Welcome back everyone. I hope you had a good weekend and got a lot done. Let's dive in. Friday: With the day off, I enjoyed sleeping in and enjoying coffee while looking over my purchases I got while at the Amherst show. I was pretty lazy that day, mainly spending it on the sofa with the wife and talking as she too was tired. That should have been my first sign. We went out for dinner but that was about it. Saturday: Somehow the dogs allowed us to sleep in until 8:00am which is very, very rare. I did not sleep well and felt a little off, but coffee soon fixed that. After coffee and getting ready, we left for Angela's dads. Once there I took care of the Mustang by hooking up the battery tender, then removed the carb from the Falcon. We chatted about the other mechanical goals before spring then picked up Grandma for an early dinner. Once home, I felt even more tired, so I relaxed on the sofa and went to bed early. Sunday: Well, it was bound to happen. It usually does when I get back from a show and it happened to everyone else who was with us at Amherst, the dreaded "creeping crud." So, another slow morning and drinking plenty of tea. I called my dad and had a three-hour long conversation with him. I then went upstairs to work on the layout. I was able to get the rest of the DCC line soldered up on one module and started wiring up the two switch machines. After hooking up one machine, I spent an hour fine tuning it and by now it was 6:00pm and since I was so tired, I cleaned up and had dinner then off early for bed. Hopefully I'll be better by next weekend. So how about you? How was your first weekend of February? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 9th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a good week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
Greetings from a cool but sunny McLean VA. Puttering: I succesfully puttered the whole weekend. Well, aside from seeing to domestics tranquility. As many have seen I took a raser saw to an old Tyco HO caboose: Midway point: The bar code is from an empty gift card being used as decking. Using @Mike VE2TRV I am using pennies for weight. Current status: Pennies are in place. Horn hook coupler on one end is cut off and now car can be used for shoving.
'Made': My Current Mobil Work Bench from an old 'Brazilian River Box' Pic shows current status of caboose with pennies centered *and* the toools I used:
Good morning all. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Modeling this weekend was good. Got a major wall assembled for the LCL building. Put down some 4mm and 7mm static grass in a few places. And, also built the stone pumphouse at Afton Fuel. Needs the piping added. Now I have to figure out finishing the scenery around the thing. Have a great week all!
Good mornin to Y'all - from rainy SoCal @Jim Wiggin - Get well soon. I managed to complete my friends NYO&W NW-2's And - I am just about done with his Lackawanna F3. That's about it. Y'all have a great week - stay safe Wolf
Happy Monday all @Jim Wiggin hope you get to feeling better quick. That crud is no fun. My weekend went well but seemed way too short. Friday evening, coordinated some help that I was hoping for on Saturday, then went down and removed all the rolling stock and locos from the layout. After that, started on building a semi sort of Lego style model. Was up early Saturday. Didn't really sleep well. Unpacked the two car projects I completed on my trip and the new cars I got while gone. I found one was in the package upside down which had dislodged the end platforms. so repaired that. Then, installed the dividers and coil loads in the new ST coil car. Around noon, my help arrived and in less that 15 minutes, we had the temporary cribbing removed from under the layout and it settled back down to it's new permeant height. I spent some time after the help left returning cars to the layout and running some trains to make sure all was well. Then made some upgrades to my work cart. Then the wife and I had a late lunch/early dinner in and watched a movie. After that, I worked on the Lego-ish model a bit. Sunday was a quiet day. Did get a replacement decoder installed in a Kato SD90 and spent some time running it. Fumbled my way through a few other little things and made sure to get that used cribbing out to the trash. Took a nap, watched a little TV and just like that, the weekend was done so that's it for me. Hope you all have a great week!
Sorry to hear that you aren't feeling well @Jim Wiggin, hopefully whatever it is passes quickly. I'm thankful that we aren't having similar symptoms after the show, the most I have is a bit of numbness / pins and needles sensation in my left quad muscle (could be sciatica, could be something else, dunno) and that should go away in a week or so of not standing on that hard concrete. I spent part of Saturday and part of Sunday working on the MRC Nexxt Gateway to fix a couple bugs we encountered at the Amherst show. I'm happy to report that those issues have been rectified and interoperability between Prodigy and LCC is now working better than before! I also learned something interesting with the TCS UWTs that is not ideal, apparently they do not operate on DCC speed steps regardless of locomotive drive mode settings (14, 28, 128 speed steps, marklin mode, etc), instead they operate using MPH/KPH and offer 0-126 as the scale for that. It doesn't map very well to 28 speed steps (speed step 1 = 23MPH) and is worse in 14 speed step mode (I'm less concerned on this though). I also didn't get any work done on my new modular layout other than unpack one of the On30 2-8-0 to use for testing: This is on a random piece of flex track with the RRAmp meter used to connect the rails to a Prodigy Advance2 base unit that I'm testing the Nexxt Gateway with. The decoder in this locomotive is the stock decoder and is going to be replaced in the near future. One thing I noticed on this loco is that in 28 speed step mode (default that it operates in, also why it's being replaced) is that it doesn't start moving until you reach speed step 7 or 8 and the motor sounds like it needs a deep cleaning and lubrication. So, I have some work for a future weekend. I should pull out the other locomotives I've picked up and test them in a similar fashion. I also ordered an On30 4-6-0 on Friday which should be delivered tomorrow. On Saturday I ordered three DCC Decoders that support RailCom and expecting them maybe by next weekend, I also ordered an NCE decoder test kit board which should be here in a few days. Most likely one of these new decoders will get put into the above pictured 2-8-0 and then swapped to a sound decoder once I have those.
Good morning from sunny and cold Northeast Ohio! Friday, went as expected and the team won all seven points, I bowled about average after starting off with a poor game. We were bowling on the hardest pair in the house, but if you know the adjustment to make one can score on that pair. I think I managed to work on the RBL car adding the uncoupling lever brackets to each end of the car. Saturday, went to the club with a Penn Central train of Covered Hoppers, mostly PC and NYC 4785's along with a few H51's that I have. Later in the day I added the uncoupling levers, walk over platforms and brake gear to the ends of the car. Sunday, Did the laundry and we went to Toledo to pickup a dining room table and chairs that better fit our dining room than the set we had that we donated to Habitat for Humanity. Also visited my sister-in-law who was in the hospital at the time. After we got home I did get down to the basement and finished all the detail parts on the RBL and managed to get the first coat of paint on the car. I also worked on adding detail parts to the roof of a 60' Auto Parts car and will be painting that today. Rick Jesionowski
Good morning everyone, Get well wishes to @Jim Wiggin We got all kinds of rain here over the weekend and some strong winds. With that combination we were expecting to have the power go out but somehow managed to avoid that happening. Sitting at the computer I got a start on the taxes and entered some items into the N Scale database. Out in the train room I did just about finish a couple of structures on the layout, made a dent in the work bench cleanup, and got one set of locos ready to take to the show at the end of the month.
Scanned more of my NP train orders. Did some searching and chatting with fellow HOn30 folks, looking for a diesel critter shell or something semi-close, for an imagined project.
Well... This week was interesting... and a little disappointing. Tuesday, I ran to the Cleveland airport to pick up our son, Jonah, and daughter-in-law so that... Thursday, the two of them, my wife, and I, could all go to the Cleveland Clinic for Jonah to have a bunch of meetings and get a bunch of tests run to approve him as a kidney donor (he's already a tissue match) for my wife. After a long day, we headed over to our favorite restaurant (Li Wah) in Chinatown. Then we went home and didn't do much else as we were all pretty tired. Friday was more of the same though we didn't have to be there quite as early and finished before lunch. This time, we went to the Hofbrauhaus afterwards for lunch and, as always, it was awesome. The hefeweise was delicious (but I only got a sip since I was driving) and my sausage, sauerkraut, and spaetzle was fantastic (even leftover later in the weekend). Once home, I finished the homework that I had hoped to get done on Wednesday (but Wednesday we had ALL the kids over for dinner). The disappointing part is that the official decision about our son won't be made until next Friday, and that they probably can't schedule the transplant until March. There are also some military hoops that our son will have to jump through once Cleveland approves him a a donor. On top of that, it is important that they schedule the surgery early enough that he can recover before his unit deploys in May. In any case, we're back to waiting. Saturday I spent most of the morning finishing up homework stuff (we have to comment on our classmate's work that we turn in on Friday). But in the afternoon I unboxed a new Harbor Freight electric chainsaw that I bought in December and finished cutting and splitting a small pile of firewood that I had in the driveway. In the evening, I started work on a Roundhouse "Combination Car" kit celebrating the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution that I had received as a gift from my parents in 1987. I substituted Kadee couplers, metal wheels, and replaced the two steel weights with one full-length lead weight (and a few small threaded nuts) to bring it up to NMRA weight standard. Sunday was church, followed by a quick lunch and the monthly business meeting of the Sebring Model Railroad Club. In the evening we spent some more time with the family and I finished the Roundhouse kit. It's already in my tool bag so it can get a test run at the club on Tuesday. Other than a trip in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and beginning my preparations for Ash Wednesday (which is on Valentine's Day this year), the week ahead looks a little more "normal" than the last several. I hope all of you have a great week.
All my best wishes to Pastor John and Jim Wiggin. My weekend was full of ups and downs. Friday: Went as planned. Put a coat of primer on both the drivers and the inserts for the Mikado. Did some fiddling around with the boiler design. Then we headed out to dinner. Being Friday night, the restaurant was busy. I did not have a reservation, but they had a table available. Dinner was excellent. My 68-year-old ears don't deal with background noise as well as they once did. Just meant I had to lean in a little closer to Sharon. Good solution! Saturday: As is always the case, that layer of primer highlights the flaws. I did not get one set of inserts assembled to my liking. The reset plan was to cut some new examples and prime those. Original plan now set back by one day for paint curing. This time I was a little smarter and made four parts to increase the odds that one would be good. Had a pleasant surprise on our morning walk. We came upon a local hole-in-the-wall coffee shop owner who had been dealing with health issues. She was back on her feet and working on reopening. We had been fearing it would never happen. A real boost to our spirits. Tinkered a little more with boiler design. Sunday: Soccer team lost! The good thing about bacon-n-eggs after the match is that they can be celebratory or consoling. Our son joining us was a bonus. At least two of the inserts looked good so I added some finish color to everything. Signed the rental lease after some back and forth with the management team. We are working on a new house which will be great. Still a way off. Here's where things are this morning: The modified driver has a prototype insert as a paint mask for now. If things go well all will be assembled sometime this week. Stay safe,
Watch those symptoms. Caboose surgery. Stone pump house looks interesting. F3 rolling out. I hate it when the product is in the package upside down. Electronics genius at work. A train of covered hoppers. Joy! Nice structures in Carlin. HOn30 sounds exotic. 1987 combine kit. Cool! Inserts look promising. Earlier today, I checked on a auto vehicle casting made from a batch of air-dry clay produced Fridayish? It was cracked. Oh well. Back to the caldron. Not much done this weekend due to visiting the local model railroad club and then driving around the area in the sunshine. This week should see module building started and a couple of building diagrams completed and scanned in the computer. And, hopefully, some figures started. We shall see. Have a warm and be well week.
@Jim Wiggin, hope you feel better soon. @Pastor John, hoping everything works out for your wife and son. Yesterday was crazy. At work we played guess what time the concrete pour is. Frist time given was 11:30, then 10:30, 10:00, 11:00, and 12:30. Luckily there was only one truck and it showed up at 11:30. When I got home the wife, and I went and picked up our new glasses. We then made a stop at PetSmart and the pharmacy. I never got to the computer to look over the forums until this morning. Over the weekend we got the Christmas decoration bins up to the attic except for one. We returned a few items to Amazon and Kohl’s. Saturday evening, we attended the private open house for the community center that my son’s non-profit is opening in a few weeks. The purpose of the center is to provide recourses for at risk young people. They have come a long way from Facebook scheduled protests regarding George Floyd, to addressing police issues, creating and running the local pride festival, feeding and making sure families have Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and presents, feeding the homeless. I think the funniest thing is despite being considered anti-police by some my son has been involved in making sure our local police department is getting the body cameras they have been requesting for several years, and being called in to help negotiate a new police contract with the township. He is being interviewed by and giving a tour to one of the TV stations in Philadelphia today regarding the opening of the center. Sunday was a lazy day. Did a few chores around the house and made a run to the grocery store. I finished painting the mortar lines on the brick walls for the Ambassador Hotel kit. I still need to seal a couple of them. I entered some rolling stock in my inventory program. I also continued organizing the rolling stock storage.
For some reason I couldn’t get TB to work on my phone until the last hour or so. Saturday I got all the foamboard glued to the layout, installed part of the fascia, and cleaned up the purple dust I got over everything. Sunday I finished some volunteer work, brought our electric piano over to a friend’s house (we bought a small Roland electric upright in Japan because my wife plays piano and missed hers and we left her upright in the US rather than ship that across the Pacific twice in three years…and we don’t need two pianos now that we’re back in the US), and then played board games. As I stare at my benchwork I see some potential ideas that I might want to play around with next weekend before I finish fascia and move on: 1)it might be possible to adjust my track plan to incorporate dogbones for continuous running instead a lift out/drop down bridge AND 2) I think I can incorporate a helix to make a staging level underneath rather than eat in to more common area in the other half of the basement Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
