Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished. Let's dig in and see what was accomplished this weekend. Saturday: As predicted, we got up around 6:30 and I made coffee. Once coffee was brewed it was off to the workshop to wake up and catch up on some of my favorite YouTube channels. After getting cleaned up we left for Angela's dads. The original carb has been giving us fits and flooding, so we used the parts from a remanufactured carb and combined them with the old to get a working carb, until it too was flooding. Frustrated, I opened the carb to find a small piece of Teflon tape in the float needle, put everything back together and finally, no more flooding. With some adjustments the car was purring like a kitten. We took her to town for gas and never had any issues of stalling, running rough or racing. Finally! She is running like a new car. After that we celebrated by taking grandma out to dinner. Sunday: Like everyone, the time change affected us. We did not wake up until 8:00am and neither did the dogs. I got the coffee going and started work on the N scale wiring. I picked up where I left off over a month ago and finished the DC line and installation of the Tam Valley turnout controller. I then installed new block terminals on either end to secure both the DCC and DC bus lines and my connectors with Anderson Power Poles to connect the two ends. I tested the module, and all went well regarding track work and switch alignment in both directions. Hopefully I can finish the other module next weekend as I will need to switch gears and start working on the NTrak module in anticipation of Galesburg RR Days in June. So how about you? What did you get done this weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 15th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a good week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Happy Monday everyone. Hope all had a great peaceful weekend. On the modeling front I got most of everything done that I wanted. Never got around to painting (airbrushing session). But everything else was good. Spent substantial time working on the stream/ditch scene getting ready to pour the water (next weekend). Also spent time running trains, a lot of time yesterday running them. Also got the uprights done (cut to height) for the elevated track. That was tricky cutting them exactly so the rail height at the elevated would perfectly mesh w/ the adjoining truss bridge. Even weathered a couple of cabooses that were a little too "shiny". Have a great week all!!
Cleaned up the train room. I live in an apartment building. We have 'insurance inspectors' coming. Ostensibly it will just be to confirm everything is in good order. I don't know how kindly they will take to the trains. I did plan various swappable scenes.
Good mornin to Y'all - I had a very good weekend. Hope Y'all did as well. Friday: The H12-44's prep work was complete. - Ready for primer and paint. Saturday: The Ops session went very well. Primered the H12-44's Sunday: Painted the H12-44's -- Then.... I did nothing. Y'all have a great week!! Wolf
Hope you cleaned up real good for those inspectors. I had that done at my last house. It lead to a lot of trouble because the HOA didn't like something.
I didn't end up getting nearly as much done as I had originally planned. After shipping out four Nexxt Gateways to testers I spent most of the rest of the weekend getting most of my PnP machine rebuilt so I can start using it again. The bottom control board is now in-place with the X and Y motors connected, lower camera and lights connected. The remaining steps are to connect the two vacuum pumps and actuator valves to have it pick up parts from the feeders, route the 6mm OD vacuum lines through the valves and to the pumps (one can be seen as part of test fit below). After that I need to remount the upper control board on the pick head and crimp connectors on the right nozzle stepper and proximity sensor (used for homing the Z axis). In between mounting of parts I also printed PCB holders for the PnP staging plates that have M3 screws sticking up into the holes of the PCBs for alignment which will allow repeatable population without needing to reconfigure the board's 0,0 position. I've not finalized the placement of the holders yet but it is likely close. I also need to reprint the nozzle holder rack (white block on the left side) as it needs to be slightly taller and one of the slots cracked and the nozzle falls out now. I spent part of the weekend thinking on my On30 layout and possibly reshaping it from a 10x10 to more of an 8x12 since I think that might fit better in the office space. It won't change the track plan too much but should help provide a bit more space on the outsides to operate and view it.
Good morning from mostly sunny and cold Northeast Ohio! Friday went as expected except for any modeling time, ended up bowling a 640 series with a 259 last game and the team took 7 points to try and get into range of the first place team with two weeks left in the season. Saturday, went to the club and ran a train made up of all IPD boxcars pulled by a pair of Scaletrains C39-8's. Got home and did some reading and played cards with the wife so the modeling took back seat to marital bliss. Sunday, with the snow we just stayed home all day, but I did manage to finish building the R70-20 Reefer and it will head to the paint shop during the week. Also did the laundry and took the dog out for numerous walks. Rick Jesionowski
Didn't make much progress in puffball tree production, but I did pull all of the ancient, crumbly foliage off my 40 year old soft metal tree armatures so that I can use them again in areas where detailed trees would be nice.
Morning all, am I the only one who really doesn't care for this time change stuff? The weekend had it's ups and downs for sure. Friday evening, I spend some time (more than I planned on) at the workbench and made some decent progress including an easier than expected DCC install. Saturday was a trip up to TN to get a couple of task finished and moving forward. It took way longer than expected and it seemed like every time we did something, two more things would come up but in the end, we got it to where it needed to be. I'm getting to where I'm not a big fan of driving at night and of course we drove home in the dark and there was way more traffic than I have seen on that drive in a really long time so that made it double bad. Sunday, I was up at my normal time despite the time change. I really wanted to sleep in but it didn't happen. Made coffee, sat down at the computer for a bit. In the process learned that there was a train show in progress just up the road in Cartersville. Decided I could postpone other activities until later in the day and headed to the show for a couple of hours. Was a decent show. Picked up groceries on the way home and got that out on the way. Then started laundry and took care of a few things the wife needed me to do. After dinner, I did find a couple of hours to get back down to the workbench where I finished up some freight car loads and almost finished decaling a M/T arroWedge container. Overall, not a bad weekend I guess. Hope you all have a great week!
Howdy friends! I didn't do a whole lot of railroading over the weekend. Still being in the design stage on my layout, I did make a few minor tweaks on Friday while waiting for my wife to get home. Added some tunnel markers just so folks besides me can follow the track plan a little better... Expanded the UP Rosenberg Yard a bit... Changed "C" to a connected hidden track to make UP operations more interesting. Previously, both of the tunnel portals labeled "C" just ran to the edge of the layout and died somewhere into infinity. Now they're actually connected and run beneath the scenic elevated BNSF mainlines (blue). Revised overview... Yesterday afternoon I also started experimenting with adding a helix where the "Texas Tehachapi" is that would go up to a second level for more mainline running. Nothing to show on this yet, but more to come if I decide to pursue that further. Hope y'all have a great week.
Good morning everyone, Weekend went about as planned. Friday while running trains found that another Tortoise motor was making motor brush noises and causing issues with the yard controls. Swapped it out with one that already had the suppression capacitors and that cleared up the problem. Later installed capacitors on the original so it will be ready for the next one that needs swapping. Saturday morning, I did some house cleaning in the morning then we had the visit with my wife's college friend in the afternoon and that went well. By Sunday things had dried out enough for me to get out an do come cleaning up in the back yard before it started raining again Sunday night. I did get the 12 DC bus extended and got an exterior light hooked up on a building in Carlin. Looking at this photo, I think I could put a larger value resistor in to dim it a bit. Next i want to add lightening inside the operations office as it would be a 24-hour operation.
Glad for no more carb problem. Stream pour coming up! Inspectors should love the trains! Sometimes doing nothing is what it's all about. Sometimes HOA = horrible old a###'s P n P machine looks interesting. Dogs love numerous walks. Tree armatures look promising. Fooling with changing a bunch of clocks/watches. Getting up feeling "abnormal". Taking six weeks for your body to adjust. What's not to love? If you have a helix, one good turn deserves another. (Okay. I'll stop now.) Carlin's lighting definitely adds to the atmosphere. Part of the weekend was spent working on depot roofing. Slow progress. I plan to prep building sides for roof installation. Have a fine week.
Hey All, I've been working on making an elusive "Frisco Refrigerator Line" car (Ice Bunker Refrigerator Car). Built by ACF in the ~1911 timeframe, this truss rod underframe 40-ft car has never been offered (to my knowledge). I stripped off the ladders, added Tahoe Model Works archbar trucks, and am now redoing the underframe with K brakes and 6 truss rods. I'll have PDC make a decal set once I figure out all of the details of the lettering (or a plausible stand-in). I have not been able to find a good side short of this car where you can see the details of the small lettering. I make my own approximation of decals for this first demo/test build and try to geed some feedback. ^^ Atlas original ^^ Builders photo ^^Sunday morning Hope All are well, -Bob T.
I had a great weekend modeling. I began laying the roads town for the city. I am using Walthers Stret System and it seems to working out. I basically completed one intersection. I also began building the bridge that will be used to carry the tracks from the station so that the roads are not blocked for extended periods of time. I finished the bridge tonight.
Got most of what I hoped accomplished this past weekend. Not exactly the way I expected. Saturday: Drove over to my son's house and swapped cars with him. Brought his back and put it on the charger. While waiting for the charge to finish I went over to the old house we bought and drained the water heater. Took me a few minutes of fiddling around, but once I got the water flowing things went very quickly. Then Sharon and I took a drive to the coast a bit north of here and grabbed some coffee. Not much going on and not many people around. Uninviting weather and the low season will do that. Car worked fine the entire time. Charged it up again while loading all the stuff from my workspace into the SUV. We decided to catch the Sounders at a little brewery about 15 minutes away. Found parking and wedged into a couple chairs with some other fans. The game was in Philadelphia, but the rain looked the same. The field was covered in standing water and the game was abandoned soon after kickoff. Oh well. At least we had some grub from the food truck and enjoyed a pint. Sunday: Early morning soccer game was an exciting draw. Then it was time for eggs and bacon with our son. We walked back home and drove the car to his place. It is having an intermittent problem. Did not do it once the entire time I had it. Frustrating. Finally time to haul the accumulated stuff over to our storage units. While I was packing and repacking, Sharon cooked a pot of beans. We each enjoyed a big bowl while watching our final soccer match of the weekend. This time a 1-0 win! After dinner, with the workspace cleared out, I finally setup a test track. Nothing fancy. But I did get it cleaned up and working. Note the headlight. Happy to have it. We moved it from Idaho in 2018 and put it in storage. I kept thinking I'd build something more involved, but finally concluded I needed the track and simple was good enough. It will allow me to test the Mikado as I begin assembly. (Full disclosure, as of Monday evening, there is still wiring to sort out.) Stay safe,
Friday, I got moving by 8:00am and got some exercise walking the dog. It has become increasingly obvious that both of us needed it, she to stretch her legs so she can behave a little better, and me because the scale is winning our recent conflicts. Despite being officially on spring break, I did do some of next/this week's homework, finally unloaded the firewood (from our son that I've been hauling around for over a week) and got that stacked next to the house before the snow started. In the evening, my wife and I drove over to my oldest brother's (#1) house to have dinner with his family and with my other brother (#3) from Indiana and one of his daughters. Saturday, we rested a little and I experimented with staining my industrial flatcar load. I tried several types of stain that we had in the basement, mostly inherited from my father's shop, by dipping strips of balsa in them. I liked the outcome of a teak stain because it gave a blotchy, dirty, aged look. But, when I tried painting it on, it was uniformly dark. It didn't take long to realize that my initial experiment probably dipped into some un-stirred and separated stain, so I mixed up a *very* diluted mixture (despite a warning label not to ever dilute the stain ) and that worked pretty well (even on the plastic flatcar desk where I accidentally spilled it). In the afternoon, we met my brother (#3) and our son at Mom's house and spent several hours going through outdoor sheds, digging through tools and closets, boxing up more thing for us to take home, and filling our car, and our son's pickup truck with more "stuff" and treasure as we gradually empty our parents' house. Then we drove into Canton to pick up some dramatically discounted flannel fabric that my wife scooped up on sale for future use in baby quilts for (future) grandchildren. Sunday, felt even earlier than usual with the time change with 5:30am feeling like 4:30. so then we had church, followed by a staff appreciation luncheon, a stop at home to change clothes (and drop off some leftovers and cake), then out to the train club for an hour or two where I laid out track for one more dock at the new port facility. Two lengths of loose, code 100 rail will be needed to finish but all the pieces that we had were short or bent. (I made a trip to the train shop in town today but they don't have any so I will either order some online or pull a couple rails from some flex-track. By 3:00pm I was back at church for a Zoom meeting of our Liberia mission board until after 5:00 and then headed home for dinner by 5:30. By that point I was so tired that nothing else got done. My flat car load is mostly done except to add some tie-down strapping on top and some pins underneath to hold it on the flatcars. Hopefully, that will be completed this week and taken out to the club to test it on a couple low tunnel portals.
Hey Hoss, can I suggest the right side of the yard tail track extend into the hill. There will likely be times when you may want to kick cars from that side of the yard. Even the ability to move five or so cars at a time would be more satisfying. A roadway overpass could help disguise it a bit. Or you could run the tail track along the front edge around the hill for a bit to keep it visible. Just some spit balling. Trash in trash out if not helpful.
Just saw this. Thanks for the suggestion! That entire yard got cut from the lower level over the weekend so it's not there anymore, but I appreciate the feedback!
