Driline wrote: secondhandmodeler wrote: Driline wrote:I thought oil firing furnaces went away with the mini skirt? We had one in the early 60's and then converted over to heated water. My own homes have been forced air. I believe fuel oil is still quite common in New England.Why?
secondhandmodeler wrote: Driline wrote:I thought oil firing furnaces went away with the mini skirt? We had one in the early 60's and then converted over to heated water. My own homes have been forced air. I believe fuel oil is still quite common in New England.
Driline wrote:I thought oil firing furnaces went away with the mini skirt? We had one in the early 60's and then converted over to heated water. My own homes have been forced air.
Why?
Nope..oil fired furnaces is common as wood stoves in some states.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Sorry to hear about you lost...Terrible!!!
I just went through a flood and my insurance company wanted everything I claim as a lost..
No problem..I didn't want my water logged furniture and personal items.
What they will do ( at least for the company that my wife works for ), is auction it off, in " AS IS " condition.
My wife works in the insurance industry, and I see this sort of thing, before - indeed the wife and I have made bids on salvage items before - $25 for a 39 inch color TV - didn't work, but, at that price we were willing to risk it.
OTOH, when the same company wrote off my 3 yr old Lap Top computer last year ( after my kids acadentialy jumped on it ), they told me to toss it in the trash, as anything on it was already out dated - as it would have cost more to find a replacement motherboard than to buy a entire new Lap Top - so they were not worried about it since there was no salvage value what so ever.
Im sorry to hear of this loss. I can understand what it must be like having grown up near a oil furnance.. (Whadda monstor) in my time.
I have been called as part of my work to drive insurance salvage wrecked vehicles in Auction here in Arkansas. These vehicles have been through wrecks and despite loss of life, damage or destruction are still driveable. Those are the ones I have to move to the auction block computer malfunctions, smashed glass, sharp steel and all.
I told my employer that I will not engage in that particular part of the industry anymore. It is unnatural to me. I dont mind wrestling junkers or near salvage from time to time but the accident insurance ones are the absolute saddest of all.
If it was me, I would write it all off as loss and call a dumpster truck to drop a box in the yard.
You might save a few items that were in boxes or packed well but to think of an insurance company wanting to sell oil soaked train stuff is past the oomphalumpa way for me.
As far as fires... I would not even power the layout up at all. One good short long enough probably will light that stuff. And there will be a serious problem that might cost your life or others. I may be a bit overboard as usual but that is how I see it.
My vote goes to "Trash it all"
Well sorry if the title of my post is a bit off the norm but I couldn't be more disgusted. I had and I specify the word had a 40'x24' layout. Now don't get me wrong it wasn't of the caliber of a Howard Zane or a John Allen by any stretch of the imagination but I took a lot of pride in what myself and 4 or 5 dedicated friends had helped to create. So let me get to the issue at hand.
Last week we had a furnace blowback which for those of you who are not familiar with happened when basically the furnace burps out a huge cloud of sot and black oily smoke throughout the entire heating system and completely ruins everything it touches. So I get the call last week from my wife and I rush home to find my local fire department with every single piece of fire fighting apparatuses they own in front of my house or in my yard. They got their smoke ejectors going full speed and looked like an old coal burning locomotive was pulling a long grade.
So after calming down a bit I go into the house to survey the damage. At first glace I thought not too bad it could have been worse. Still a god-awful mess to deal with but thank god no one was hurt and my house was still standing. It wasn't till about an hour or so later it hit me like a ton of bricks (MY TRAINS!) I walked down to the basement to find my entire layout covered in soot. So instant weather you might think but mix the soot with a nice blend of fuel oil and you have one horrendous mess. I have basically written the entire set up off as trash. So now I have the insurance company to deal with and they say no problem we'll pay to have them cleaned, repaired or replaced. Here's the kicker, they want anything they deem as a total loss for salvage. What is there an honest Charlie's used model train salvage yard some place?
Screw the money there is a huge emotional attachment as many of you can understand with my trains. Last fathers day my 4 year old son gave me a Proto Heritage 2000 0-6-0. The look on his little face was priceless when he gave daddy a cool train. So yeah I'm about to give that to some insurance company I think not.
So the scenery is all shot to hell I know that but the bench work is intact etc. but does anyone have any suggestions as to A: how to clean the engines (90 odd pieces ) and 300 plus pieces of rolling stock, B: clean the structures, bridges etc. C: The track work and switches. I haven't even tried to see if anything will work, as I'm afraid I will cause more harm or possibly set the whole thing a blaze. I just started to make the transition over to DCC so about 20 or so of my engines are dcc. The only thing that saved me from total annihilation was the fact that I closed off all the vents in the duct work around the layout. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated. I will try and post some pics but the blow back took out all the computers in our house as well.