Greetings everyone. I apologize that I did not post a Special 4th of July Weekend Modeling Plans. Thursday afternoon, storms blew in through Central Illinois that knocked out power for a few days, so I was unable to post, however with power restored sometime Saturday, life quickly got busy again. With that said, let's see if any of us got any modeling done. Saturday: For me, I stayed in the house alone as I directed Ang and the dogs to stay with her dad. It was unbearably hot so not much sleep. I got up to make coffee on the camp grill in the garage and around 10:30 the power came on again. I then had to get ready for the 4th of July party we put on every year as well as get some Athearn work done. Sunday: I spent the day, cleaning the yard and setting up the pyrotechnics for the party. Some people are Halloween people, others Christmas. For us, the 4th of July is our big holiday of the year and my absolute favorite. Monday: All morning was spent getting the final details finished for the 4th party. I started at 8:00am preparing the four palates of fireworks and getting lights, the grill and yard set up. At 3:00, guests started to arrive, and we enjoyed each other's company. Once it was dark, the firework show started up and finished at 10:30pm. This was our biggest show yet and we had a few neighbors and towns people come and set up lawn chairs to watch and even had a few stop by after the show to say thank you. A good time was had by all. INDEPENDENCE DAY: We slept in. Ang's dad stayed the night as we ended up getting ready for bed at 11:30 after the clean-up and he has an hour drive home. We got up, cleaned up and went to breakfast. We said our goodbyes and Ang and I went home and relaxed, then cleaned up the yard from the previous night's festivities. It was 90 and super humid so after an hour, we were done. Back inside for heated up leftovers, ice cream cake and Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Jack Ryan before heading to bed. So how about you? Did you have any modeling accomplishments? Let us know. We should be back on track for a bit for Friday, however, I will be on the road for Athearn this weekend so expect a slight delay. Until then, have a great rest of the week, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Good mornin to Y'all Hope Y'all had a great and very safe Independence Day weekend. I worked on my new BLI RSD15's Removed the crappy BLI decoders and installed DZ126's in them(At least for the ATSF version) and added some details. Mechanically, they run great - however, I am no fan of BLI's decoders. Then I ran trains -- no issues -- Murphy took the weekend off Y'all have a great rest of the week, Wolf
Another weekend of not a lot. Saturday morning around breakfast time we received a new shelving unit for one of our upstairs closets. Upon opening and inspecting the contents, we discovered all the hardware was missing so spent some time on the phone and email trying to see what to do. So far, no resolution. That afternoon, I did spend several hours in the train room. Put on a train DVD, made some hot tea, and finished up with the last few sets of metal wheels I had. Then built a couple of trains with all the cars I have added said metal wheels to over the past few weeks and let them run for a while. Woohoo, no issues! While the trains ran, I did some digging around the work bench looking at parts and pieces I have to see if I could get any project ideas. Maybe another pipe load in the future. Sunday was filled with non train activities and it was back to work on Monday. It was a long day for sure. Tuesday, I did about nothing. Did get caught up on the same two shows as Jim. Now it's back to work again! Hope you all have a great rest of the week!
Happy Independence Day All, My weekend will extend through today. We made a quick trip to Houston to see our son, and a few minor home maintenance repair items. Otherwise, I mainly worked on the Wichita & Northwestern Free-mo set project which will be about 6-8 four-foot sections and can be a switching layout. This included some programming for the new Athearn power that arrived... These will get patched out and the CNW loco renumbered for the WNW. Keith Robinson installed sound and DCC in the CNW unit, which I bought second-hand. The RI unit is a new release, and I am trying to program to match Keith's braking settings. I decaled several boxcars for the WNW as I showed last week. A friend asked about a WNW car for his 1964 era layout. It is in the paint booth now, getting a clear coat. It looks something like this: I am hoping to finish up the decaling of cars today, and next weekend work on weathering the cars from this project (about 6 boxcars and 5 hoppers). I hope you had a good one and things are getting back to normal up in your part of the world, @Jim Wiggin . Take Care All, -Bob T.
I had a busy weekend-the timeline is all jumbled together in my mind, but I did a bunch of home improvements-painted mailbox; trimmed more hedges, taught my kids how to write dentist and pick ripe raspberries; and stained, assembled, and installed one of those Little Free Libraries and bought some supplies for an HO scale switching layout and completed a version of the track plan (see my Hunts Point/Bronx, NY thread for more details). Already got some good feedback in that thread ([mention]BigJake [/mention] -thanks!) that I’m going to incorporate in the next version of the track plan. Outdated one below, but pretty close. Once this is done, I’ll go back and stick mostly to n, with the occasional diversion into weather HO rolling stock. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Friday, I spent several hours sorting the last of the scrap metal that we have (so far) pulled from our parents' house along with a little of my own. Much of the scrap dates back to when my parents closed up my grandparents' home and, apparently, set things aside or just didn't know what to do with them. Once sorting was finished, I loaded the truck and made a run to the scrap yard that has been a *long* time coming and freed up a LOT of space in the garage. I ended up with 71 pounds of aluminum cans and along with everything else came home with $47 goes straight into my mad money/trains/rockets stash. Also on the agenda was ordering a new WiFi dongle for my desktop computer since the old one decided to die during a Zoom meeting last week and I really need it to get some of my homework done. Unfortunately, while I order a replacement from Amazon that was supposed to "arrive tomorrow" (Saturday) it didn't get here until Monday. Saturday, I really wasn't in the mood to do much and spent much of the day resting. I did get back out to the garage and continued the clean up/out that began with my scrap run. At some point, I made it to the basement and got some stuff put away and cleaned up in my workshop. I didn't really get anything done, hobby-wise, but at least now I can get to the stuff that needs done. I also watched over our robot vacuum that was relearning the map of our house. Periodically its map gets corrupted and I just have to erase it and let it start over. Sunday, was church, followed by the monthly business meeting at the Sebring Model Railroad Club. The only news of note is that the membership seems intent on studying and arguing about our need to insulate the crawlspace until well after winter starts and its too late to do anything about it. The other issue is that a number of members seem to have Mercedes Benz taste in selecting insulation, while the club has a distinctly Chevrolet Chevette budget. After the club meeting I took my wife to the board meeting of a friend's equestrian ministry. They do ministry but also rescue dogs and horses. My wife is now on the governing board and, while I contributed at the meeting, I mostly went to play with the doggos. Monday, I did a little more work in the garage and... not really much else that I can remember other than installing the new WiFi dongle. Tuesday, I began my negotiation with my professor by proposing the topic for this semester's research paper, then we went to our daughter's house so that we could celebrate the holiday and eat too much. We came home around dinnertime and I thought that I might head out tot he train club for a while, but our lunch inspired us to nap instead. Two hours later it was too late to think about going anywhere. A local gas station chain, Sheetz, lowered the price of regular gas to $1.776 for the holiday and while I tried to go earlier, the line for gas was two blocks long. So, before bed I tried again at 10pm and found the line shorter. By 11pm I had gassed up both of our vehicles and saved $30 over the regular prices.
The weekend went well, managed to decal a couple of cars as well as the GP7. The only painting I got done was to dull coat the cars and GP7. Saturday went to club and ran a PC train of various PC and NYC covered hoppers. Also talked about the various derailments and bridge collapses around the nation. Did not do a whole lot over the weekend but managed to read a couple of books and went to see the final Indiana Jones movie. Also bowled Monday night in the summer league a friend talked me into. Rick Jesionowski
It was a quiet but enjoyable holiday weekend here. On Friday I re-connected on FB with the kid who introduced me to N Scale in 1968 when we were 12 years old. Model Railroading is not something that he stayed with but I did. Exchanged messages throughout the weekend catching up and sharing memories. We had our holiday meal on Monday which was BBQ steaks. It got hot enough here to use the A/C for the first time this year in both the house and the train room. I spent time installing the new control circuit for one of the staging yards and modifying the control panel. Work on the wiring changes continue.
Opened my package of Rubber Rocks [ http://www.cripplebush.net ] and began to mark and cut pieces with good success. It's a great product. Much more to do though. My layout is designed to be disassembled, so I have to put a lot of thought into everything, including careful cuts in the rock faces where the tables separate. I want to first have all of the pieces cut to size so that painting and appearance is consistent across the whole layout.
Had long work shifts, so tired and not a lot of free hours. Had a hard time staying awake! Did decide the HOn30 truck frames received were better than what I have been using. So will be ordering more. Also with that another HOn30 hopper body. Just placed a want ad here in our Swap Meet for an item I need for a project in N scale. Built another page for my website. Next weekend is almost here!
Road Warrior! "crappy BLI decoders. I am no fan of BLI decoders." Tell us how you really feel. "All the Hardware was missing." 'Dem's fightin' woids! New loco's! Sometimes my mind gets jumbled too. I too am often inspired to nap. GP-7 sounds cool. "not something that he stayed with". Sounds like redemption time is called for. Yes. Your disassembly plan is wise. Understood. Tired time is not good MRR time. Yes. My recollection of the last four or so days is a little jumbled. I did have a good but rainy Fourth. At this point, I have finished three headlights. Next is to work on more stuff. Have a good short week.
My wife and I enjoyed the movie, at least Harrison Ford played Indy as an older man and the story although far fetched was easy to follow. The unaging sequence at the beginning of the movie was also plausible and lead into the story of 1969. Rick Jesionowski
Canada Day weekend here, quiet, staying out of the heat and from under the lightning bolts... Dealt with a minor fridge emergency, a frosted recirculating fan making a racket to wake up the dead . De-icing the fan resolved the situation, which was much like the problem many northern railroads had with snow and ice packing the dynamic brake fans on EMDs. I did plan my upcoming vacation time, which I will use to install new Just Plug street lights along my two major streets, Railroad (ex-Main) and Church streets. Will also get the hang of my new battery powered airbrush once it arrives from Amazon. Among other projects.
Making small progress steps on my SP in the IE layout. Today was supposed to be dedicated to house related items but oh well. I cut and fit the upper level subroadbed, removed it, and painted it along with a bunch of other items on the existing benchwork. I also cut the glass board for backdrops, painted, then set in place. I still need to secure the backdrops and fill many joints throughout the existing work. I think my next step is to build some turnouts so I can put some mainline in place. Maybe even dial in the Fontana area and come up with scenery solutions there. The walls are closing in but its a good thing in this case.
