Hi, Joe. Some coffee for me on this Monday morning. No rest for the weary, I'm afraid. We don't get the day off. Easy commute, though.
No progress at all this weekend. Instead, we took a trip up to Sunday River for the Fall Festival weekend. The highlight of the trip was the annual North American Wife Carrying Competition, in which 50 couples raced, 2 at a time, around an obstacle course. Like ballet, it's a sport for strong men and lightweight ladies. Like grand opera, one of the contestants wore a Viking helmet with horns. And, fortunately, like neither ballet nor opera, beer, pulled pork, hot dogs and burgers were served in abundance.
I'm about ready to start work on the liquor store, and once that's done I'll have that block of buildings in the commercial district complete. Then, I can get them emplaced and cut the sidewalk sections, and that will let me do the shoe repair shop. That's one that's got my excited.
I lost a friend over the weekend. I suppose it's only the beginning of the inevitable, but John is the first friend from my college days to go. So, count your blessings and enjoy every day with those around you.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Howdy, Joe. Mighty quiet here. I guess everybody's home watching political commercials on TV...
A few hours ago I had one of those Eureka! moments. My layout plan had called for both my coal-hauling normal-gauge short line and my narrow gauge logger to interchange with the JNR at Tomikawa - and I'd been having fun (NOT) trying to figure out an elegant way to fit both of them into the available space. That was done because for forty years or so I had been working with the assumption that Tomikawa would be the only JNR station I could include on my layout.
Then it struck me. In the prototype world, the logger didn't interchange at Kiso-Fukushima, modeled as Tomikawa, but rather at the next station down, Agematsu. My last-in-this-lifetime layout actually includes that station, under the name Haruyama. By moving the logger downgrade to its proper interchange location I de-complicated Tomikawa. There's PLENTY of room at Haruyama for the interchange, the transfer yard and enough buildings to catch the flavor. Not only that, but I now have a traffic source at Haruyama more significant than the freight house. Win-win!
Is there a down side? Only one I can see is that I just rendered all my JNR waybills for loads originating or terminating at the Rintetsu obsolete - they all read, "Tomikawa'" and now it's Haruyama.
Guess I'd better get on making some new ones. See ya,
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Good morning, everyone. Just some coffee, and maybe a bowl of fresh melon. Thanks.
I love those "Eureka!" moments, Chuck. Something about the way the mind works, I suppose. We think about things "in the background," and sometimes the answer just pops out. That's the way I figured out how to fit in the car float terminal. The key was understanding that the car float itself is removeable, so the benchwork supporting it can also be removeable. With that, it no longer blocks maintenance access to what's behind it, so it fits.
The shoe repair shop is done.
Again, it's a childhood memory. I wanted to put a small shop like this in the "basememt" of a tall building, just like I remember from visiting relatives in Brooklyn as a kid. I found that it's a very hard scene to photograph, though. I made it too deep, but in my defense, the Miniatronics sign fills the shop window, top to bottom, and they put the "shoe" part at the very bottom.
This whole block has the station platform behind it, and four lines of unballasted track, so it will be some time before I can put the buildings down for the last time. But, at least I've got the styrene base in, and the "sidewalk" sheet of styrene is cut to size and shape.
Right now, I'm doing castings of manhole covers. We've had the usual interminable period of road construction around here, and I guess I took my cue from way the prototype guys do manholes and pavement. I took a bunch of the "manhole covers" that come with the Walthers streetlights. They are intended to cap over the sockets if you remove the lights for maintenance or whatever. Since I don't have enough of these covers, I made up a small latex mold from them, and I've begun casting copies. Tonight I'll paint a few of them, and install them where the street will be. For a while, until I pour the Durhams Water Putty for the "asphalt," the good people of Moose Bay will have to live with "raised manhole covers" in the streets. The only difference between Moose Bay and Bedford, MA, will be the pink earth beneath their roads.
All's right in the world. Well, it would have been nicer if the Jets lost, but the Patriots did win over Indy.
Yesterday, the local cable TV came over to my house to shoot some layout video. 3 of us from town had been in a short panel discussion a couple of days earlier, and the plan was to overlay some layout shots on top. I suppose they came out OK, but, well, it was one of those layout disasters for me. Things derailed where they never had before. I got a subway stuck in an inaccessible tunnel. Mr. Murphy, take a bow. You outdid yourself.
So, I spent today in maintenance mode. I ran the CMX machine through the subways. I pulled liftoffs to find problems I even removed one that hasn't been off in years, because of the wiring. Lo and behold, I found the wheel from the PCC car, about where I knew it must be, because, well, it wasn't anywhere else.
The Prodigal Wheel has returned. Now, the fatted calf has been slaughtered, I've got a cold beer, the grill is hot and it's time to cook the steaks. Life is good.
Joe, I can't believe it's been a month since any of the regulars dropped in! Where is everybody???
My layout work has been on hold, for a really weird reason. Seems I dropped into my neighborhood book store and saw a familiar face - on a dust jacket. Sally Belfrage, a lovely blonde who sat next to me in my Basic Physics class in high school, went on to become a best-selling author. The book, Un-american Activities, turned out to be a memoir of that period in her life.
It's amazing how little I knew about someone I thought I knew!
After I read that book, I ordered her other four. I'm working my way through them now.
I had wanted to send her a, "Thanks for the memories," note, only to discover that she had died of (outer lung)*** cancer, 'way too young. Her parents reached their mid-80s. She never got to 58. Maybe it's true that only the good die young.
(So, why am I still alive? I leave that as an exercise for the student...)
See Ya.
Hey, Chuck's here! Joe, a round for, well, the two of us.
I lost an old school friend, too. John Huchra was a world-renowned astronomer, and a former dorm floor mate. He passed away suddenly from a heart attack, with no warning, and not even a chance to say goodbye. I guess if gives us all the more reason to count our own blessings this year.
I've been struggling to get through some of the Phase 2 scenery. This section involves a lot of structures, plus associated urban scenery around it. In my own divide-and-conquer scheme, I've decided to tackle the station, two tall City Classics buildings and a scratch-built liquor store. The structures themselves were time-consuming, but work progressed. The whole final work, though, is one of those things that I've had a hard time getting started. Today, though, I did put down the Gypsolite between the tracks of the staging yard behind where the buildings will finally live. Once I get the ground cover on that, I can complete the dread ballasting job. I can also put down the pavement in front of the buildings.
Inspired perhaps by the seemingly endless street repairs around my 1:1 town, I decided to put in manholes in the streets over here. I have a few of the manhole-caps that come with Walthers Cornerstone street lamps, but not enough to do the job. So, I made a latex mold with the ones I've got, and poured some Hydrocal castings. I embedded them to the right height in the base foam of the layout, so right now they stick up, just like the real ones do when they're about to pave the road, a time period that always seems to last an inordinate amount of time. My goal is to have this whole area complete by the first of the year. We'll see how I do.
Hi, guys. I have been so busy with parties lately.
We have had lots of layout time. Larry laid the track for the staging yard temporarily. The end board is tacked down with a couple of screws. We are waiting for the Walthers 130' TT to come in. (If ever)
I kitbashed from the Walthers Empire Tanning & Leather for the packing plant. It is totally freelance though.
There is a lot going on this week, but maybe we will get some time next week.
Sue
Anything is possible if you do not know what you are talking about.
Ho, Ho, Ho...Merry Christmas to all....
It has been a long while. I haven't done a thing in the Trainroom for months! I haven't feeling well (Doc now thinks it is cronic Lyme) and I have been SOOOO busy with work. I really hope to change this scenario soon.
So for now "Here's a health to the company"