Hi, everyone.
Not doing much lately, train wise, just been taking things one day at a time, doing other things of course. Have seen some pics and video of CP 2816 "The Empress" on its tour, looks pretty good.
I took the 20 minute train ride to downtown today to watch the parade and visit the Pride in the CLE festival. Had a great time, ate some good food and got slightly burnt walking around the festival grounds in the June sun.
Same me, different spelling!
pennytrains I took the 20 minute train ride to downtown today to watch the parade and visit the Pride in the CLE festival. Had a great time, ate some good food and got slightly burnt walking around the festival grounds in the June sun.
Sounds like you had a good time
WOW about all I get when I try to log on is,,,
Seems the only thing that works on this site is the POP up adds.
Bummer 8N on the show. I have been slacking on train running as well.
Otherwise,, All is well on The North Bluff.
Joined 1-21-2011 TCA 13-68614
Kev, From The North Bluff Above Marseilles IL.
Just found out about the magazine sale.Haven't logged on in a long time. World's been looking like a scary place, and I've mostly been sticking close to the people I feel safest with.The website is definitely slower than I remember, even got a 504 bad gateway error when I logged in. Luckily things worked again (eventually) when I refreshed the page. Hoping that a better forum that fully works is part of the plan for the new owners of the magazines.Becky, I keep thinking about going to a Pride since there's supposed to be some good ones out here but I haven't worked up the courage to check it out yet. Have some friends who regularly go though and have a good time.Life is busy right now, have a very full week lined up. Siblings all home from school, great to see everybody again. Some new pieces in the O and HO collection since last writing, and all the standard gauge motive power is up and running again. Latest O gauge challenge is to revive a Generl Models NW2 mechanism and fit it into a shell I've had for years, patiently waiting for something to put in it. On the HO front picked up another 0566 Texas Special ALCo, this time a boxed example. Needs new belts, otherwise just the usual toy train tune up.Hoping for a nice summer ahead.-Ellie
El Fixes ThingsHaven't logged on in a long time.
Ellie, you're BACK! Thank goodness! I was hoping you weren't dead!
I even sent you an e-mail and got even more concerned when you didn't respond! Anyway, it's GOOD to "see" you again! You were missed!
And don't scare us like that again! That's an order!
Evening,
Today, I did some "Trackwork" on my garage setup, as my Lionel CN Mogul was "skipping" the track on my O-31 curves, so, I ordered some O-42 curves, and that solved that. (O-42 MTH Realtrax,) other than that I helped my dad prepare to take the cover off of the swimming pool, as it's just about warm enough in Georgia to swim in it.
El Fixes ThingsBecky, I keep thinking about going to a Pride since there's supposed to be some good ones out here but I haven't worked up the courage to check it out yet. Have some friends who regularly go though and have a good time.
Cleveland's is amazing! There must have been 100,000 people down there representing every social, ethnic and just about any other demographic you can think of just enjoying each other's company and feeling the love. I think Cleveland is as diverse as the U.N. but without the fighting
Wow this seems to be flying compared to what it has been. Couldn't get on earlier. For you that are having prblems with the adds, I don't even see them, the reason is I use duckduckgo browser in here. Yes I also have Chrome and edge on my computor. There + and - with duckduckgo.co but for here it saves me from the PIA adds.
Not much train wise.
smokey1Wow this seems to be flying compared to what it has been.
Yeah, I just got in with little to no trouble at all although the loading's a little slow.
I kept getting 504 errors yesterday, but it seems that the site is working now.
Not much going on train wise...
The forum is still hit and miss for me.
A friend brought his 1974 Ford skid steer over last Saturday. We got the stone caps on the brick railing on our 1914 mid Mo. front porch project. Also got rid of about a yard of dirt that has been piled in our front yard for a long time.
Just 378 more bricks to go to finish off the 3 front porch columns. Going to be a trick to keep the columns plumb as I lay the bricks.
No train action lately, though.
https://youtu.be/Le1BT1iRcH4?si=994L9ooZRCc4Yw13
Not railroad related, well, there is a small train at the zoo but it's not in this video. Anyways, I finally finished all the editing and stuff for this video. It's of the Asian Lantern Festival at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo last summer. I was down at the zoo on Monday and they're already busy setting up for this year festival so I figured I'd better get last year's pics processed before the new one opens.
Enjoy!
That was absolutely charming Becky! Thanks for posting it!
Hey all-returned home from a short vacation trip on Sunday night. I made a stop at my favorite train place while I was away, and spent some time today unpacking my goodies.I'm already debating if I did myself well here... on the one hand, I did acquire a piece that has been on the want list for a while, and checks off more than one box for me. On the other hand... condition doesn't get much worse than what I'm working with.But hey! The B&M ALCo family has grown again I previously owned two sets of 217s. The new acquisition is a 226 A and B, with a spare chassis. The shells are pretty badly wrecked, you could make an easy argument they're beyond saving. The chassis aren't much better. I do like a challenge, but this one's going to test me. I had an idea that I could take a donor (not special) shell, and 'cut and paste' pieces from the donor onto places that are missing on the 226P shell.The B-Unit shell is more or less complete, but has several cracks that need repair.-ElliePS: I did a bunch of careful typesetting work to make the pictures smaller so they don't take up a zillion miles of post- it displays fine in the post editor but when I view the posted post, they're all huge! Dunno why, and don't think there's anything I can do to fix it.
Wow. Ellie you've got your work cut out for you with that shell!
I guess if all else fails you can use it to model a scrapyard but if anyone can bring it back to like you're the one!
Currently having one hot week out here in Western MA. It could be a lot worse, but the hot/humid combo has been enough to keep me planted inside. And what is there to do indoors, besides working on trains?Over the past couple days I've fixed a couple of the new buys from last weekend- a Triang loco from the late '60s, and a Hornby Dublo steamer. Both models run very nicely. The 1062 from my uncataloged 11580 Lionel O27 outfit got a nice bath and some fresh lubricant. I have unfortunately discovered the reverse unit now manicly changes the loco's direction when it is engaged, making it impossible to run the locomotive. My two guesses are somehow the transformer I tested it with (MTH Z-750/Z-controller) and the loco don't play nice for whatever reason, or perhaps the replacement traction tire I put on it changed the balance of the loco a little and it isn't grounding as well. If I can find the correct tender to go with it, with extra grounding strip, that should resolve any grounding issues (currently missing).Today's big challenge is to finally repair the ZW I've had for a few years. I've been holding off due to it needing a full teardown, but today I bit the bullet and started in on the project. I should have taken more pictures as it was coming apart!
I have most of the replacement parts I thought I'd need, but it looks like somehow one of the ZW-55 contact tabs got broken. I'm going to see if I can repair the original for now, but even if that works out I would eventually like to replace it with a new one. All the large plastic pieces of the transformer have been washed and are now drying off, ideally I'd love to have the whole thing done by dinner but we'll see how that pipe dream goes...-Ellie
Wanted to provide an update... my first ever ZW repair was a success! I gave the case a good cleaning, replaced all 4 carbon rollers, and wired in a new power cord. I had a nice, heavy duty one left over from a broken vaccum cleaner I took apart, which should last for many years. It was also nice to pick an arbitrary cord length of my choosing, since the cord was a good 10-15 feet at least to start with!
The whistle rectifier for the D throttle is toast, but the one on the A throttle still works. At some point I'll replace the defective one, and I might as well do them both when that time comes...In the meantime, I'm really enjoying running trains with my 'new' toy
-Ellie
Great job on the ZW Ellie! You've got more guts than I do, the inside of that thing looks scary! Makes me wonder if that's what the insides of "Little Boy" or "Fat Man" looked like!
Like the run-by too! A fine demonstration of a job well done!
Wayne, I took the cover off not long after I got it 2-3 years ago, took one look, and said "okay... maybe not today". Then it sat on a shelf. I'd keep seeing it, and thinking "man I'd love to have that transformer working..." but all the wires made me nervous. But in the intervening years, I've tackled several other projects, including two KWs, one of which I'd attempted to work on before and given up on! So earlier this week I was thinking about the ZW and thought... maybe it was time. The secret to my success was to take pictures from a few angles of all the wiring, and try to avoid repositioning the wires too much as I took things out. When it came time to put everything back, it was a little hard to read because the transformer itself is shown on the diagram at a different orientation to how it sits in the case. In the end, it was my pictures that ensured I got all the wires reconnected to the correct terminals. I think this transformer experienced some sort of catastrophic short at some point, and I think this might have been what killed the diode- there were signs of it with one of the rollers looking pretty fried, and some burn(?) marks on the secondary winding and the wipers. I was worried I had bought a "dud" but it looks like whatever damage it may have sustained didn't wreck the transformer. When I first plugged it in I was ready to yank the cord at the first sign of trouble.One thing I noticed when I was wrapping up work, is one of the wiper arms comes very close to one of the terminals on the primary winding for the cord coming in. I put some electrical tape over it to ensure the wiper can't come into contact with it. I've never seen this mentioned anywhere, but I didn't want to risk any chance of mains voltage going through my trains.-Ellie
I concur, sometimes working up the nerve to tackle a complicated project is half the battle. Every time I pull the shell off a contemporary engine and see the rat's nest of wiring I have to take a DEEP breath before I continue!
It makes me appreciate the rugged simplicity of Post-Wars all the more!
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