Welcome back everyone from the weekend. I hope you all had a great weekend and here is to @dti406 hopping for good results regarding his knees. Let's dig in. Friday: I left work around 2:00pm and gathered up all the paperwork on the truck, filled by bikes tires with air and road down to the post office. I had not used my bike in years but as it is getting nicer out, I may start riding it again. Once home again, I called my dad to check up on him and we talked until Ang got home. The rest of the evening was spent with Ang and the dogs. Saturday: I got up, made coffee and woke up. Once awake, I quickly got cleaned up and went into Operation surprise birthday party. Angela's birthday is on St. Pattrick's Day, but I had reserved a room at the next town overs Country Club for a surprise birthday party. I left for Bloomington to pick up her cake and food, then headed to the country club to decorate. Angela's dad and a friend helped with the prep, while Angela's friends took her for lunch before bringing her to the country club for her surprise party. A good time was had by all. Once home we headed for bed. Planning a surprise party wore me out so I slept like a baby. Sunday: I got up and made coffee and woke up watching a few YouTube videos. I then had my second cup whilst enjoying some Krispy Kream donuts the wife picked up for St. Patty's Day on Friday. I mainly took it easy and did not really start working on the layout until 1:00pm. With a podcast fired up, I re-did some minor issues with module one before working on module two which included installing two more sets of feeders for spurs than installing the DCC bus line. About the time I was halfway through, Ang told me she wanted Mexican for dinner, so we went to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and celebrated her St. Patty's Day birthday with Mexican. The grocery store was next door so we figured we might as well get that off the list. By the time we got home, it was time for bed and just like that the weekend was over. So how about you? What did you get done this weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 22nd to start the process all over again. Until then, have a good week, stay healthy, be safe and as always... High Greens!
Good morning and happy "March Madness" week! This weekend turned out pretty good. N.C. State won their 11th ACC basketball title, taking 5 games in 5 days which was a totally improbable path to a trophy. Now they go on the NCAA's and play Texas Tech Thursday night. The women's team also playing in their NCAA field. So a lot of basketball to watch this week. My oldest daughter and her husband came by late yesterday for dinner and that is always a good thing. On the modeling front it was a good weekend: Got water poured in the drainage ditch (photo below). Now it needs some guardrails by the roadside. Got out another control panel that I had printed last summer and started mapping out getting that wired. Spray painted some remaining parts for the tobacco barn build. Straightened up another cabinet shelf in the work shop. Crazy shelf clips started falling out. Last week I ordered some "locking" shelf clips from Amazon and they showed up Saturday. So spent time getting those in and getting everything back in the base cabinet. Spent some time making a list for lighting fixtures in the train room that will light the center peninsula. That area needs some accent lighting as I turn attention to scenery in the center of the layout. I will try and get those ordered today or tomorrow. Have a great week all.
Good Morning All, I attended the Hindsight 20/20 online talks on Saturday, inspiring me to push forward on this Frisco Refrigerator Lines (FRL) ice bunker refrigerator car. I have worked for a while to try to sort out the details for a custom decal set. Anyhow, some progress and getting addition input from the Pre-Depression Era Modelers and Frisco Modelers on Facebook. Not going to be a prize winner, but I'll follow up from what I learned here. Have a great week, All, -Bob T.
Friday: Cleaned up and threw out at least 3 bags of stuff that should never have accumulated in the train room. Saturday: Ran trains and planned a 'erosion created' needle shape 'monument' for 'The Grandure Valley'. Maybe I can find or make a 'land speeder' to fly through it☻ Sunday: Ran trains for family zoom. //no derailments.
Happy Monday, everyone! I did some railfanning along a new route I was considering modeling over the weekend. It had potential but what I thought was going to be a very busy mainline was actually not maintained very well and most train traffic gets routed around it. I did make some tweaks to the design through the rural part of my future layout on the lower level. Aside from benchwork I haven't really started planning much on the upper level yet. I also made my first layout purchase...seven locomotives from @Atani to get my fleet started. Pics coming soon! LOWER LEVEL UPPER LEVEL
Good mornin to Y'all, Pretty basic - I made great progress on the H12-44's -- They are now ready for handrails -- fun stuff Y'all have a great week!! Wolf
Looks like you should see them in a couple hours Your purchase helped pay for my new laser cutter for my hobbies It also freed up a small bit of space in storage which will help clear the space for my new layout build. As for my weekend, I spent part of Friday shuffling the bulk of my N scale stuff into a single place so I can start cataloging and listing items to clear things out a bit. Loads of cars (some older, some newer, some with no runtime on track). Saturday was spent troubleshooting a bug in the Nexxt Gateway that one tester reported. What a mess it turned into, but it's fixed now and aside from one odd issue that I've only reproduced a couple times in three/four years it's now pretty much complete and working as designed. The one odd issue I suspect is a timeout condition not clearing the state correctly which leads to the LCC stack freezing, if I can reproduce it a bit more reliably then I can attach a debugger and see what went wrong exactly and have some others on the LCC side help sort through it to fix the rather nasty bug. Sunday morning was spent spending money on train projects (RGS research materials), sorting through some of my magazine/book collection and buying a laser cutter/etcher. I ordered the Creality Falcon 2 Pro 22W laser setup and cleared some space for it next to my reflow oven. I'll be moving the reflow to a new desk in front of a window for venting and then combine the laser vent pipe with the reflow vent going to the window, very likely some sort of Y fitting that helps prevent the venting from going in the wrong direction will be needed for this. Sunday afternoon was grocery shopping, I was overdue to restock the freezer with meats and came home with about 15lbs of chicken and beef. With any luck that will last us unto mid-April with some of the other items in our freezers.
Good morning everyone, We had nice weather here all weekend so that was my cue to get busy on the yard work. Worked on getting the ground ready for this year's vegetable garden and picked up some tomato plants and got them planted. Then started working on the irrigation circuits that have been dormant since last fall. On Sunday had a video call with the friend I am building the yard controls for and was able to demonstrate its operation for him. Also worked on a Design Preservation building for Carlin finishing the painting of the window detail and weathering the walls. This building will have a Miller Engineering sign in front, the slot above the door is for the wire. I decided to add a rooftop penthouse to hide the electronics module for it. The switch is accessible from the back of the penthouse.
My new HOn30 SR&RL Forney kit is here, finally. From Japan, it flew over my head to Chicago, where it sat in customs for a week. From there it came back out west and then wandered my direction. This has never happened before. I had hoped to be working on it over the weekend. Otherwise, I simply relaxed and began reading a book I'd want to start enjoying, for a while now.
Happy Monday all! Event though I had to work Saturday, ended up being a pretty decent weekend. Friday evening, I got down to the workbench a little later than planned but also stayed later. Made good progress on the freight car loads I was working on and installed a basic Digitrax DCC board in a Kato C44-9W. Went very smooth. Saturday was work so was up and at it early. Things went well and we finished a little early. That was good but weather was not warm enough for painting so that was the one goal I didn’t accomplish. We had an early dinner and tackled the dreaded income taxes. Once those were done, it was bed time. Woke up very early on Sunday morning and after staring at the ceiling for a bit decided to just go ahead and get up. Hit the coffee and TrainBoard for a bit before heading to the train room. There, I finished up the 4 freight car loads I had in progress, installed metal wheels on a few cars and sent them on a test run behind the unit that got DCC on Friday night. I dug around a bit to decide on what project I should tackle next. Possibly a modern power line for the layout. I also took the shell off my H12-44 and dropped it in the vat of paint stripper to soak. It has factory pant plus a terribly applied bushed on coat of Floquil so should be fun to strip down. Future paint job TBD. Somewhere in there, I fit in a run downtown to GT to pick up my son. All in all, a productive day. Didn’t sleep well Sunday night so I’ll be glad to just go home and hit the recliner when this Monday is done. Hope you all have a great week and @dti406, hope the knee surgery goes well.
The closest I got to trains this weekend were the CSX freights running behind our camp site at the state park where our Scout Troop spent the weekend. The Scouts had s good time hiking, working on Cooking Merit Badge requirements and sitting around the campfire.
Nice surprise party! Excellent job on an unassuming ditch. Well, well. That Frisco reefer is sure tempting me to go off my late '40's mandate. No derailments is good news. New locomotives coming down the pike! Yep. The devil is in the details. Hope not in handrails. Nothing like a new laser! The DPM edifice is realistically imposing. It seems like "package wandering" is the new order of the day. Freight loads rolling! Trains running behind the camp is better than in the camp. Friday P.M. don't recall. Saturday was locate diagram and convert to scale GM&O semaphore, family visit and local train club visit. Sunday was family visit and get treated to lunch. Fine weekend! Several paths to choose now. Roof supports. Roof making. Attach walls to floors. Porch braces. Other stuff. Should be a busy week. So, let's all be healthy, safe and as busy as possible.
First of all sorry for the confusion as it is my wife who is having the knee surgery and that will happen right after she gets her shot in the eye for her macular degeneration. Friday’s bowling was not good and we will probably not be able to win the league championship. But I did manage to paint a hopper and the under frame for an R70-20 reefer. Saturday spent the day at the city bowling open championship monitoring scores and then working on brackets and jackpots. In the evening went to dinner with my son and his wife and my wife at my Niece’s restaurant in Ohio City. Sunday had enough people to run the tournament so I got home early so I rested and did the laundry. Later I like one of the responses I cleaned up the floor around my work area mainly to find a part I dropped on the floor (which I have not found yet). Rick Jesionowski
Weatherwise, it was about as good as it gets here this time of year. Sixties and sunshine. Let's see. There were four big areas to focus on: Automobiles, trees, soccer, and brass boilers. Getting the snow tires off was easy as it gets. There was a time when I did this myself, but lack of space to keep a floor jack and store the tires, plus diminished motivation means the local tire shop does the job. My son's car was not so easy. What we started on Friday did not get finished until today. The highlight was removing the inner door panel while the door was closed. Then disconnecting the jammed outer door handle from the latch by feel. We were eventually successful. The tree pruning was straightforward enough. Still have more to do. Soccer was a mixed bag. One win, one draw, one loss for the weekend. As is our tradition, we found time for eggs and bacon after the morning match. Progress on the brass boiler. The outline is there. Much more to do before I decide if I like it or not. All in all, a very good weekend. Stay safe,
I did pick up my car on the way home from work on Friday. I now have to get used to driving it again. Saturday I worked overtime and when I got home we ran out to Kohl’s to drop off a couple of Amazon returns and I bought some suspenders. We also went to the nursery to get some plants. We ended the running with some pizza for dinner. Sunday, I made the corn beef and cabbage by putting in the crockpot. My daughter needed buttermilk and we needed a few other things, so I ran to the grocery store while my wife and daughter planted the plants, we got Saturday. For some bizarre reason it took me three stores to find buttermilk. This is the first time I have made it to the computer in two days. Yesterday, work was nuts. I started at 5:30 AM and went to 2:30 PM on the job site. I had to rush from work to my cardiologist’s appointment. She cleared me for the hernia surgery next month. Now I just need to get some bloodwork done. My Walthers Thru Girder bridge arrived yesterday and I managed to assemble one side. Over the weekend I finished the other bridge except for the wing walls. I finished cutting out the space for the bridge. I removed some ties on the track so the track would fit on the bridge. I tacked down the track and ran several test trains over the track. I cleaned up the debris from cutting the foam and removing the track and ballast.
Sorry I'm late in posting but with Easter approaching, and planning for five worship services next week (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and two on Sunday) our schedules here at church are incredibly busy, add homework to that, plus chores and all the other normal things that life requires and its a bit nuts. Friday morning, I drove my wife to an eye doctor appointment in Akron (since they would be dilating her eyes), then a stop for a hearty breakfast (in Hartville) on the way home. Much of the rest of the day was dedicated to homework. Saturday we took a trip to the dog park with the pups since it was a beautiful day. Many other people had the same thought and the park was packed with people and dogs, but all the dogs were friendly and had an absolute blast together. Afterwards, we drove over to the Beech Creek Botanical Garden for a short walk (with the dogs) and, while there, watched an eastbound NS train on the Fort Wayne line (former PRR) slowing to a stop, likely at the concrete plant just outside of Alliance). As often as we've been to Beech Creek, we rarely see trains on that line (as it is not nearly as active as the Cleveland to Pittsburgh line that also runs through Alliance (and crosses the Fr. Wayne line). When we have seen trains there, we always seem to be way in the back of the park. But this day, we were on the road nearest the tracks. I'll attach some photos below. At home was laundry and more homework. Sunday, was church, a quick lunch, then out to the Sebring Model Railroad Club. With lots of guys running trains, no track work got done, but I did confer with one of the designers of our new port facility and got answers to several questions that we had about the track configuration. Otherwise, not much got done train-wise this weekend (and likely none at all next weekend). Head end power RJ Corman boxcar I was a second late, but if you zoom next to the tree, you can see the Friday the 13th Jason Vorhees graffiti. Tail end power
