The last big hurrah of summer is over. Was it a good weekend for you? As predicted, I didn't get much done. Saturday was spent at a soccer field from 9:00am to 8:30pm in 100+ heat index. Fortunately we had my Ez-Up that is used at my airplane events to shield us from the sun and a lot of water. Sunday I worked on items for the next work related show and Monday was spent doing some running on the layout. So I did get some model railroad time in. So how about you? Were you able to get some train time in between honey-do, kids and cook outs? Let us know, with pictures if you have them. We'll get back to the normal schedule and meet here on Friday the 6th and do it all over again. Until then, have a good short week and... ​High Greens!
I am spending time to clear out stuff I don't need and get, or build, stuff I do. I have almost cleaned out my box of pulpwood cars which I used on my East Texas piney woods layout and which have no place on an end-of-the-line Texas port layout. My port has no forests, no paper mill, and since it is the end of the line, no pulpwood goes through on through trains. I have an old Atlas A1g (first generation of N scale, ca 1970) 40-foot bulkhead end car lettered Southern Pacific. It does NOT have inward sloping decks and is not actually a pulpwood rack car, but I must have used it as such at least a little. At some point I put MTL truck-mounted couplers on it. Maybe it is so old, they were Kadees- before the MTL breakaway. Did I have any use for it? I researched cars in my ORERs, my data files, etc. Apparently not. Maybe I could offer it on that auction site for a couple of bucks. But without the Kadees. They would cost me almost $5 for some car I CAN use. So I pulled the Kadees off and replaced them with truck-mounted Rapido couplers... the way the Atlas car originally came. I had a Walthers 53 foot bulkhead car, so far unpainted and unlettered, with Rapidos. Nice and heavy- cast metal basic flatcar with plastic bulkheads. It is pretty close to a Santa Fe bulkhead car used for wallboard shipments. That is something I CAN use on my layout. A port city has a lumberyard somewhere (even if not explicitly modeled) that takes shipments of plasterboard. I wanted to get the Kadees on before I lost them. I discovered the Kadee truck pins would not quite fit into the Walthers car. The paint stuck to the original Rapido-style truck pins and pulled off some of the plastic into the hole. I needed to drill and ream it out. As long as I was working on it, I might as well do something for my own layout for a change, rather than just getting rid of the excess. So I sprayed the Walthers car on Labor Day. Today I will Glosscote(tm) it and tomorrow or next day, decal it. Someday built a packaged plasterboard load. Little by little, doing something for the layout.
Well, it sounds like my paltry progress is better than most. I've got 3 of the 4 tannery buildings standing, with roofs loosely in place. The 4th is on the bench, with all the wall assemblies painted and mortared. The big brick chimney is painted and mortared, too. The tannery complex is a Walthers "modular" kit. As such, it is packaged as bundles of generic sprues, and there are a lot of parts left over. I guess I'll have to come up with a plan...
I managed to get a bit of preliminary work done. A roundhouse has been completed with the exception of installing the doors. I'll wait until the chance of damaging them is at a minimum due to construction. The partially built engine servicing kits have been put into place so the track can finally be laid to the turntable. A fuel oil kit has been started, and he location of parling lots, a park, driveways and so forth have been marked on the layout. I had planned on putting Walthers Golden Valley Canning kit in where the red building by the fuel oil distributor is, but the building is too big for the space without crowding the area. Anyone interested in a kit ? I'll have to look to building a gas station to fit into the space by the fuel distributor if I can't find a kit that can be used or kitbashed. I hate to see the warm weather turn towards winter, but I am sure that progress will speed up as the weather cools.
Well...........on Saturday I went up to Bentonville, AR to operate on a friend's N scale model railroad (based mostly on Ft. Smith, AR and the SLSF, MP and KCS), and shot pics of the Arkansas & Missouri's motive power at the Springdale shops. Sunday was spent with family. However, last night I took out that undecorated Athearn Genesis GP15--1 I bought off a certain auction site and started to lay out the detail parts & pieces. So far, I've reamed out the holes for the lift ring and grab irons, cemented various detail parts to the shell that need to be there before painting, and went over everything else to be sure nothing was broken or missing. This is not your father's "shake the box" Athearn kit.
Well, mine was a great weekend, just didn't get any modeling done! I drove two hours to Sacramento (after working from 8:30pm to 6:00am) to go to an anime convention with my kids. I didn't get home until 1:30am Sunday morning, but it was so worth it. I'm still recovering from all the standing in line and climbing stairs. This coming weekend, I'm going to Sonoma Raceway (Sears Point) to watch racing, a car show and a drifting/time attack demo. Doubt any model train work gets done this weekend, either!
