Hey Joe...It's the Wednesday PM check of the "Barn"! I'll have a tap, make it a Meininger "Backwoods Black" and I'll buy a round for any comers too!
Got out to the Trainroom the other day to discover that it's time for "cleanup" again! I hate how I let the place get out of control when I'm not "Working on the Railroad" for a while. Of course it's also a bit out of control when I am working out there...Just worse when I'm not.
I got a good start on the off pike staging for the upper level with the supports for benchwork and even one section of "shelf" installed. I really hope to get trackage down, this season, for the mainline both to and from staging on both levels....Wish me luck!!
Mike, good to hear from you and know you are doing better! But, SSI...WOW! I had NO idea you were that bad off. Here in MN it seems that therapy, surgery, therapy and surgery again...followed by more therapy and / or surgery is the order before SSI. Sorry to hear you are in that bad of shape!
Hope to get out to the Trainroom again this week (hope it rains again) and get a bit more trackage done....Sure would be great to be able to run "off pike to off pike"
And with that, another thought for the week: If I'm late...Wait another 5 minutes! Then you can give up on me!
Good morning, Joe. I will have a cinnamon roll with my coffee, please. Maybe some of my MR buddies will show up for coffee before they get active on their layouts. Larry should be home within the hour. We had our first killing frost last night, so we won't be heading outside too early today. Maybe I can get him back on track with his trestle.
Glad to see that everyone is dropping by even if they don't stay long.
Sue
Anything is possible if you do not know what you are talking about.
I'll have coffee and a roll this morning...Missed you yesterday Sue.
We are having rain this AM so I hope to play in the Trainroom a bit again today. I have a good start on the "clean-up" and will work at that alnog with the staging.
Hope you are all having a good one!
Ah, a quiet Sunday morning. I'll have some bacon 'n' eggs, Joe, and keep the coffee coming. Yeah, I stayed up to watch the Sox last night. Well, at least they're coming home to Fenway even up after taking one of two in the other guys' house.
I just couldn't take waiting any longer, so yesterday I cut out the space on the other side of the engine house where the pond and stream will continue. This brings it right out to the edge of the layout, so I carefully left a thin ridge to hold in the Envirotex. I've still got the track pinned down with paper clips around that curve, because it will have to come up when I do "Moose Bay" and need to remove the chord bridge and all nearby track. So, it was a piece of cake (no, Joe, I don't want any cake. It makes my benchwork wider.) to lift up the track and cut under it. I got the plaster cloth down over the bed of the pond area, too, so the next step is Gypsolite.
I'm going to put a series of short timber trestle bents under the track here where it crosses the waterway. They'll only be about an inch high, so I should be able to knock them out pretty quickly. I've been googling around for pictures, and it looks like I can put the bents right down into the water. I took a bicycle ride down by some streams yesterday, too, and studied the flow patterns around obstructions to get an idea of how the ripples should look. It was a beautiful day, by the way, and my riding was almost entirely on old railroad rights-of-way. As I pedal down those long, straight tree-tunnels, I can imagine what it must have been like back in the Age of Steam...
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Morning all, I will have the bacon n' eggs with Mr. B. this morning. Thanks Joe.
I am going to take a trip Tuesday up in the St. Louis area to visit my sister and we will stop in Tulsa and visit my Dads sister for a day or two, Should be a lot of fun if my back doesn't give me to much trouble. My sister and mom and dad are comming up from the Dallas area and pick me up on Tuesday. My sister got a new Caddy a couple of weeks ago so we will go in style. I am hoping to get to go to a few Hobby Shops along the way if possible. I should have my DCC system here when we get back and am going to need some DCC equipped locos to start. Modeling in N scale for now, I cannot see well enough to install the decoders myself so for now I will get the DCC equiped models.
It is supposed to start raining here this afternoon or evening, we are needing some rain. I hope it doesn't rain on us all the way to St. Louis.
Anyone know of any Hobby Shops between Tulsa and St. Louis? I see joe has my breakfast here so I will eat while it is still hot.
Have a good day, I will try to post some along the trip, I am going to take my new digital camera and laptop. Mike
Hey, Joe....I'll buy a round this evening!! Need a tall cold one, make it amber or a dark in a frosted mug!
Well...I did spend better than three hours in the Trainroom today and have all of the staging figured out (did some major cleaning too), with most of the upper level of it in place. Now, just to add some additional space (a blob) at the end of the "yard" for a reversing loop and I'll have the big projects out of the way!
The thought for today: Getting older is a snap....Just wait.
I thought that I should stop in for some light refreshments. Joe, if anyone else shows put it on my tab. A hot cider sounds good for now, thankyou.
JB, Cleanup is always hard to get started on. I am guilty of scouping things into a box. Never to be found again.
MrB, Are you gearing up for hockey yet? The bicycle usage can be good conditioning. The bents on your waterway should go quickly since they are so small. I love the thought process. You have to do this before you start something else. We had part of our track pinned down so that the loco cleared smoothly.
Mike, Have a nice trip. You are braver than I would be trying N scale. I use my dental magnefying loups for HO. And sometimes that isn't enough when you are working in such a small world.
We didn't work on the layout this weekend. We mostly discussed future construction projects while the locos exercised. Poor Larry has not been getting two full days off on the weekend. They are running him ragged. I suspect that things will slow down in the winter, but who knows.
Good morning, everyone. How about some waffles with maple syrup today? Thanks.
Sue & Larry, it's better to be working on a weekend than not working at all, particularly these days. The experts are all out there scratching their heads, so I think we should all be out hiding nuts for the winter. On a more icy note, hockey is a year-round sport for me. I've been playing Tuesday nights at 8 PM for over 30 years now. Last month, that long string was broken as our 8 o'clock hour was taken from us and given to the more lucrative Youth Hockey program. So, now we start at 9:10, still not a bad time, and we'll go back to 8 in the spring. For those of us who remember the Bobby Orr years, when pick-up ice time was at midnight or 6 AM, that 9:10 faceoff isn't bad at all.
I did the first pour into the wider pond last night. I should have put the trestles in first, but that will only impact 1 or 2 of them. Besides, the "water" is actually more solid than the rocks underneath it!
I just dropped in for coffee. I wanted to make sure that Joe made the transition as well.
MrB, How do you work a full schedule and manage the late night hockey? For me, 5:00 comes way too early to be out that late. If I get home by 9:00 and in bed by 10:00, I am pushing it.
By the way, does anyone know where the Font button is?
Yeah, Joe, where is the font button. (Oh rats. I just noticed that the old trick of using CTRL-i to go to italics no longer works. Instead, it toggles the "favorites" window on and off. Foo.
I made up 5 very short trestle bents (15 mm tall - I found it was easier to measure these in Metric units than English.) These will go under the short section of track crossing the pond/stream area. I have to get these in place before I can continue pouring layers of Envirotex, so they're #1 on the railroad to-do list. I looked at them in place, and I think I may want 1 or 2 more.
I have a weird schedule on hockey days. I get to work at about 7, so I'm home at 4 and I take a nap for an hour or two. But, I really only get about 4, maybe 5 hours of sleep after hockey, so Wednesday is kind of a drag-myself-through-the-day situation. After I finished up those trestle bents, I went to bed at 8:30 to catch up a bit. I'm usually back to normal by Friday.
Looks like you are progressing well, MrB. We cut wood for a while, and now we plan to head into the train room for a while. Larry says, that he needs to noodle out the next part of his trestle.
Later, Sue
Morning all, Joe, I'll have a black coffee and some cheese toast. Thanks.
Well we made it to MO. yesterday evening about 6 PM after stopping in Tulsa for a while, We had a good trip, my back did pretty well for the most part, it started giving me trouble after we had been driving for about 8 hours or so. Once we arrived and I got to moving around some it got better.
I brought along a small HO scale train to play with my great nephew who is 3, I set it up last night and I wish you all could have seen him, He had the time of his life! my sister has been telling me how much he likes trains and she was right. I got it up and running and he was simply amazed watching it go around "All By Itself" he said. I showed him how to run the throttle and he really enjoyed making it go fast then slow. Once he stopped it and said the people were getting off the caboose. I took some really good pics, will try to post some later.
I have been studing the manual on my DCC system and don't believe it is going to be as hard to figure it out as I was thinking.
I see joe has my toast here, Take cary and I will see you all later. Mike
Good morning, Joe. I will have a coffee, please.
Larry is working on the girders for the trestle. His sister and her husband are coming over, so I am doing a little light cleaning.
Mike, Great job on the mentoring of your nephew. Have a great time on your trip.
Back to work, Sue
Morning all. Joe bring me a light breakfast of waffles and coffee this morning, Thanks.
We are still in Cape Girardeua MO. and will be leaving this morning. I thought you all might be interested in seeing a pic of a future Model RR'er
This is Bryce, he just turned 3 and loves trains! We played ''trains'' most all weekend, had a memorable time to say the least.
Friday morning we were getting ready to go out and see some sights when my mother fell and we had to take her to the emergency room, (She is 73) we spent all Friday morning at the hospital, and found she had broken her ankle and had to spent the weekend in a recliner with her foot propped up with an ice pack on her ankle. They put it in a ''boot'' and she will see her Dr. when she gets home. What a bummer.
We had a pretty good time in spite of everything, My sister did take me to see the Mississippi River, I thought it was pretty neat.
We will be leaving this morning heading back to Okla. We will have to make lots of ''rest stops'' partally for my mother and myself. I am not able to ride in the car for long periods of time before my back starts hurting really badly. We are planning on making the 650 mile trip in two days and not rush things as none of us have to be anywhere soon.
You all take care and I will check back when I can. Mike
Joe, I'll have coffee and a bagel with cream cheese this morning. A glass of OJ, too, if it's the fresh-squeezed stuff. Mmmm...
Love that picture, Mike. I know I was like that when I was a little kid. He's going to remember that day for years.
Looks like you and your Mom are going to have to apply a model railroading slogan to your car travel: "It's not a race, it's a journey." As long as you've got the time, splitting a long drive up into two shorter ones can turn an ordeal into something closer to a vacation. On our camping trip to Nova Scotia last summer, we did a lot of driving, but we gave ourselves a lot of time, avoided the highways, and got to see a lot of great scenery.
We had a leak in our sunroom roof some time back, and we finally got it repaired. This past weekend was spent cleaning up the residual damage to the wall and the paint job. I did the joint compound a while back, but I finally picked up some sanding screen and smoothed it out. Once again, I discovered that blue painters' tape is just as good for painting walls as it is for painting trolley cars.
I did get to work a bit on the layout while the paint was drying, though. The larger pond is almost done. I got some marsh grass in last night, while watching the end of a great and entertaining season for the Boston Red Sox. I think the whole scene will come together once I put some more trees around the pond. After that, I'll add some ducks and geese and it should look pretty good.
I will sit on this bar stool and see if anyone shows up.
Larry got the girders and bent finished yesterday. He managed to get one coat of stain on today. While he was doing that I got back to work on my Walthers coaling tower. I have been looking at that for 6 months and not even feeling guilty. Now as soon as the stairways are semi assembled, I will try some paint. Boy, oh boy. That kit is a bit detailed for your first kit building. I have done the laser wood kits, but this is my first plastic kit.
Mike, Looks like you are doing a great job mentoring.
MrB, Glad to see that someone else has honeydo projects in the way of modeling.
PS. I got the top of the page, so this round is on me.
'Evening, Sue. I'll take you up on that.
Well, the RAV should be back in my driveway in another day or two, ready for our next adventure...
As for the layout building I thought I'd do, that transmogrified itself into a decorative block wall for next year's new flower bed. Had a Lowe's gift card that we had to use for something...
Mike, sorry to hear about your mother's problem. Still, it looks like you have one happy three-year-old there...
At the rate the new forum software is re-connecting my old posts, they should all be available some time in late 2010. Glad I went back through them before the great upheaval. OTOH, there seems to be a bit more activity since the new format came on line.
Sue, structure building is one of those things I'm looking forward to. This layout is the first I've ever built that is likely to need anything more complex than a yard office and a handcar shed.
Well, it's getting late, and tomorrow will arrive on schedule whether or not I'm ready for it. See ya,
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Good morning again. Just coffee today, I think. Thanks.
Chuck, didn't you say you got a camera? C'mon, now, don't be shy. We want to see your layout as it looks right now. I know, it's not finished, but I think of those early in-progress photos kind of like baby pictures - it's fun to watch the layout grow up.
Actually, doing these "water features" dovetails pretty well with the honey-do list. Each step only takes a bit of time, but then I have to wait for plaster to set up, or glue to dry, or Envirotex to cure. So, it's a few minutes of layout time followed by several hours of waiting. With Envirotex, of course, you don't want to be doing anything nearby that might possibly stir up dust. That said, the new stream is almost done. All that's really left is to replace the standard flex-track with bridge track (tighter tie spacing) and ballast the approaches. That won't happen for a while, because this whole section is still "temporary" track until I get the rest of the water done in Moose Bay, so I can permanently mount the big bridge. But, here it is as it looked last night:
Morning all, Joe, I'm with Mr. B this morning, just coffee. Thanks.
We had a good trip yesterday, made it as far as Ft. Smith, Arkansas. We did make a few stops along the way, Restrooms, Fuel, Things to take back with me. I did pick a handfull of rocks in Arkansas that I am going to attempt to place on my layout, some incorperted ito the mountains and use some for outcropings. I thought it would be a nice place to display some ''keepsakes''.
Mom is doing really well, She and I are the opposite, She needs to sit with her foot across Dad's lap and doesn't walk well, and I have trouble sitting very long and need to stop and walk around every once in a while.
My Brother is supposed to meet us at his houseboat on Eufalla lake and take me home. Mom and the others will go on to Dallas from there. This will cut out about 3 hours or more of driving time for them. I have really had a good trip, but am ready to get home. (Hook up my DCC for starters, and see my dog, I know he is missing me and will be glad to see me back home).
You all have a good day and I will check back in later. Mike
Good evening, All. Looks like we are all hitting different times of the day.
Chuck, What are you doing up at that hour of the night? You did promise baby pictures. None of us are done either.
MrB, Those short bents look nice.
Mike, Sound like you are staying busy on your trip.
WOW…A guy is gone for a few days and stuff changes!
Actually, between the forum changing and myself changing my ISP, resulting in a new email address, I have been unsuccessful in getting through the DOOR of the Barn for a bit now! Seems all is right for now though and it’s nice to be back!.
Nothing new to report other, than the difficulties I’m having eith the new ISP / email thing.
Good to see you all here…I’ll buy the next round..
Coffee and a cinnamon roll, please, Joe.
JB, Glad to have you back. It took me several days to get back in too. Hope you are getting some layout time.
Thanks Sue…
Glade to be back here too! It was a bit of an ordeal, but with some help…I got back!
Sunny fall days don’t bode well for working in the Trainroom, but I have “puttered” a little with some more work on the off pike staging. It’s actually coming together pretty well and I am close to having the upper level benchwork in place!!
Today’s Thought to Live By / Thought for the Day: “Forgive yourself…Be True to your relationships…And, be Genuine!”
Joe, I will have a large chef salad, and it is 5:00 somewhere so I will have your dark beer on tap.
JB, Getting benchwork complete really gets you fired up to continue.
Howdy, Joe. I'll have a boilermaker, and a plate of spaghetti - thanks.
Let me clarify a misconception. I don't have a digital camera. My wife has a digital camera. So far, I haven't even succeeded in convincing her that she should take the cartridge out of it and print copies of the 100 or so pictures she's only seen on the camera's tiny screen. Negotiations are continuing...
Mike, your mother's misadventure reminded me of something that happened to a lady of my acquaintance a couple of decades back. She was at a prestigious international competition, and injured her foot in practice. As a result she had to perform with her foot heavily taped, which hampered her enough to limit her to one silver medal (in vault.) On the other events she did better than most, but not good enough to medal. When she returned to Florida, her orthopedist set her broken foot and put it in a cast... (The lady's name? Brandy Johnson. The event? The 1989 World Gymnastics Championships.)
While wandering around the new, improved(?) forums, I couldn't help noticing that we folks with small trains are a LOT more active than the rest of the Trains.com community. And it's not all comments about the forums, either.
Sue, you seemed surprised that I'm up late. What's surprising?
Well, my (real world) spaghetti is ready. See ya later (which is a term and spelling I picked up from Brandy...)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - when not watching gymnastics or Sumo)
It is 7:00 in the morning, and a plate of spagetti sounds good. Am I nuts? Joe, I will just have coffee for now.
tomikawaTT Sue, you seemed surprised that I'm up late. What's surprising? We're both in the same time zone. I've always been a night owl. I also get along on fewer hours of sleep than the average bear. Being fully retired, I can sleep late.
Chuck, I have always been a morning person so it is hard to sleep past 5:00 am on my days off. You can understand my thought process. Some day when I retire we will see if I change. Glad to see that someone is enjoying 80 degree weather.
BUMP.
Joe, I will sit on this bar stool to see if anyone else drops by this evening.
Well, I can't let a lady drink alone. I'll have a draft lager, Joe. Nothing heavy. I've got to get some sleep at some point.
Just got back from hockey. Last week, the game ended when a shot hit my goalie mask and broke the helmet. No, it wasn't some blazing rocket from an NHL star, just a run-of-the-mill shot and an old, already-cracked helmet. They guy at the shop where I picked up a new mask said they hadn't made those for 20 years, so I guess I got my money's worth out of it.
I'm working on Lady Buc's Seafood Bar now. I have this old, old wood building I got in a box o' trains from a yard sale when I was a young teenager. It's the only building on that layout that had an interior, and it's still in relatively good shape, so I decided to turn the former "Java Dive" into something a bit more interesting. The Lady Bucs are my daughter's lacrosse team. Our town of Bedford calls their teams the "Buccaneers," and someone made up the Lady Bucs logo just for the lacrosse girls. I scanned her jacket for the logo, and I'll use it on the sign for the restaurant.
This will sit at the water's edge on Moose Bay. It's going to have a relatively large deck with tables and chairs, and I found that putting together the deck and cutting it to fit the space really solidified my planning for the Bay itself. It's still a big pink gap, but now I know the borders much better, and I can proceed with a bit more certainty about how I want it to look.
Well, time to hit the road, I'm afraid. Mornings still come early, even if it is still quite dark when that alarm goes off. That will change next week. No change in my schedule, but remember, set your clocks back on Saturday night.
That was fun last night. And the pizza was just in time.
This morning I have been working on my first background building. I am kitbashing a Walthers 3-n-1 building. Hopefully, I will get at least 3 buildings from the kit. I plan to start a thread for suggestions on businesses or buildings that would be close to the TT.