The Coffee Shop (a place to chat) Est. 2004

[Anonymous]

Got the steam winch engine running on air today. LIttle compressor really had to work to keep up even with the engine just turning over slow. I think the rings in one of the valves is leaking pretty badly.
I'll try to post a pic. It ain't much to look at now, but someday soon!
by the way, how do you post a pic here?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by fec153
I am nervous about Deb's operation tomorrow. ... Thanks for all the previous prayers, I'm not ashamed to ask for more...

Flip, I was totally clueless about this[:O]...! My family offered a Rosary decade for Deb this evening. My kids, who usually complain, were surprisingly cooperative when they learned the intention.

[jdolan]

Flip, I'm sending prayers for you and Deb too. My lady will probably not need surgery .
For the rest of you folks, Have been working on my layout, but have to go shopping for some crossings to go much further. Hope top do that this week and maybe run trains next weekend.
Welcome to all the new folks on here, this is a real great place to come to visit and see some great modeling. Belated Birthday Greetings to all that I have missed.

Have fun guys will be back later.

Jack

[trolleyboy]

Good evening clubbers.Just a quick pop in the door seems to be empty so chloe I'll take my tea to go please. Flip let Deb know that Heather and I are thinking of you guys.Take care of both of yourselves. Rob

[philnrunt]

Evening all- Serious stuff first-
Flip- Tell Deb to hang in there, sounds like her Dr knows what hes doing. You're in our thoughts.
Ok, we now return to our regular program, already in progress-
Ferg- I actually took them for orange, as I've seen that color shift from digitals before. And no matter that you are Canadian, that you are a sailor, and that you are a model railroader, I KNEW you wern't cra-zee enough to paint jennies pink! Salmon maybe, but never pink!
JimRGC- The weather guesser- good term for them- says it's gonna stay cold here until.....(I'm thinking July) but at least thru next week. I think we all could use a break. 'Cept for Ed. The life of Riley, I'm tellin' ya!
der5997- Good name for the parish RR. I can just see the boxcar slogans now- "We Run Between Haven and ....well, you get the idea. And I guarantee you the UP can't charge us for this one!
Ed- Asleep after picking oranges? I fall asleep after getting OJ from the fridge! And BTW, those smoothies sound fantastic. Lord, I wish I could drink 'em all day. The best ones I ever had were peach (of course) in Savannah. Man, they probably shot my sugar to the moon, but at least I can say I tasted heaven!
attaboy- Why can't things be easy- good question, only answer I can come up with is-engineers are totally EVIL. It is their secret creedo to make everything so complicated that you need to hire another engineer to work on it. I think Smersh or Spectre trains them. Thru***rains lawyers. (Now how many have any idea what that was about?)
siberianmo, trolleyboy and anyone else concerned- The boys arrived today- and they are beautiful! I met the UPS man in the mud, took the package inside and opened my first all Kato engines. Paint on USS #1 is fantastic, a bit thick on EJ&E 665, but not bad. Brought them to work tonight, drilling out mounting holes, gonna borrow the chiefs magnifier headset (he carves neat stuff) tomorrow night and start attaching details.
Now, I have to start on the layout, no excuses, as the MIDWest has 2 serious tonnage haulers to move their cars about. And as for you folks, feel assured that any traffic you route thru the MIDWest will arrive on the advertised, those 567s are WAY reliable.
Maybe except for Ed. Takes awhile to siphon off enough OJ to offset the lousy weather.
And everything I broken so far can be easily repaired!
Gonna look at 'em again- g'night all!

[lupo]

Flip and Deb, my thoughts are with you, all best wishes from this side

[lupo]

and as I started off a new page,
I'll keep the tradition offering all goodies on me for this page
anyone for some more BOLUSSEN ?
hmm, as I did not have breakfast this morning I'll rush over to bakery and get me some !
yummi!

[Fergmiester]

Well I'm about to go into Forum withdrawl as in a minute the pewter will be offline and wire a dangling as it goes out the door and to the shop.

Later gents
Fergie

[tomwatkins]

Good Mornin' Everybody,

Flip, our thoughts and prayers will be with Deb and you today. Hang in there and keep us posted as you can. We're all with you.

It's a chilly morning in the mountains this morning. There's supposed to be some wintery mix on it's way to us a little later this mornning. So, despite all the flowers blooming and popping up, winter's not quite done with us yet.

The odds and ends yesterday managed to expand to fill most of the available time and energy, so I didn't get a lot done on the light mountain. Today will be a better day.I did get a few little things done on it, awnings over the cab side windows, boiler handrail posts, and grabs on the front of the cab sides, so it's getting there. I'm really going to try to get the air pipe runs done today.

Ryan, Your making good progress on getting the train room ready. What else do you have to do to it after you fini***he floor? I know what you mean about the weekends being extremely busy. It seems like ours are usually flat out.

Siberianmo, That is a beautiful layout in a beautiful train room. Having an attractive setting for the layout makes a lot of difference in the overall appearance. Your friend has an interesting sense of humor. It would be an attention getting scene, though.

Fergie, Amen! It's never too late to add steam to a railroad. Even if it's a steam excursion train, it's still steam. Hope you get the 'puter back quickly. What's happpened to it.?

Selector, you're right. Gardening tends to take a lot of time away from the layout. Louise and I are big time gardeners. We love it, and it's something we do together, so it's time very well spent. It's good for the soul.

Noah, enjoy the club! I hope you can work out the scheduling so you can make the meetings. They can be a whole lot of fun.

Luc, It's really cool that your Grandson want's to come see the railroad a lot. It doesn't get better than that. Enjoy! I really like the graphic. Steam is alive.

CatTom, using a Yellowstone to pull reefer trains makes perfect sense to me. Railroads used what they had or could get when traffic increased or motive power was in short supply. I'll bet one Yellowstone could pull a loooong persishable train.

Phil, i'm glad the new locos have arrived! Enoy them.

I just got up to get some more coffee. It's really good this morning, and it's snowing.! Great big fluffy flakes coming down. It's very beautiful.

I'd better get off of here andget some stuff done.
Have a great day, everybody,
Ga.Tom

[siberianmo]

Good morning all! Only have a couple of minutes this fine day to enjoy a cuppa ... decaf please, hold the Jack.[:)]

Got only a bit of work done yesterday in that Juneau wanted to be outside more than in - and since we have no area that I can trust him to run alone in - that means he's on a tether - about 25 ft of it; one of those retracable gizmos. So, that limited my activity. Then the trips to the wallpaper stores to locate the background I'm looking for - a night sky with stars or snow - what an exasperating experience!

Maybe it's just my age, but I detest those places! Books and books and books of wallpaper samples, with no easy reference to assist you. Lots and lots of ladies lining up projects for their husbands (my guess![:D]) and little old me trying to find one simple pattern! I wound up with an Exedrin headache - and I don't get those very often. By the way, I found what I'm after on the net!!! And yes - I had checked out a few zillion sites BEFORE going to the stores - but we all know how that is.

Now to the replies:

JimRCGMo

QUOTE: Siberianmo, you'll need a stepladder to fully appreciate the Polar Express branchline, I believe! You're making very good progress on getting that built, too

Jim - there's one available any time one requires it! The ceiling in that part of the basement isn't really very high - so the vantage points will afford a nice view of the large oval run. More pix as the progress warrants ......

Rob

QUOTE: ]Originally posted by siberianmo
I OWE YOU ALL 'DRINKS ON ME' - apparently I was a 'page starter' some time ago and failed to recognize it. Order what you will ......... (What does cyber money look like?)

Hey my best recollection is that the cybermoney is pink and has a picture of Bob or lupo wearing the Pink hat It only comes in million dollar denominations so don't try to pass it a wal-mart LOL

Rob - I'll stick with the money I normally pass use - just printed on one side![}:)]

SteveBlackledgede - Any more shots of that Japanese Bullet train? Great picture!

der5997

QUOTE: siberianmo: John Wood - Fergie - Teffie: From the photo's you've provided, no doubt who the modelers are! Great work indeed and obviously lots of talent to go along with it.

Thanks, coming from you that's a real compliment. In my case it's mostly smoke, mirrors, and out of focus pics!
See you later, gcp.[9-D]

I know about those out of focus pictures ..... ever since I've gone digital, I've found that my focus (hmmmmmm) isn't the same as it used to be (whatever that means!) I'm learning - but I've only had a few shots that I consider equal to what I would get with my 35 mm "old fashioned" camera.

selector

QUOTE: Siberianmo, it's a struggle, but we seem to be able to lift our 'project' back to the front page every now and then. It is getting heavier, though.

Crandell - The CANADIAN PASSENGER RAILROADS discussion seems to be gaining some momentum now that we've "let" the trolley guys in (catching all of this TrolleyBoy??[:D]) My guess is that those who care about this topic really won't care about the page it is on - they will make and take the time to find it.

See ya and I appreciate your participation too!

LilRob1974

QUOTE: Teffy, Railroading_Brit, siberianmo, those are some cool photos.

Thanx![tup]

philnrunt

QUOTE: siberianmo, trolleyboy and anyone else concerned- The boys arrived today- and they are beautiful! I met the UPS man in the mud, took the package inside and opened my first all Kato engines.

Awright! Now you can say, "It was well worth the wait!" Having fun, yet??[:)][tup]

TomWatkins

QUOTE: Siberianmo, That is a beautiful layout in a beautiful train room. Having an attractive setting for the layout makes a lot of difference in the overall appearance. Your friend has an interesting sense of humor. It would be an attention getting scene, though.

Tom - The room was built AFTER the layout was constructed. Kinda backwards - but apparently it worked out. I seem to approach most things kinda bassakwards. And by the way, a "sicko" is a "sicko," no matter what they do for a living![:D] See ya.

[Anonymous]

Good morning all. Chloe, I'll have a vegetarian omelette with OJ and a large coffee...

Weather Report in Woodstock, MD, 6:15am:
Outdoors: 23 deg. F
Garage, indoors: 69 deg. F
Conclusion: The heat pump and insulation on my [future] train room are working as planned.
Sorry about talking this thing to death, but after spending nearly $3000 that was originally earmarked for 'direct' model railroading purchases, I need to keep convincing myself that it was a worthwhile expense and - more importantly - stay motivated to keep doing the hard, dirty, disagreeable work of de-cluttering the garage. I need to be able to actually see the benchwork before I can finish it and start laying track.

QUOTE: Originally posted by JimRCGMO
...And it helps sometimes to have someone who's gonna ask when you show up, "What've you been doing?" (and actually can see our face when we say "oh, a
bunch")[:)] Being 'accountable' (I think that's the fancy word) keeps us motivated - and honest. Not that I think you've been lying - I've seen your pics, and as I said earlier, you do good great work! But it gives us a deadline, like "I sure want to have something done to mention/bring to the next meeting".

Jim/Noah: I've been trying to apply the 'accountability/motivation' principle to myself here online (see my 2nd paragraph above).

QUOTE: (...continued...) My problem is, the group in this area's contact person's email bounced, so I have no one to get in touch with...[:(]

I hear ya! There is an excellent modular group in my area, but they don't seem too interested in acquiring new members[sigh]...they acted a bit surly when I tried to speak with them at the most recent GSMTS in Timonium.

Luc: That's great about your grandson, here's your chance to perpetuate this wonderful Hobby!

Fergie: I agree about it never being too LATE to turn back MRR time...but in my case, it's the EXPENSE part of the equation that traps me.[;)]

Cat-Tom: I see you too are a garage-dweller, I guess the California climate is better suited for that than here in Maryland.

NorthernPhil: Glad to hear you got your SD's. I hope to pickup mine on Friday, won't be able to operate them for awhile though...
...
Gotta go now, I'm NOT retired yet...

[Anonymous]

Good Morning All:

***:
My mainline min rad is 28" on the two inside passing sidings, the max is 36" but mostly 30". Since I haven't laid the branch line yet, I"m thinking maybe 24" or 26" for a min. All turnouts are "5's or 6's" depending on where they are. The curved turnouts are 28/32 and 32/36 and they work very well. I have one 24/28 in the yard.

Flip:
By the time you read this Debbie will already be under the knife but my prayers are with you and her.

QUOTE: My turntable works fine. Plays 78's, 45's and 33 1/3's.

we're showing our age, the youngersters don't even know what we are talking about.

Attaboy:
The "M.E.S.S." 4-6-6-4 was routed through the "Almost Nothing" on the way to the home shops. During the night some vandels broke into the roundhouse and graffitti painted the visiting loco. Our maintance super had a real hard time getting it running again and didn't worry about the paint.

Cat Tom:
If you like it run it It's my railroad and I do what I like.

Paul:
Bring all that you want, I'm Digitraxx DCC equipped so we can run DC and DCC locos.

Fergie:
I have enough nerve to wear the "pink" hat around the house but "eye shadow and makeup" - no way.
As to the photos - I use an everyday trouble light with the squeese clamp on one end and a reflector about 9" or 10" on the other end. I use a 75 watt bulb as that's what I use in the floor lamps.
I think (from what I've read) that you're going to be disappointed in the cold heat gun. It might do Nearly invisable track but not Horiably Oversized.
I am impressed with your trestle.

Ryan:
As Ed said the river is just east of Austin/San Antonio. It runs through New Braunfells and is probably the most canoed river in Texas.

Siber:
After looking at your layout anything would be pale by comparison. How do you get to play with the Polar Express up that high?

Have a blessed day
Bob

[Anonymous]

Mornin' folks,
Can't figure out how to post pictures here, so,, I've posted three pic of the steam winch engine at the yahoo group "HoinandRV" which is my group. The way the group seems to work you have to join, but it should be automatic.
I think I have the steel for the frame, some 2' pipe for the boiler, wheel blanks, the lubricator, and maybe a feedwater pump. Things are coming together. Now if I just didn't have to go to work, maybe I could get something built!!! lol

[JimRCGMO]

Good Morning to all here in the Shop! Zoe, a cup of java mocha, and if there are any of Lupo's cinnamon rolls, I'll have one of those (hopefully all the stragglers followed after Fergie's)[;)]

Weather here is about low 40's this a.m., with rain/wet snow mix forecast for later today. They're not predicting any accumulation, though. Then a short break until about Friday, when another batch of ... whatever comes in. That ought to make Phil and *** feel relieved that we're not stealing the warm weather. [}:)]

John, that 'Paradise and Perdition' that Phil mentioned sounds good for a steam layout. [:)] How's your visiting cat - behaving himself/herself? Don't let your cat get near the computer, though, you know some cats send messages to each other that way...[;)]

Fergie, I forgot to mention earlier - on your photos, if you can bounce your flash off the ceiling tiles (not literally!), you may get better lighting and not wash out things so much. (Free advice from the former prof. photogr. here...[;)])

Here's revision three on the CAW's color scheme:



Mitchell had an excellent idea he sent me in his email (to use white lettering against the rusty color of the butte - duh! Should have know that...) So I decided to just use white for all the lettering, to punch up the contrast against the black/dingy dark grey of the body. Also added a few details into the butte (but may revise that more once I take another look at the image Mitchell sent me). I'm debating about whether the two colors on the top (along with the yellow/gold on the frame botton) are/is too much. Like: would a prototype railroad use that many colors, even in the late 50's? Anyone else want to weigh in on that? (and no, I'm not running a poll on that[;)])

Ryan, good to hear what you've been doing. I believe you are the tile and grout man![tup] Now we all know who to ask for tiling questions, right? [;)]

Only can stay for a short trip in the Coffee Shop this a.m., so gotta get going. Hope to be back later in the afternoon and check in with you all.

Ed, almost forgot - thanks for the link. I did find there's a club in the area. Need to get wheels and then can go. Apparently they have a permanent club setup in Jackson (neighboring town to Cape). Found it on the WGH search page you gave.

Blessings,

Jim in Cape Girardeau

[Anonymous]

SiberianMO: Just don't let the government know you have cyber money, the Secret Service might find you.

LilRob: I like your new signature, that's a great song isn't it?

better go, mom and dad want to go to the city, and we might get to go to the LHS on the way!!!!

Greg

[trolleyboy]

Good morning clubbers.Today is the second strait day of sun and puffy blue clouds(and not just on the layout bachdrop)One would think it was almost spring till you walk out the door and feel the -3 air and see the still large bank of snow[V][xx(][:0] Northern Phil glad you received your package[tup]Hope you didn't scare the UPS guy running out to meet him/her like that.I didn't notice the thickness of the paint on the "J" unit I'd seen but the all orange paint with the little bitty logo tends to blur the picture some. From my experience with paint orange and yellow are hard not to put on thickly they always seem to have a large pigment.Oh well the important thing is that you have them and now the fun part begins.Having those beuts will likely be a good kick to the posterior [:0][:D][swg][swg]read incentive to build the mother of all layouts.Enjoy my friend. Well got to go do some stuff around the house then off to work this afternoon. Till later Rob

[cwclark]

TEFFY,..you gonna make the train show this weekend?

[trolleyboy]

QUOTE:

Originally posted by TEFFY

Good Morning All:

.
[ My turntable works fine. Plays 78's, 45's and 33 1/3's.we're showing our age, the youngersters don't even know what we are talking about.

Hey Bob I resemble that remark lol [:0][:0][swg]actually I have a bunch of 45's and 33's and if I dig deep enough some of my dad's 78's. Nothing to play them on at the moment.Though I noticed that the searc catalogue had a unit that would play all three not sure I want to spend the $450 CDN on it though. I do like your turntable though and Presier makes some good goat and goat herder figures if you need them[:p] Rob