MODELING It's Monday, February 26th, 2024: Weekend Modeling Accomplishments

Greetings from an early sping like morning in McLean,
Promoting the domestic tranquility became necessary so the trains became a maybe.
Practice Caboose because a 'not today'.
On a very positive note I met up with a new low vision friend who may become involved in the trails.
Guess I'll work on the trains today.

 

Didn’t get anything train related accomplished, other than unboxing some recent purchases. Saturday was spent as planned for n some chores and hanging with the family. Sunday morning I did a few errands but got a big migraine about 1pm so ended up taking a nap, which turned into me getting up for dinner and then going back to bed.

Better now.


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Happy Monday all. Hope everyone has a good week coming up.

This weekend, in the train room and workshop did about what I wanted:

• Worked on getting the small stream cut in and sealed for a water pour. Now have to get the scenery built up and a small drainage pipe put in.
• Found the electrical issue, was the "one" hidden turnout I have not operating all the way. Even though it is hidden, I did plan access to get to the throw mechanism. I pulled out the Tortoise spring that came w/ the motor and put in a thicker steel spring. Voila! It works like a charm.
• Spent time working on the tobacco barn project, which will be a small diorama.
• Got out my BLI Mikado engine. Paragon decoder/electronics are acting up again. This is the third BLI steamer that's happened on. Beautiful engines but I don't find the Paragon's reliable. I will have the paragon ripped out and a TCS system put in. I did that w/ my BLI C&O Hudson and the problem was fixed. Pricey fix, but a fix nonetheless.

Everyone have a great week!

 

Monday already.... My weekend was fair. Ended up being gone all of Saturday without really having anything decided for our main objective of the day. Did get to hit a LHS and caught a nice surprise unit while railfanning. Sunday, I spent the better part of the day fighting with a decoder install. Did manage to get a couple of cars converted to metal wheels, add one more part to the layout fascia, and make some progress on reworking a load I started last weekend. That is about all.

Hope you all have a great week!

 

Friday was, once again, a homework day, followed by a run to Tractor Supply so that we could refill the bird-feeders in the back yard. A little later, we picked up lunch and drove up to Akron to visit one of our sons. While there I helped him a (very) little bit to change a CV joint on his truck. Mostly, my job was to loan him a wrench from my truck, and drive him to the auto parts store to borrow a socket. Before going home, we loaded the truck with firewood. In the evening, I set up the new printer that we bought a month or so back. We've owned the same brand printers for 30 years, but even though there's nothing wrong with the one we have, printer ink has become so expensive that we decided that we'd buy a new printer (from another brand) the next time we needed ink. Also, since the house across the street, a beautiful wooded one acre lot) recently sold, the new owners have contractors harvesting nearly every tree on the lot, so we are enduring three days (so far) of non-stop chainsaws and chipper noise.

Saturday, was a little more homework, laundry, and a little time spent trying to figure out how to build the blocking and bracing for the flatcar load that I am building. I'm sure that I did something else on Saturday, but I sure can't remember what it was other than watching television.

Sunday, was church, then a (very) quick lunch, then back to church for an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for our troop's latest THREE Eagle scouts. These were numbers 123, 124, and 125 for our troop over the last 95 years. Afterwards was cake and then helping one of our folks (who is also a train club member) to fix a door so that we could secure the building. I tinkered a bit more on my flatcar load but since it's balsa, I build a little, then wait for glue to dry before I can build any more. Hopefully, I will get finished this week, stain it, and take pictures for next weekend's report.

This weekend's medical news was not good. More tests are needed before they will approve our son as a kidney donor and these tests require a drug regimen so the transplant is pushed out at *least* another five weeks. As a result, sometime today my wife will have a discussion with her doctor about dialysis (which we had hoped to avoid).

Also, the contractors appear to be back for day four of tree harvesting. We had hoped that they were nearly done, but they came back with their high reach picker so it appears that they are targeting even more mature trees. Bleah. My wife will be going nuts at home with the noise.

 

Friday I spent most of the day wrapping up the designs for the Nexxt Gateway so we can send it off for FCC testing. I'm expecting PCBs to ship out today sometime and be here (hopefully) by the end of the week.

Saturday I drove out to San Jose for the Great Train Show and spent the day in the NMRA Booth and a short time over in the CCC On30 layout to help get the Nexxt Gateway working on there, which worked for a bit and then started having issues. I still don't know what the issues were caused by but I have some additional data to work with and improve my hardware testing setup here at home (I'll have three concurrently connected Prodigy throttles, two TCS UWTs, two WiThrottle clients and the Gateway). Hopefully I can nail down the last couple bugs.

Sunday was spent doing a whole lot of nothing! My GF and I drove out to the West Side Railroad trail but didn't go out on the trail due to the parking lot being packed to capacity, maybe next time! The trail is on whats left of the roadbed with a lot of the track still in place, sadly only a few years ago the trestle that was part of the trail collapsed in a rain storm (much like the others did back when the line was active). After we left the trail head we went to look at plants for our garden for this year, not a lot of selection yet since it is still a bit early but we saw (and did not buy) tomatoes and peppers at one store.

 

@Pastor John - Thoughts and prayers for the best outcome in your son's test(s).

 

Good morning everyone,

For me this weekend was all about the San Jose Great Train Show and the Peninsula Ntrak layout.

Friday I picked up the club trailer and got to the fairgrounds at 1:00pm. We finished setup at 5:30pm.

Saturday got to the fairgrounds at 8:00am and after working out a few bugs we had a great running layout and ran a bunch of trains. This turned out ot be a very good show and was very well attended on both days.






The little hanger I made up for the Wi-Fi module and UR93 duplex transceiver worked out great and we were running simplex, duplex, and Wi-Fi all at the same time on the layout. A few of the guys were able to try out these new to us methods of controlling their trains.



Got to visit with a bunch of people I had not seen in some time which was great. Sorry I did not run into @Atani there, it's always nice to meet someone in person who you know on line.

Sunday after teardown I brought the trailer home as I don't like to try to back it into the shed in the dark plus being tired. Later this morning I'll get it back into the shed. So that was my weeked.

 

Friday, did not do much modeling, but I selected a mostly NKP train to run at the club along with a little cleanup of the workbench area. Bowling was a mixed bag, we won one game and total pins but lost two other games, the last game was so bad that my poor score of 175 led the entire team. If just one of us had managed to bowl our average we would have won the last game.

Saturday, went to the club and we ran and tested some trains. The test involved how well certain makes ran with each other, this was done to determine what a club member wanted to purchase. Later in the day I did some decaling and took my wife to Joann Fabrics to pickup some yarn for crocheting.

Sunday, did the laundry and managed to paint a 89' TOFC flat car, also fixed a mug where my wife broke the handle off, CA does wonders on these repairs, I still have a mug that I fixed that way over 30 years ago. Did some more cleanup work on the workbench and put away and sorted some undecorated kits I recently acquired.

@Pastor John - I did the same thing with my last printer, the new cartridge was more than the cost of buying a new printer on sale. And since it was not an HP printer I can get refurbished cartridges that will work unlike HP with their new embedded chips. At work a vendor sent us a refurbished cartridge for our check printer and the printer then refused to work until we got a genuine HP cartridge, I know HP is getting a lot of flack because of their attitude to other cartridges.

Rick Jesionowkski

 

Unfortunately, my mood does not match the good weather. In a case of bad juju my car, a 2018 Kia Optima, was stolen exactly one week after my wife’s car. My car from what we can find out is the 8th or 9th car stolen in our neighborhood this week. All of them were Kia’s or Hyundai’s. My neighbor heard what happened and saw them drive away. His wife alerted the police. Even with the police notified and on the scene in less than 10 minutes they were not able to find the car. I am currently driving the rental we got for her so I can get to work. I will be picking up the second rental later this week.

Before the incident I had a successful weekend. We picked up the rental car for my wife. The body shop said my wife’s car was in good shape. While there is damage It is minor. My wife and I went out to dinner Friday night, something we have not done in about six months, and it was delicious. Saturday, she had a dental appointment and we stopped for breakfast and then ran to the produce store, Home Depot (didn’t find what we were looking for), and Ace Hardware (where we found what we were looking for). I replaced one of the basement window well covers, and fed the bulbs. Sunday, we took down and stored the Valentine’s Day decoration, and did several loads of laundry and put it away.

My glue arrived Friday and that night and Saturday I finished the Ambassador Hotel. Sunday, I cleared off more of the layout. I put away several locomotives and a bunch of rolling stock. I still have a good bit to do and once I am done, I can place the hotel on the layout.

@Pastor John - praying that everything works out for your son.

 

Sorry I missed meeting you as well, I didn't get very far from the NMRA booth or the CCC On30 layout. I met Mickie and her husband Jeff (BAZ guy) and will be in touch with Mickie as I've got a bunch of N scale stuff that I'm downsizing (I need the space for electronics projects and my On30 layout build).


@Pastor John Missed seeing your post, hopefully things work out well for your son!

@Tompm Sorry to hear about your troubles with cars, that is extremely frustrating. Hopefully the car turns up soon and the incidents are resolved soon.

 

No hitch day and early out of the office. Practice caboose sounds promising. Migraine sounds painful. Pricey fix = ya' gotta' do what ya' gotta' do. I hate it when you have to fight installs. Custom flatcar load sounds interesting. A day at the train show! I love a good train show. I got my last boxcar colored cardstock from Joann's. (Ahhh, HP! ) Another car theft! Unbelievable! I hope the thieves get what's coming to them. I am still doing laser cutting. I hope to finish the passenger depot cutting and start the Hull house set. I am hoping Pastor John's family health situation has a good outcome. And no more car thefts! Have a great week.

 

My condolences to all of you with less than stellar happenings. Hang in there, it will get better!

No model railroad or truck activity for me this past weekend, BUT I did complete and file my 2023 Federal Tax Return. It was accepted by the IRS, whoopeeee!

Now back to the fun stuff ! ! !

 

Good Evening All,

We had some nice weather here in S. Texas. I even had to mow the grass...will this winter never end?

Not too much progress on modeling, but a quick trip over to the train show in Garden Ridge, TX (NE of San Antonio) was worth the trip. A great turn out and a few neat layouts.



I grabbed about a half-dozen cars, mostly from the used resale vendors. The SAMRA club's company store had the best deal...I bought two of these Atlas ballast cars for $15 each (boxes never opened). They are MoPac for now, but will soon become part of a W&NW work train, and get different couplers...



Most importantly, I picked up this metal sign that James Tanzillo (Maverick Metal Works) made for me from my herald for the W&NW.



I'll paint it "Shocker Yellow" and put it in the new outbuilding (shed).

Hope you all have a good one...now back to some modeling.

-Bob T.

 

A good Monday evening to all of you. To @Pastor John and @Tompm, I hope your family health and auto issues are resolved positively and quickly.

My weekend went as planned. The train show on Saturday was great. As usual, I began by cruising the sales tables looking for stuff I "need." Actually, I have a very short list of things I am willing to buy right now. We are beginning to pack up at our current home in preparation for moving some time next year. There is no layout to detail and only a limited number of projects on my shelves. Here is the only treasure I returned with:


The N scale layout article in this issue got me started in N. When I spotted the magazine laying on the "FREE" table I had to have it.
I chatted with Lowell Smith for a few minutes and got to see samples of his new dome coach.



There were a lot of things on offer. Quite a few people were heading out the door with large sacks of trains, track and scenery. I could have put a real dent in the savings just on detail parts, not to mention new and used rolling stock.

After grabbing tacos at the food truck outside, I spent some quality time checking the layouts. There were at least 19 layouts from Z to G plus Lego. I lost count because some groups had multiple layouts in their section. I realized I couldn't do justice to the number and variety of scenes that were presented on that many layouts. I decided to share three pictures of scenes that brought a smile to my face when I first encountered them. There were many more examples of fine modeling. I don't have time to present them all.


Here is the host United Northwest Model Railroad Club showing how to present a module under construction.


This still photo shows a piece of animation from the Pacific Northwest On30 Modular group. The loco disappears into the mine in the background. Wait a few seconds and it reappears.



Finally, Fairwood Light Railway is a OO9 representation of 2-foot gauge railroading. A little something different.

Unfortunately, my shift at the local regional table was cancelled due to the table not making it to the show. Maybe next year.

Sunday we were up early for soccer. A big win for us and then out for some eggs and bacon. Spent the rest of the day working on raised beds for my mother-in-law's garden. I did get some time in the evening to work on the Mikado's boiler design. I would share the drawing, but all you need to do is imagine an elongated rectangle about 2 1/4 inches by 6/10 inch and you have the essence.

Stay safe,

 

The IRS can wait!!

 

Completed my first experimental batch of N Scale puffball trees, but haven't yet placed them on the layout.