Welcome back from the weekend. I hope you all stayed warm! We are currently at a balmy -10 degrees with no signs of reaching above the freezing mark until mid-next week. Perhaps this cold snap has allowed you to get some modeling done. Let's see how we did. Saturday: Thursday was the last warm day of mid 20s, so Ang and I had stocked up on supplies at Costco before sheltering in the farmhouse. It was a weekend where I got a lot accomplished but don't have a lot to show. Saturday, I got up about 6:00am and made coffee. Back to the workshop I went to enjoy some YouTube videos along with my coffee. After getting cleaned up and enjoying a cinnamon roll from the aforementioned Costco trip, I went to the workshop. While all the workshop windows were glazed with ice, I still had plenty of natural light. I worked mainly on installing the last three Tam Valley servo turnouts. I came up with a better and neater method of mounting the servos, checking the throw and routing the wires. Next, I mounted the control boards for each servo and lined them up for easy access to the main power DC bus. By 6:00pm I was done for the day. Sunday: Another cold one. We slept in a bit this morning and after a bit of coffee and cleaning up, I set out to wire all the feeders on the second module of the layout. I was able to get the first modules feeders done last year. Here you can see I have all my feeders ready for the soldering iron. It may be a bit of overkill but since this is a switching layout and I will be operating at slow speeds, every piece of track had a set of feeders installed. I also installed feeders to every diverging route of my turnouts. I worked on this most of the day while in between enjoying coffee with my Domestic Goddess and calling my dad in New England. By 6:00pm I had all the feeders and servo turnouts finished on the layout. Not a lot to show but progress and fidgety bits finished. I figured out a way to run both my DC and DCC power bus lines before putting all my tools away for the weekend and having dinner with the wife. Spurs will have to get laid later. And like that, the cold, dark weekend was over. So how about you? What did you get done? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 19th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a good week, stay warm, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Good morning all. Hope everyone had a great and "warm" weekend in the middle of this winter. The modeling weekend went pretty much as planned. I worked on various scenery things around the layout. Also in my control panel planning and checking the layout, I found a "bug" in the "WYE" reversing section. Now, just need to get it corrected. Also, got about 8' of track ballasted on the north side of the layout. The good news is today is a holiday for my office. Even though I am now "semi-retired" they still call or ping me about things (which I really don't mind). Nonetheless, the modeling can continue today uninterrupted. Also had a couple of basketball games on in the background as I was going about the house. Yesterday as planned, we finally went to a 7:00AM mass at the Raleigh Cathedral. Gorgeous building... we'll have to go over there more often. Have a great weekend all! Here's the country store/gas station finally mounted. Needs a little more detail (couple of lights, a tree out back), but essentially done.
Good mornin to Y'all, My weekend went pretty well. Renumbered my friends F3's -- Primered his NW2's and another F3 The decaling on my AT&SF H12-44 is pretty much done. Hand rails are bent up - ready for installation. One more weekend, it should be ready for service. Y'all have a great week, and happy MLK day, Wolf
Happy Monday! Weekend pretty much flew by. Friday evening, the weather wasn't as bad as predicted but I was still able get down to the layout but only for about an hour but was a good hour. I everything all prepped and set for attaching the second section of the new fascia. Saturday went about exactly as expected except we were close enough to the no so LHS that I was able to fit in a stop and picked up some DCC decoders. Sunday, the section section of the fascia got installed. After that, I went back and forth between attaching stuff to the new fascia and installing the new decoders. I was 2 for 3 on those. Very happy with my fascia progress at this point but that is about to come to a crawl for a couple of weeks. Overall good weekend. Here's hoping you all have a great week!
Friday: Picked up donuts for the family and then did some chores and loafed around up lunch. My wife also had the day off so we walked to a local restaurant. When the kids got home from school I played a few board games with them. Saturday: Ran out to the Community Forklift place with my wife that [mention]Philip H [/mention] mentioned on Friday and found 3 used HCDs in very good condition. No warping, just a little dirty. Also got a gallon of paint. All that cost me less than 1 HCD at that orange hardware store. Looked for a new dresser for one of my kids, didn’t find an that fit. Then we then went out to Home Depot where I bought shelving brackets for the around the room portion of the layout. And then to IKEA to buy the dresser. We had lunch at a local burger place. My wife made progress on her knitting while I drove and we had a lot of fun. When we got home, we assembled the dresser and I hung the all but one of the shelves. Had an epiphany that I should go back and see if I could grab some more HCDs for the peninsula instead of building benchwork. Sunday: Made a second trip out to the community forklift place and picked up five more HCDs, again, all in great shape, as well as some floorboards in decent shape that I’m using as splice plates between the doors. Ran out to the orange store again as I decided to use new lumber for the peninsula legs. Started building the peninsula, got about a 1/3 done before discovering a short (I think) in a ceiling fan. Rest of today: I have off, so before I can work on the layout I’ve got to get fix the fan. [mention]Philip H [/mention] thanks for telling me about this place! You saved me quite a bit of money.
Good morning from sunny and very cold (2 degrees) Northeast Ohio! This weekend except for going to bowling (which went very well as we won 7 points) and going to the club to run trains, I got nothing else done. The GL was not feeling well and wanted constant and close attention so going to the basement to model was out of the question. Rick Jesionowski
Good morning everyone, It was cool and damp here all weekend so after completing household chores I retreated to the train room in the back of the garage and spent some pleasant time working on the propane dealer. Got the tanks and the small buildings painted and most of the piping figured out. Still waiting for the Gold Medal Models chain link fence While looking for a Lineside Models cast resin kit of a propane delivery truck which I never found, I ran across a bag of VW vehicles that I had forgotten that I had. So while waiting for paint to try on the other project I started to work on a couple of these to make them look better. They come with silver wheels but do have window glazing. With some painted bumpers, head lights, etc. they should look good and were so common in the 1960's and 70's.
-10 degrees! I say Brrrrr! Brrrrr! And Brrrrr! Baker's Store is outstanding! Can hardly wait for next weekend's H12-44. Electrical genius at work. Two for three is a good score. Always good to save money. The GL = Good Lady? Propane dealer is great for railcar in and out work. Cold here as well. I continue with new turnouts. I made a glue guide which I hope will help speed things up. I should install the first turnout this week and hope to do more. Have a warm week and happy MLK day.
@Jim Wiggin, that's exactly our train club policy in track laying. Every track section gets its own feeder. We simply do not rely upon track connectors for electrical connection. Thursday was work, then a ministerial association meeting where we began planning for Lent. Then home to pick up my wife, then off to a chamber of commerce reception (ie. free food) at a local place that sounded like a steak house. Upon arrival, it was basically a bar that serves meat. The free food was okay. The pita chips were good but most everything else was nothing to write home about and it was so noisy you couldn't really hold a conversation. Not a place I would ever take a date, and terrible as a business mixer. But... dinner was free so there's that. Once home I started my homework but not much else. Friday, most of the day was dedicated to getting the first wave of homework reading, writing, and (new this semester) videos done. Saturday, I did more homework, this time responding to the written and video posts of my classmates. Sunday was church, followed by an hour or so at the train club. Nothing really got done but talking, and much of that about the way that our heat pump simply cannot keep up when it's 10 degrees outside. That resulted in a clubhouse temperature of about 55 F. By three o'clock, I had to be back at church for the Liberia mission Zoom meeting. After an hour, when they got stuck talking in circles and accomplishing nothing, I declared that I had to be somewhere else... and I did... at home. Once home, I brought firewood into the garage, stacked it, and brought some in for a fire in the fireplace to chase off the chill. I then retired to the basement to update a box car from my original collection, a 1977 Bachmann issue remembering the anniversary of the Golden Spike. Body mounted Kadee couplers were added, trucks were reamed out, and additional lead weight was added to match NMRA spec. Today, Monday, I'm back to doing homework and laundry before returning to the office tomorrow.
Heat pumps seem to be something they are pushing here in California. We had one in our building when I was working. They're fine until it gets into the 30's then we had to supplement with electric space heaters. Surprised they even use them in the colder climates.
Since the street our club is on does not have a gas main, electric is the only option there is. That said, this heat pump is better than the previous one, which was undersized. We do have supplemental electric resistance heat, but, as noted, it just can't keep up when it's really cold. This, in part, because our crawlspace is in dire need of being reinsulated, but we have not raised the funds or the volunteers to get it done. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
Interesting that the super cold here is "last warm day" for @Jim Wiggin ! We had about 20 degrees last night and that's big news here in South Texas. Two more nights of the same. I spent Saturday working on the storage decking above the garage, but Sunday and today managed a little hobby time. My decals did not come in USPS (not sure why everything is taking 7-8 days now), so I tried some weathering approaches on this Accurail car...it is best viewed from greater than 6-ft, but hopefully I am learning. With the weather bad, there is also no progress the past few days on the outbuilding project, so I cut down some plywood and started working on a switching layout (three 2X4-ft sections) to take (if I can get it done) to the next Red River RPM, displaying some of my ~1908 rolling stock project and structures from the Crawford & Cherokee (mostly stowed right now). Pete Munger did this at the St Louis RPM the past couple of years, and I think a neat concept. Anyhow, I am tired of not being able to build any real layout kind of stuff.... Above the the track plan as of today. The left and middle section will become part of the Crawford & Cherokee (v3) when the outbuilding (shed) is finished. I'll start a build thread for this one elsewhere on the site in the next few weeks. Stay warm and see you at the Elks, -Bob T.
I succesfully puttred and putzed around the whole weekend. Nice work everyone. Fine, I also did some wiring and track work but it really was just puttering to the next level.
Other than snow, snow and more snow, not a bad weekend. Between sessions of shoveling and blowing snow, and sleeping off some of that work, I managed to find some boxless freight cars and gave them some boxes (power supply module boxes that are exactly as high as a loco or train car is wide ), and put a "real fake coal" load in a 50' EJ&E hopper: What in the wide wide world of sports is "real fake coal"? There's the plastic "fake coal" loads that slip into hoppers, that simulates real coal. Then there's my real fake coal load that is actually the contents of an expended Brita water filter cartridge - the contents of which is part activated charcoal! Thus, real fake coal. The whole shebang sticks together thanks to liberal amounts of spray adhesive. Looks good and adds weight to the car. I have a half-dozen or so of these, in hoppers of different roads (EJ&E, PRR, B&O, Reading, etc.). Started a kit of a Walthers blacksmith forge car (basically a flat car with a shelter at one end for the forge).
I'm okay with the "real fake coal" thing but I can't quite wrap my head around the "box-less boxcar boxes." Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
I had grand plans for the weekend modeling. Not so grand results, but at least results. Oh, there was one small detour. First, Sharon helped me move the tables around in the workspace. Access to my tools is restored. Second, it took longer than I hoped, but I turned a new air assist nozzle for my laser. As to the detour, the storage facility where most of my hobby stuff is kept reported a broken pipe today. Fearing the worst, off we went to check for damage. We were very lucky. The water was close, but only slipped under the door of a small unit we were using to stage some automotive stuff. Looked like several folks were not so lucky. We had to swap out some wet boxes and set a few things out to dry. Biggest damage was to our schedules.
A while back there was a topic where it was mentioned of storing unused track switches (N scale) in a compartmented box. I looked and looked locally, but while I found them of sufficient width and length, none had any depth. None of the big box stores, small town outlets carried what I need. I finally gave up and went to an e-tail source. Just received it and have started sorting out my surplus. Also did an inventory of my few detail parts. Had not done so in fifteen or twenty years and had no clue what remained. Much less than I once possessed, yet I found a few I'd squirreled away and forgotten, which will be of great value in the near future.
@MetraMan01 - you are most welcome. Like I said, a lot of funds got diverted there when I was in DC. It's an old house owner's paradise - and the best HCD selection I have found.
