Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good long weekend (those of us who still are not retired). Despite what is going on, I hope you were able to observe the Memorial Day holiday in your own way. Onward! Saturday: Not too busy at the dealership. A young man traded his Mustang for a new Explorer. I also found out that this dealership is closed in observance for the Holiday...NICE! Sunday: I played with the layout and had some trouble free operations while I waited on the Mrs. to get ready to go to my favorite store. Spent the day working on the yard, installing my American Flag to the porch and getting everything presentable for guest arriving later that night. Monday: Spent the day getting my peppers and tomatoes in our garden. Lots of tilling and weeding. Finished in time for Angela's dad to arrive for a small family cook out where the subject was mainly Mustang's, Ford trucks and motorcycles. So how about you? I really just enjoyed the outside this past weekend but maybe you actually got some modeling done. Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 29th to do it all over again. Until then, stay healthy, do some good in the world and as always... High Greens!
I finished the scratch build with a little weathering around the smoke stacks. Decided it was time to pull out the depot again. I didn’t like the way the doors were installed a few months ago so I puked them all out and redid them. I ended up trimming them down so as to fit the slots. I then started to work on the roof. I needed to draw up the plans and I finally got the slope right. The drawings are almost complete. When done I need to decide if I am going with just styrene for the roof, just painted sandpaper or both. I also looked into adding shingles from Monroe products and painting them. Monday I drew up some plans for some future modules. Out of the three ideas two will each have their own module and the third will have three sections. I also drew up the final track plan for the WWII air base module.
We had a wonderful weekend. Saturday: My Niece's birthday party. Sunday: We went to a park and visited with some dear friends. - Then watched the race. Monday: Spent most of the day playing with our granddaughter. -- Then decompressed from her visit - LOL Not much in the way of model railroading -- Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Was a pretty good weekend. I had off Friday and that started off w/ a thud. Even though I was supposed to be "off", things came up back at the office and I wound up working several hours. But did manage Friday afternoon to level/adjust/finish the track connections on the bridge I installed last weekend, so Friday wasn't a total washout as I got an item "checked off my list" Otherwise, spent the weekend and yesterday doing some scenery work. Mostly, ground cover work around the water tank/water column I put in last month. Here are 2 shots of that: Also broke out the small, PECO grass applicator I got for doing "touch up" areas and played around with. So I finished an area at the top of what is the east side retaining wall at Albemarle City. My biggest learning experience here is static grass is messy and it needs to be layered. So I taped every where around it and was careful. Also learned if the grass and textures are not layered, your layout can start to look like a putt-putt golf course green. Hope everyone had a great time this weekend.
Pretty much decided to just do nothing. Watched some old re-runs of Hogan's Heroes, snacked and ate, listened to some old time radio shows, listened to music and caught up, slightly, on some rest.
Finished up a fun little project: More details here: https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=49612.msg666373#msg666373
Well, the pontoon was a bust this weekend, the motor would not stay running. Shop time. We did a little shore line action, but only caught a few guppies. Change gears, back to yard work, and in between Garage Time was spent on my roundhouse/depot module. I got all the base scenery down: View attachment 218360 Made a power pole with a gooseneck lamp on it, and just staged the depot and sanding tower for now. Trying to get a feel for the module: View attachment 218361 Overview so far: View attachment 218362
Pretty typical weekend for me with an extra day thrown in. I got Monday off after all and I'm off today. Saturday was another crazy day at the bicycle shop. Everyone is pulling their rust buckets out the the barn and wanting us to make them work like new again. They're better off buying a new one but that's a story I won't go into here. Sunday I painted lots of stuff and decaled a little. Pics to come soon. Messed around on the computer. Yesterday was pretty much like Sunday. Today I'm off so I'm doing house chores and the weekly food preps. Later on I'll be exploring my new Cricut cutter. I hope that it's easy. I don't need frustration after a nice weekend. Good Days to you all. Be safe and smile when you can.
I painted four MDC/Roundhouse metal bases for two 40 foot reefers, a 40 foot reefer, and a Northeast caboose.
I only have to wire up the freight station and engine house track, I have SPST switches for these, so I can store locos on them and still operate the layout. The soon to be laid staging track will be wired. I have also painted all of the track, up next is ground cover. I am really thinking about using Arizona Rock dirts and ballast in the yard, I have only used Woodland Scenics ballast, and it is a pain to work with when you glue it down. I have also painted the tracks with Krylon camouflage brown, and I have drawn up the SPINS for Playa Desnuda. I plane to use these as a control panel and a diagram panel.
"did not like the door", I can relate. I have had to redo some things due to "not liking" the results myself. Signs of "artistic" traits perhaps? Stuff looks great and the diagrams are interesting. Good luck.
No real pictures from my weekend accomplishments *BUT* ESP32 CS v1.5.0-alpha1 has been posted. Still a bit more work to do before it gets officially released but it is close.
Good luck with the Cricut. I got a Scan-n-Cut last summer. I found a learning curve. Had to "back-burner" it to stay on schedule. I will try again soon hopefully.
All the projects look great! Currently I am re-doing a coal hopper car that I discovered to be off-spec. It is basically the truck retainer rods that are affected. But the rework calls for fabricating new combo coupler pockets. Also, as fate would have it, (fate = incompetence) I discovered that a large amount of trackage was made with "vellum" 110# cardstock rather than smooth 110# cardstock. The vellum is not actually smooth and absorbs some moisture when being glued. This makes it thicker. So now I know why I had been experiencing "rough operation" on certain sections of the tracks. Looks more "redoing". However, this will improve things once done. Also, I am working on another turnout upgrade that if successful will improve both performance and appearance. You can't beat that. And lastly, due to all the aforementioned nastiness, I am behind on my plans to post a pic of the new shifter. See how it all works together!
Well, I accomplished my main goal of a nap every day over the 3 day weekend. That was driven by a combination of being worn out, un motivated, and a bit down over how trying to stay isolated is catching up with me. Despite all that, non mrr, I managed to clean up the room where I keep all my tools and garden items and put up a peg board over the workbench in that room. Helped the wife with a couple of outdoor items. On the mrr, I finished up the tombstones for the cemetery, painted some speed limit signs and made and painted one more storage tank. Could have done a bunch more but alas, that is the extent of the weekend accomplishments.
I switched to the Arizona Rock & Mineral Company ballasts years ago, after trying all kinds of fine ballasts for Z Scale. The Arizona stuff is the easiest to work with because it don't float away like the Woodland Scenics termite pellet ballast. It is real crushed rock, so it's jagged pieces hold profile better while you mist it with wet water, then you can drip on dilute glue or matte medium and it dries cement hard,
