sunday was sunrise fishing, house work, replacing car wiper blades, grocery shopping, and an hour of going through a box of motors from my uncle looking for repowering project fodder.
This weekend was pretty much a bust, after bowling on Friday which was good for me personally but the team faltered and we only won 2 points. Saturday went to the club and we were open to the public as the Historical Society had Veterans Day Remembrance, half way through the event I got very ill a left early had chills and shakiness the rest of the day, hit the bed early and spent Sunday recuperating so no modeling work done over the weekend. Rick Jesionowski
As expected, Friday was mostly spent doing homework with a break in the afternoon to go out to the local retirement community and test my laptop connections for a presentation on my spring trip trip to Israel that's scheduled in a couple weeks. I did not make it out to the Sebring Model Railroad Club. So, Saturday, I got up early and headed out to the club to make sure everyone is ready and the concessions and admission folks have the cash that they need and do some other last minute prep. My homework was not done, so I returned home. In the evening, I dropped off my wife at a fundraising gala at a local country club for her employer, which is a therapeutic riding center for handicapped youth and adults. While she was there, I went to a local Panera, had a half a sandwich, typed up my homework and submitted it online. Sunday was church, followed by lunch, then worked out a computer problem my wife was having with her embroidery machine, then put to visit the club open house and lock up the admission money. Saturday's attendance was kind of okay, but Sunday wasn't particularly good. We'll see what next weekend brings, but given how much harder we promoted this year's event, so far we're disappointed that attendance seems to be even lower than last year. After the open house closed at 5:00 I went home and helped my wife make pizza dough in the bread machine, a homemade pizza, and then some potato rolls. Yum.
I was lucky and ended up with a four day weekend, thanks to all those who served (and continue to serve)... Thursday and Friday I spent the time sorting through my supplies and printing a number of parts feeders for my PnP machine, I now have seven feeder frames that will be assembled soon and one frame that one of the print in place buttons snapped as I was breaking the small "bridge" piece from the button to the frame so it'll get reprinted at some point. On both Saturday and Sunday I drove to Sacramento CA for a train show and came home with fourteen On30 car kits, five sets of trucks and an assembly jig for the trucks. I now have some work to do while the weather outside is too wet to work on cutting lumber for the layout. Additionally on Sunday morning I ordered a load of parts from Fast Tracks so I can start building the following On30 turnouts: three ways - 2x wyes - 2x left - 5x right - 6x There will be a few more once I finalize the track plan for Pandora CO. I've also started cutting 3/4in plywood for the layout benchwork, I'll post pictures of that once I've got the first two 2x4ft modules assembled.
Good morning everyone, The 4 locomotives did arrive on Friday, I guess the post office didn't get a holiday. After test running them I went about installing the DCC decoders. The decoders had the old yellow LED's so I replaced them with bright white LED's taken from some of the Atlas stock LED boards I have. Got that done and all 4 installed. Next was going to be handrail painting but when I opened my bottle of Testors Pactra Racing Finish enamel I found that it had dried out so need to order more of that. So I entered these 4 into my collection on the N Scale database and while there entered a few more items into the database itself.
[mention]Jim Wiggin [/mention] -thanks, feeling better. I’m out of isolation today. Still off work today, so just resting some more. No train stuff happened this weekend, mostly slept and rested. Will see what happens next week. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sounds like fun op session. Maybe yard can be on back burner for a while? I very much hope the hip heals soon. New building coming out. Backsplash tiles = hammers! Me not know. The underbrush and trees look outstanding. Unusual tie train power. dti406, get well soon. Keeping fingers crossed on the club open house this weekend. Fourteen On30 car kits! Wow! Looks like a quad set of "train brains". Good rest = good health. Friday some more work on passenger cars. Saturday A.M. was out of town at daughter's home. Came back Sunday afternoon. At this point, I am beginning to install wheel sets on center beam assemblies. Should finish that today. I am thinking door making and installation next. Have a wonderful, healthy week.
The weekend was fairly much as expected. Saturday was work consuming the better part of the day. The doctor saw fit to up the dose on some medication last week and I'm learning certain foods don't mix well with the higher dose. Apparently Sunday's lunch was a bad choice. After eating, I made it down to the layout for about 30 minutes before I got so queasy that I had to return upstairs and lay down. Didn't feel better until about lunch time today. Maybe the week will pass quickly. Hope you all have a great week!
I worked more than enough hours this past weekend. Bleh. The up side is that I received the Arnold SW1 I had been seeking for so long. I was not disappointed. Looks beautiful. Runs superbly. The couplers on it are rather funky, but I suspect a set of MT #1015 will be a quick and perfect cure.
Built one kit of the two I bought back on November 4th (the B&O airslide hopper) and started on the second, a NKP 40 foot boxcar. That one is basically done except for finding a way to adapt the body shell to the metal underframe. That underframe is what's giving me a headache. It's not the one usually supplied with the Roundhouse kit. For starters, there were a lot of metal underframe detail parts - brake components - but there were not only no mounting holes but the details were already molded to the underframe! OK, I can live with that. I don't spend my time looking under rail cars anyway... Mounting the trucks? The frame mounting holes are big enough to easily pass a 4-40 screw, never mind a 2-56! Here's my solution: Two 0.080" pieces of styrene drilled with a 1/16" hole each, and the 2-56 x 1/2" screws used to cut a thread into them. Then they were glued to the underframe. They work. The last challenge is to mount this to the body shell, which is just a tad wider than the frame. It fits snugly lengthwise but there's some play width-wise. The frame tends to drop out. I'm thinking glue but nothing too strong (like CA) where I would need to destroy the shell to get inside. To be continued...
