BM1 Lee Soule USCG (ret) L.S.&W Railroad Serving the Lower Great Lakes
Good morning. It's 47 and cloudy. High today should be around 50 and it'll be partly cloudy. We had a long, hard, heavy rain last night with quite a bit of wind. Fortunately there was little damage and no power outages. In just a bit over two hours I'll be going into town to have an eye exam done, the first step to getting my new glasses. I know from past experience that my eyes will be very sensitive for the next few days. Now get this. On the 10th I have to go to Alexandria to get my eyes checked for diabetes damage. That's gonna be another few days spent in darkness. Oh joy! I'm really looking forward to that. NOT! Today's Weather for: Sundown, LA 71446-6114 12/4/2008 Wind Chill: 43°F Humidity: 95% Dew Point: 45°F So Far Today High: 55°F Low: 47°F Rain: 0.12" Rain Rate: 0.00"/h Gust: 26mph NNE Today High: 50 Partly cloudy. Much cooler. Highs around 50. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Tonight Low: 35 Partly cloudy. Colder. Lows in the mid 30s. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph. Wind chill readings as low as 23.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Good Morning All,
I see Bill's been in already so I'll have Grandmas Pancakes and some juice with that coffee - O.J. from Eds' grove of course! Bill - have you had a chance to start a layout or are you still basking in the glory of not having to go to work daily?
The John Allen debates are still going full bore out on the main here. I think that the combination of tenacity, skill, vision, and the ability to photograph and describe his layout inspired a lot of people. He may not have been the first or even the best, but I think we owe him a debt for moving the hobby forward. I am still amazed when I see the early color pics just how real the overall effect is. I appreciate the whimsey as well in engine 13, the inspector, swaybacked cars, etc.
Lots to do again today and I'm ready to get started. I'll check in later. CUL, J.R.
Good Morning from Tipton IN !
Bill Tidler Jr.
Near a cornfield in Indiana...
Large glass of Eggnog, please & thanks.
***Philip, were there any FBI Agents in the vicinity of that wide vision caboose? (Jim, we think alike)
***Robby....Outstanding weathering job!
***Paul, sounds like some perfect "extra work" for you. Anything to keep the MRRing funds in good shape.
***Jim, still needs carpet, front porch screens, commodes, hook up sinks, etc...& LOTS of clean up. A few goofs here and there were made, but nothing that I can't live with. It is "close" and the days left on the contract are ticking down.
Well, the med for my insomnia is starting to kick in. Hate taking anything, but there is a point at which even I realize the risk of doing nothing can be very detrimental to health, especially with certain issues are already creating havock.
Goon night all. Rob
Good Evening Diners!
Well it's a nippy 2F out there right now so winter is certainly here. At least there isn't much snow but I expect that will come soon.
Jeff, it was good to hear your Dad is helping you out with the glasses. I can imagine how frustrating it was to lose them. I just got my first pair of presciption bi-focals as I was tired of taking the reading glasses off and on but am having a hard time adjusting to them. I probably should get some strings for them as I can see putting them down somewhere and losing them. I think my wife would kill me if I did put those strings on them.
Robby, that is truly a great job of weathering on that box car!
Not much new here, just work, eat and sleep it seems.
Hope everyone is well,
CN Charlie
Well. There seems to be quite a lot of pies going around so I think i'll just check out our pumpkin cheesecake and get a slice. Maybe get a little eggnog on the side...
I'm going to go into the t.rm.and see if I can't get some stuff done on the wye...
Have a goodnight
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
Robby P. Robby
Robby
Robby! you know you can't take a pic of a real railcar and call the weathering your own!
SWELL job!
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
Evening Gang: This will be short tonight. John moved the rest of the furniture out of the former bed room including the desk that had the computer on it. Right now the monitor is on the tower and the keyboard is on my knees. It's not too handy but it works. This room willbe turned into my office untill we get the room across the hall fixed up for my office. When that will be is anybodys guess. I have soom old pieces of tops from a office at Six Flags that I can use for a desk for the computer. I'll put one of them across a couple of two drawer filling cabnets.
Robby that box car looks like you shrunk a real one. Well Done.
I was offered a job today at Clark Gardens helping to take care of the garden layout. I told them that I take being retired very seriously. I will think about it and maybe do a couple of days a week there. I'd be mainly doing repaire work on the rolling stock and locomotives and the track. I could use the money for MRR stuff.
Well I'm going to hit the sack.
Good Night All
Well, here's one happy dog:
http://www.dogwork.com/dogsnow/
Funny! Now, can you imagine a cat doing that?
Jim in Cape Girardeau
Evening, Chloe, Diners. I'll have a bowl of that hot veggie beef soup and a cup of decaf, please. Thanks!
Jerry, rest up and get over whatever it is that you have right now. You sure don't want to be sick in bed when it's Christmas time and the grandkids want you to run trains!
Sawyer, one thing I saw done once with an old shell of a loco was - chop its height down so as to make it look like the loco went off the tracks and got buried in the (river) mud, at a slight angle. You could do some practice weathering/rusting on it before you 'plant' it in the mud... Hey, can you post a drawing of your (modified) track plan? Y'got me curious how it's looking now. Thanks!
Jeff, that's outstanding that your Dad sprung for the eye exam! I have confidence that (even with your Wallie-World glasses) you'll have the engine figured out and fixed up running better soon.
JR, when you first described the rotisserie, I had this bizarre image (had been reading the latest issue of MR at the library earlier tonight) of "John Allen's #13" on the rotisserie... If you know what I mean.
Aw, Robby, you're makin' me drool with all that fine weathering! I know, I know, I'll get the chalks and paints out this weekend and see if I can practice some weathering myself.
But it'll be a busy weekend - Friday night one friend from church is having a (children's) book signing from 6 to 9 p.m. (she already gave me one copy of her first book; not sure if she'll have the second book out yet, but she said the draft copies were sent off to the publishers a couple of months or more ago). Also Friday evening, I'm supposed to have my birthday dinner with daughter and son-in-law (and handsome grandson). Then Sat. a.m. is the usual laundry time, followed at 1 p.m. by MRR club's Christmas dinner and train running (which may take a few hours, as he will have us switching lists to take care of, if it's like our last year's event). And somewhere in Sat. night, I need to finish up tweaking the lesson notes/plans/copies for the Sunday Singles small group. Okay, maybe Sunday afternoon I can do weathering...
PC, if I were you, I'd watch out for Chloe and Vinnie - I think RT asked them to 'run interference' and protect the pies... You might draw back a stub, as they say. On that closed up bay window caboose, maybe they were transporting 'something' down Southwesterly to Roswell?
Rob, I can tell you're chomping at the bit for moving day into the new part of the house to come, huh? Hang in there, they're bound to get done soon. What else can you tell that they need to finish yet?
I'll ease into the corner booth and finish my soup before I head for home. See you all tomorrow!
Blessings and prayers,
now theres a shock PC. pie raiding might have to have a word with Vinny about this
Robby - nice job on the box car! Glad you were able to reason with the jury folks.
BC - the rotesserie is to rotate one frame at a time. We need paint coverage all around all the tubes and trying to paint a bit at a time then tipping the frame on it's side to do more always results in dry spots and orange peel plus usually spots missed entirely. We have two crashed frames underway right now with a third coming in Monday plus four "tubs" for Indy Lights cars to do after that so the rotisserie should be appreciated by the paint shop.
PC - please step away from the pies - one might be booby trapped! Hate to see you needing to mop the floor and scrub the walls, no ? And weren't you warned about Chloes mean left hook?
Jeff - glad you have a solution for the glasses gig but hold the olives, they're right off my diet.
CUL, J.R.
Having fun here for a change. I'm watching 'Smokey and the Bandit' on the Slueth channel and having a laugh a minute.
Robby, your weathering skills ASTOUND me!
Sawyer Berry
Clemson University c/o 2018
Building a protolanced industrial park layout
How about a cup of egg nog, and some pumpkin pie
Well I got out of being a juror. I will have to go 8/10/09 thou.
Finally finished upi the Railbox. I finished it up the other day. Heres 2 shots of it.
I can't get rid of my head ache. I guess I will hit the sack early tonight.
Everybody have a warm night,
"Rust, whats not to love?"
blownout cylinder Sawyer; The layout is so full of possibilities it will definitely make for a lot of scene developments.... As for new body for GP9 I can remember a few specimens of my own. I have a kind of 'black museum' of painting disasters sitting in a rubble pile behind the engine house...
Sawyer; The layout is so full of possibilities it will definitely make for a lot of scene developments.... As for new body for GP9 I can remember a few specimens of my own. I have a kind of 'black museum' of painting disasters sitting in a rubble pile behind the engine house...
It is. I can see what I want to do in my mind how it will take shape. I'll probably wait until my 4x8 is up and running and the yard has basic scenery. Speaking of my 4x8:
went up there today, and took out a switch for the yard. I don't need 4 tracks, and I can work with only 3. The A/D track can act like a 4th classification track, and wrose come to worse, the main as a 5th. I also moved the engine shed again. Now to get the track for my yard tracks, then ballast it, get the lot down around the engine shed, and get the forest started (going to need A LOT more pines, lol).
Hey, I almost forgot.......
I saw something interesting yesterday. At about 5:45pm CSX No. 428 followed by CSX No. 413 came by with a decent sized train. The interesting part was near the end of the train though. About 6 or 8 cars from the end was a wide vision caboose. All the windows were covered over and the whole thing was painted a cream color. Kinda strange to see that I thought.
rtraincollector Okay lets see if I can hide these pies from PC there for the Sunday dinner . Flo I'm putting them in the back bottom shelf no one ever looks down there for anything. lets see 1 chocolate merrange, 1 lemon merrange, 1 banana cream, and 2 apple 1 dutch and 1 lace.
Okay lets see if I can hide these pies from PC there for the Sunday dinner . Flo I'm putting them in the back bottom shelf no one ever looks down there for anything. lets see 1 chocolate merrange, 1 lemon merrange, 1 banana cream, and 2 apple 1 dutch and 1 lace.
Heh, heh, heh......lets see now, any booby traps? Hmmmmmmm, looks safe enough.......
Tall glass of lemon water & a plate full of chocolate chip cookies (as if I need them), please & thanks!
***Jeffrey, good to hear you will be getting an eye exam & glasses. Ever thought of putting an adjustable valve infront of that cat. converter? (I assume they still make & sell them for "open road use".
So far I've only installed one of the three ceiling fans for our little Diner. Perhaps tomorrow I can get the others up and then get back to work on the front deck. Today I had to put together an electric fireplace for the Library room. Wife found one half price and grabbed it. Not the same as the real thing, but it looks nice enough. Would sure benefit from a sound/smell generator though.
The new Atlas diesel arrived today. All my train stuff is packed away, so no way to test run it. Why did I buy it again? Sure doesn't resemble a steam loco, nor would it look right running beside past one. It will live on a shelf (yet to be built) in the new train room next to the other few token diesels. Sure wish the contractor would finish this build up so we can settle in (ie: start building train tables).
Rob
Not much else happening just taking it easy.
Talk to you all later
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
I seem to have sstttrrretttccchhed my post a bit. OOOPPS.
JimRCGMO Sawyer, I always heard that (unless one had dynamic brake fans and the other didn't - which varies from RR to RR), it was awfully hard to tell a GP7 from a GP9 without looking at the builders' plates. So you may not have to get a new shell after all. Best wishes on getting the layout and mini-layouts done.
Sawyer, I always heard that (unless one had dynamic brake fans and the other didn't - which varies from RR to RR), it was awfully hard to tell a GP7 from a GP9 without looking at the builders' plates. So you may not have to get a new shell after all. Best wishes on getting the layout and mini-layouts done.
While my GP9 does not have dynamic brakes, it still would be getting a new shell anyways, b/c of how bad I screwed it up with that spray paint crud. However, after reading Gerry's article for the build a scene contest, my juices are flowing on my 4x8 again, so might not get around to this thing for a while, lol.
Hello everyone. We were out of town(my wife and I) at some friends and already started on the Xmas dinner rounds. Of course that also means come back with barrels of stuff and...
GMT; how many frames do you do at a time? Hopefully no one has to become an octopuss to do the painting...
I'm going to find some pix and see if some of them actually came out this time....
Good Evening All,
Getting ready to head out after another long day. Been a quiet day at the diner but not at the shop. Got the rotisserie started so we can more easily paint the formula car frames, and most of the car due next week is ready to assemble. Just need the rest back from paint and we can get after it. Catch y'all later, J.R.
I went to Wal-Mart this morning to the grocery shopping for the perishable good. 1 box of chicken, 8 Totino's pizzas, 5 $1 Mexican dinners, 7 of those little $1 Banquet dinners, 2 packs of sliced ham for sandwiches, 1 box of fish sticks, 2 packs of chimichangas, 2 jars of sliced olives (love my sliced olives), 1 loaf of jalapeno and cheese bread and 2 packs of cheese. Picked up a cheap pair of bifocal reading glasses while I was there. The bottom parts for reading and the top parts just regular glass. After I got home my father gave me a check for $74 to go to Wal-Mart tomorrow morning at 9:30 for an eye exam. Surprised me! Usually he's so tight with money he squeaks when he walks. My niece says she know of a place online where I can get my glasses cheap. I just need a current prescription. Worked on the car a bit today. I took the EGR valve off and removed the valves base from the engine. There was a lot of carbon fouling and one of the three holes in the base was completely plugged. I knocked it out and scraped it clean with a screw driver blade then did the same with the mounting port on the engine, being very careful not to scratch it. I reassembled it then spent the next hour inspecting vacuum lines. Not my idea of fun. I found one that had a break in it and taped it up real tight with electrical tape. I thought maybe that was it but it wasn't. It runs somewhat better but is still choppy when I step on it. When I let off it takes off like a bat out of hades. I also took a serious look at the plug wires. Seems like it's been running a bit worse since those new wires were put on a week ago. They're radio-suppression wires. I've never used those type before. On a hunch I took them off and reinstalled the old wires. They're high temp, high performance. Much better! I'm still leaning toward the catalytic converter being part of the problem. I've already drilled one hole the as big a round as my thumb (and I have a BIG thumb) ahead of the converter. Maybe I need to drill another one and see if that improves things any. I may have time for that this weekend.
Good evening all
I'll have a nice mug of char please girls
well in Gavs world its dark and getting cold but dry all the cherubs are out at Propaganda tonight so will be blasted when they get back. got to change 1 waggon and 3 cabooses over to knuckle couplers so keeping busy.
well thats all for now I'll be at the counter if anybody wants me
Afternoon...Its a cloudy gloomy day here with a light cold rain...I'll have a cup of hot tea...I am a little under the weather didn't sleep well and can't seem to nap today..Dr. sent me some new Meds...I ran the new track cleaning car but thats been just about it..I'll take my tea and slip over to back booth...You all have a good one...Jerry
Duke
"Don't take a wooden nickel,because it isn't worth a dime" by my Dad
"There are only 3 things you need out of life:A gentle grade,the wind in your face,and cinders in your hair.....But keep an eye on the water glass!" Jack Evans
Looks like a fairly slow morning in the Diner, Zoe. I'll have a bowl of chili, some grated cheese and onions, those oyster crackers, and a glass of milk, please 'n' Thank you, ma'am!
Ryan, enjoyed your GSMRR blog (and all the pics. Those GP9's (low or high nose) keep on going, don't they? Did Ben enjoy himself a lot on that?
Rob, wish you/your Dr. could figure how to help you get better sleep than you've been having lately. Kind of messes with the rest of your days when you don't get your night's sleep. going up for you.
PC, we know that you wouldn't miss a slice of pie if you knew it was there and could get to it.
Jeff, did you get yourself some temporary 'eyes' yet today? Don't want you getting your eyes strained and having a headache from that.
Mark/Hoople, I'd agree with what JR said about dealing with the bullies/jerks/...Keep your school work on track so you get to high school (and maybe some of those bullies will wind up dropping out - or get in trouble with the juvenile authorities and get moved elsewhere?).
I still have to get my Christmas tree and decorations put up at home. Might do that tonight. I'd like to figure how to have my battery-powered under-the-tree train to run without jumping the track on the curves... Wonder if I could have someone who knows more about electronics to wire a resistor or something in to lower the power to the motor on the loco. I may ask our electronics guru and layour design architect Kevin when I see him at the MRR club dinner-n-train-running this Saturday.
I've also been debating about having Kevin DCC-ize one of my diesels so I can use it to run when we're running trains at one of the club members' house, since they all have DCC on their layouts (those who have a layout built, that is). But the minimum DCC system from Digitrax is way beyond my budget for now (until I maybe get a tax refund next year and put that with some money from a paycheck).
Zoe, I'll be w**king on polishing off my chili at the window booth until someone else comes in.
Blessings,
Morning folks!
Drop in to say howdy and such and see what's fixin in the kitchen in the diner!
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving Holiday, I'm still playing catch-ups from being out for the extended weekend.
As promised, I have a report from the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad and it is posted on my Piedmont Division Blog site, click the link above for the full report, but to wet your palete here is a photo from the train museum's Lionel layout.
Ryan BoudreauxThe Piedmont Division Modeling The Southern Railway, Norfolk & Western & Norfolk Southern in HO during the merger eraCajun Chef Ryan