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

[wetidlerjr]

Good Morning ! from Indiana. 12"=1 foot scale signal time. [:D]

[inch53]

MORNIN ALL, some irish coffee Zoe,
The first day of spring brought us 15 mph NE wind, and 6" snow and no school, so I'll have all the kids, wonderful.
Not much else of anything going on here. Hoping for a trip to Effingham Sat for some rail fanning.

RT , My littile brother's had one of gagets in him for years now and no problems. We'll keep ya in our thoughts

OZJim , good to hear your OK. Hope the next one misses your friends and stays out to sea

GMT , now thats my kind of bank hiest, but it'll never make the news headlines

Jerry , sounds like you got lucky on your switches.

bout it fur now , still got some chores to do. Laters all
inch

[pcarrell]

Morning!

Coffee, lots of it please!

RT,
Sorry to hear of the surgury plans. I know that can be quite intimidating. I will be praying for you (and your doctors), as I'm sure others will too. While God was not speaking directly to us when He said this, it's comforting to know that He has the power to do this; Jeremiah 31:25, "I'll refre***ired bodies; I'll restore tired souls." Rest in that.

TrainFreak409,
Model Power might still have some of the Minitrix Pacific chassis for sale. They don't have a body and there is no motor, but everything else is there, including the gear tower. They're priced right too! Here's a link;

http://www.modelpower.com/site/519087/product/41-2001-04

Hard to go wrong here, even if it's just for parts.

[JPowell]

Hi all -
Nothing new here for me as of late.

Ed - How 'bout them Red Sox? Tomorrow night (Wed the 22nd) will be the 1st meeting, albeit still Spring Training, between those dreaded Bombers from the Bronx and our beloved Red Sox. So, how about it... Go Sox! [yeah]

Oh and before I forget again.... [#welcome] to the newbies!

JP

[grayfox1119]

Good afternoon gents, it finally got up to 38F today, it hads been below freezing the last week, Winter just won't let go. The one good thing is, this Polar vortex located up to the north keeps all the storms to the south of us off the Mid Atlantic states.
I have been trying to get my new Maxtor 200GB external hard drive to work, to no avail. The computer cannot write to the drive. It finds the drive, assigns it a letter, etc., but cannot communicate with it. I tried everything I knew, even Maxtor FS tried, so back to Staples it goes today for a replacement. [xx(][V][banghead][censored]

FERGIE An addition!!! It will be good to have dad nearby, and I am sure he will love being with family close by. NOW, I have a suggestion for you. In regards to the sun deck addition to the house, why not excavate under the deck and attach to you basement. Think of all the additional space you will can for layout!! We added on to our Family room a few years ago, it is very open with lots of tall windows, like a sunroom in many respects, and when I saw that the footings would be 4 feet down, I decided to excavate the full 8' depth, cut a doorway into the existing basement, and that gave me the Train room. Not that more expensive to excavate either.

Talk later gents...have a great afternoon,

[Cox 47]

Afternoon all..Snow here as Mike said most things closed what a joke for the first full day of spring...I'll have Coffee and a Krispy Kream please...I am thinking about putting a snow blade on my power chair...Got the layout back up and running with 2 switches that will be at the coal mine working saved some money and it did'nt take nearly as long as I thought...I gotta get on with a coal mine now...You all have a good one..Jerry

[Anonymous]

Hi all

Had a rather shocking experience today (apologies in advance for the appalling pun) - discovered that an old 12v DC power pack we'd had around for years was faulty, unfortunately this wasn't apparent until it tried to throw me across the room. Given I weigh a bit more than the transformer it got flung at the wall instead. No ill-effects but not a pleasant experience!

Scott, I'd second PC's suggestion of the Minitrix chassis - you could always put a B-unit behind it in the train to provide the power, I remember reading about one of the Canadian operators doing that for steam excursions although the B was there as a backup in the event of the steamer failing.

Bye for now

[rtraincollector]

QUOTE: can you soder rails with insulated rail joiners?

I would think that would defeat the purpose of insulating the rails unless your talking about sections inbetween the insulated area. As I believe electric flows very nicely thru solder.

Thanks all for your thoughts and prayers its still 2 weeks away but its going to be done unless meeting with doc reveils some reason not to.

[Fergmiester]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Railroading_Brit

I remember reading about one of the Canadian operators doing that for steam excursions although the B was there as a backup in the event of the steamer failing.

Mmmmm... Steamer failing? Ya Right[:(!] all the pictures I ever saw was the Steamer hauling Diesel with tail between legs back to the barn! Hmmmf

[;)]Can we say... Insurance Salesmen and Liability? Sure sure ya can. I knew ya could.

Steam will always rule!

[Anonymous]

PAGE 1000 contest update

Flip - March 1
KenM - March 3
luct, TallDude - March 4
manofwar - March 5
Jim in Cape - March 6
Attaboy - March 8
*** - March 9
trolleyRob - March 10
JP - March 11
Kathy - March 12
Noah, Chuck - March 13
Duke - March 14
RT - March 15
Deuce - March 16
pc - March 17
OZJIM - March 18
steveblackledge - March 19
Jerry, Trent - March 20
Fergie - March 21
Greg - March 22
KenL - March 24
Gman - March 25
Paul - March 27
dhilyer - March 28
inch - March 29
JR - March 30
nsscot - April 1
Phisig3 - April 2
Ed - April 3
Scott - April 5
der John - April 6
dekruif - April 7
stripes2 - April 8
TrainsRMe - April 10
avidham73 - April 15

We have reached the cutoff page, page 965. No more entries accepted.

I will post this from time to time and update to the post date.

Good Luck.

The winner will get to help out Elliot!!!!!!

[der5997]

By the look of the length of the page, this will probably kick to the top of 983. So, why don’t we give NG a break, and just put the drinks on my tab anyway.[(-D] I’ll have a medium coffee, black, please Chloë.

Ed: That is a truly awesome bridge. I really like the curve on it. Quite the valley for it to span too.![tup] Thanks.

AggroJones: Long time no see. How have things been in Sacramento? Haven’t seen that film, what’s the attraction?[:D]

Andrew: Welcome back.

QUOTE: can you soder rails with insulated rail joiners?

What I do is have a “heat sink” right at the insulated joiner ( and another anyway just at the joint itself to prevent the ties from melting if the job takes longer than expected.) The sink I use is wet tissue pressed against the rail in question.

QUOTE: where can i get it, and about how much does a sheet of facia cost?

I use hardboard, 1/8th” thick. The stuff I’ve used so far is white faced, and I got it for free from a friend before I left Alberta. Since that ran out, I switched to nearly white with a pale grey wood grain. That came with the shed we bought about 6 years ago. You cold probably find quite suitable stuff at a recycled building supply place.
I see you intend to paint, so the plain brown hardboard would do for that.
Some folks use wood paneling for a finished furniture look. I’ve done that too, and trimmed it with plastic paneling trim strips. You can see a bit of it along the top of the fascia here.
and here's a look at a complete fascia section on the same layout.

If you do that be prepared for some surgery with a sharp and moderately heavy blade on the back side of the trim strips to make everything fit around the corners. WATCH YOUR HANDS ON THAT ONE. I know whereof I speak.[:O] Shouldn’t break the bank, especially if you get the used material for the fascia itself.

QUOTE: and how much does plexiglass cost per sheet?

Much more than you would think from watching films like Star Trek – The Journey Home! Depends on the thickness. However, I was able to get a sheet of 1/16th” look-alike at a plastics wholesaler, end of line, 4x8’ for $25 Cnd.

Fergie:Nice score on the camera![tup]

QUOTE: finished putting the switch stands in the yard last night so now I'm just about ready to ballast.

Are those working, linked to the rods, or just dummy?

UKMatt: Take care! Glad it wasn’t more than a warning[:D] I guess the insulation degraded over the years.

Some success with the plaster, but we’re not home yet. No mrr time today, even though I was on my own. Too many chores.[sigh], and tonight there’s things on TV.
I’ll say goodnight now, as I probably won’t be back this evening.
RT, our prayers are with you for that surgery. Prayers for healing and comfort also for all those in need. God Bless.[angel]

[Grubby]

Morning Trippers,

Just coming out from the shadows to say hi... counting down the weeks now to the Brisbane show... last year I had just started the layout and I have set some goals for the 12 month mark. Of course, having Dad and his mates coming down for the Show and a visit helps keep you motivated [:P]

Things are progressing very well, I have taken a heap of photos as work progresses, just need some idle time to upload them all to railimages... it seems to take forever.

Anyway, GL HF...

[trolleyboy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Fergmiester

QUOTE: Originally posted by der5997


Mikey:

QUOTE: Why does the items that I want most always seem to be available in scales that I’m not modeling?

…Welcome to the wonderful world of N scale! Things are WAY better than they used to be, but still your symptoms are very familiar! N seems to be very short on anything modern painted for CN.[:(]…and RT, I’m not being tempted into O![:D]

Well John don't feel so bad by the looks of it the 1:1 scale guys have issues with finding modern CN stuff too!






Sad, very sad![:(]

Fergie

I don't know Fergie, the weathering looks pretty good on those units, they must have spent a long time doing it.[:p][:D] I'm not so sure about that s bend though,wonder what the NMRA guage would say about that, espeacially with those extra long modern cars.[:p][:0][:D][swg]

just a place setter for me I'm working midnights tis week one more to go tonigth then I'm back to the land of the living waking[B)][:p][xx(]

Rob

[james saunders]

ATTENTION!

[:)]fellow Brisbane-ites


the Brisbane Miniature railway show is coming up shortly, and am keen to meet some of my fellow modellers at the show, on the saturday or sunday of the show, if you guys are interested, perhaps we could meet there at the show?, if you are interested, please drop me an email which is in my profile, and then we can start to organise a meeting... thankyou for your attention, and i hope that we can make this happen! [:)]


James

[Paul W. Beverung]

Hi Gang: This is going to be more of a mark than anything else. The connection is slow tonight. No MRRing tonight. We had to go in to town to check out some new glucose monitors. The insurance provider is going to change ours and sent us a choise of 4. So I'll just slip of in to the darkness.

Good Night All

[egmurphy]

Good Evening Coffee Clubbers,

Another beautiful day in Paradise. Not quite as hot as yesterday, and mostly cloudy, but still plenty warm enough for us to go to the beach. First time this year, water was nice. Not too crowded.

JR – Yeah, I’m waiting for the game, although I don’t put much stock in pre-season games. I was a bit surprised that they traded away Arroyo. I liked him even if he did do his hair in cornrows. He was a good pitcher, but they do have too many starters.

QUOTE: derJohn: What I do is have a “heat sink” right at the insulated joiner ( and another anyway just at the joint itself to prevent the ties from melting if the job takes longer than expected.) The sink I use is wet tissue pressed against the rail in question.

??? Okay, you’ve confused me. Why would you try to solder a joint where you have an insulated joiner? (I’ll admit the original question wasn’t real clear.)


Catch you guys tomorrow.

Regards

Ed

[Anonymous]

Okay guys, we have to make 17 more pages tonight if I'm going to get the page 1000!! Between the approximately 30 of us in here, that works out to less than a half page each, so get to typing guys, and fast!!!!

The new container train isn't doing so well...it's a 305' five piece articulated Thrall unit, and it seesm to have two places that it likes to de-rail (one's the same as where the steamer de-rails) and the other is a switch that needs some filing. I can fix the problems, but I'm rather disappointed because I expected it to run as good as the rest of my rolling stock...but NOOO, it has to be picky!

We have an idiotic calf with an infection in her toe that runs up nearly to her wrist, and we've been giving her a bunch of penicillin (40cc) every 48 hours since Friday. Today was her third treatment, and she's such an idiot that we can't catch her, so we have to dart her to get a shot in. She did something I've never seen before though...the dart hit and started to take effect, and she just stood there like a statue with her tongue out, so we walked up and got a rope on her and knocked her down on her side, gave the shot and let her go, so she stood back up and stood there like a statue with her tongue out again. She's an idiot, but is definitely getting better.

Well guys, early morning at college tomorrow, so I'm gonna call it quits tonight. Might check back during high school tomorrow.

Greg

[Anonymous]

thanks a lot DER, i'll have to look into that stuff

[AggroJones]

Well its been quite stormy in Sac Town these last few weeks. Makes it kinda difficult to get my custom weathering stuff done. Its either raining or too humid to get things going. My back yard keeps getting flooded with 6"' of water everywhere! [:(] It could be worse....So we're flooded, but not quite, I guess.

I still ain't got no real job. Right now I'm on finacial low cruise. Making just enough to pay bills. Mabey I'll sell one of my steamers to get some slack money. Well see......

Fergie: Currently, I'm tearing out many of my early made trees and replacing them with improved peices. The thing with those filter conifers, is the more you make, the better you can make them. Yeah, 200+ trees later, they come together quicker and much more refined in appearance.

der5997: There are some parallels in that film in my reality. I urge anyone who can to see Hustle 'n' Flow.

[wetidlerjr]

Good Morning ! from Indiana. [:D]

[GMTRacing]

Good Morning All,
Black coffee would suit me down to the ground Zoe. Got the G-scale stuff moved out of the bank and into one of our CN cars that is awaiting restoration. My 24 ft box trailer was totally full. and it took a little over two hours for six of us to cart it out all out, and another four to trans load it into the CN and our "project wood" storage car (an ex PRR 50 footer). Went back to the museum last night to work on the HO display fitting pieces of bench top around the turntable and laying out the yard feed and coal tower tracks. It all went well.

Andrew Something else you can try for a fascia is sheet plastic like styrene. If you have any plastic discount places around the price can be very reasonable. Styrene sheet is easy to use, has available strips to join the ends and it can be rolled up for transport home without too much trouble. A lot of home supply stores carry it also, but they tend to be pricey. The styrene can be drilled, nailed and glued to wood, and you can cut it with a pair of metal snips or a saw. Best bet with a curious cat is to see if you can keep it out of the room when you run your trains. Cats can make some amazing leaps and love to ambush cabeese. Mine wiped out an entire freight train before i finally closed off the train room.

RT Good luck on your CDL test today. I'm still running on my class 1 from the 60's as none of my rigs are commercial yet., Make sure you explain what you looking for as you do the walk around, and here you need to make sure you and the inspector are both belted up before you move - they try to catch you out with that.

All for now - nice to see some new faces and some old familiar ones back in the shop. Time to pick up tools. CUL, J.R.

[Anonymous]

Good morning folks, It was a long morning at work..... but I hope to be on the downhill slide now. I get off at Noon..... can't wait.

Zoe, I'll take a good hot cup of Joe !

[beegle55]

Hey well I don't now if im part of the club but I'll help ya'll get to 1000. It's snowy in West Virginia today, its the first day that we've had a 2 hour delay at school. Sweet. I need to get some rolling stock weathering advice because I'm replacing wheels & couplers, and also trying to weather my fleet. Have a good day everyone!

[Cox 47]

Good morning all...Sunny and cold here...I'll have coffee and apple pie please...Setting here listning to a Roy Mercer CD...Funny...Hope to get some train time in this afternoon...may start painting and decaling hoppers....Can't stay long you all have a good one...Jerry

[Paul W. Beverung]

Hi Gang: It's lunch time at Six Flags. Last night was a real slow connection for some reason. I normally get 26.4 to 28 kps but last night it was 24kps. Now remember that this is dial up. Anyway just 2kps really slowed things down.

I didn't get down to the basement. By the time I got my E-mail down loaded and read I was 15 minutes in bed. I'm going to shoot for doing some running tonight. I still have those two 2-8-0s to check out and I'd like to put some more ore cars on and see how many that 2-10-2 will handle up the grade. I also have to get some more cleaning done so that Ed will be able to see the layout. Ed, you are still planning on coming I hope.

Greg: It's things like that deal with the calf that make ranching so much fun. Right? We haven't had that kind of a problem but we have had a couple that were real wild. We found them a home at Mc Donalds as soon as possible.

I just talked to atsf railfan (Gary) He hasn't done anything in the MRRing way. I guess they finally got unpacked from there move back from Denver. I'd try and shame him into getting back on the ball but I haven't gotten much done myself.

I'm going to say so long for now. I'll drop in tonight if the speed is up.

[der5997]

Out of printer ink on my machine, seems like I just put a new one in.[V] So I’m trying to get some Excel files printed off on Kris’. Means going from XP Excel on a floppy to 97 Excel on her computer, and that isn’t to the printer’s liking. It’s taking for ever to get anything out of it.[banghead]

Ed:

QUOTE: ??? Okay, you’ve confused me. Why would you try to solder a joint where you have an insulated joiner? (I’ll admit the original question wasn’t real clear.)

Made the best shot of the problem given the information. How about power feeder soldering? Or, soldering on a new piece of flex track that’s going to be on a curve behind an insulated join. I gave my “how I do it” for any soldering on plastic tie track. I guess we’ll have to wait for further clarification.[:D]

Andrew: Can you tell us more about this soldering on an insulated joint thing?

Aggro: Apart from the Aggro-life parallels, what’s H&F about?[:D]

Paul: 24 kbps is normal for us, 26.5 on a good day.[:(]

TTFN

[egmurphy]

QUOTE: Paul B: Ed, you are still planning on coming I hope.

That's a roger there, good buddy. But no need to do anything special on the layout.


Regards

Ed

[Anonymous]

Hi all

Mostly been testing a Saab today - Dad's auditioning new company cars so we've got a 1.9TD 9-3 for a few days, scarily quick and a very nice driving position. Also to be tested are a Volvo and BMW 3-series Coupe, though they'll have to be very good indeed to beat the Saab. Also ordered a few new telescope bits (eyepiece and filters) and done a little more on the long-term tram project (LCC Class A)

John, I think it must have - the transformer was from Dad's old slotcars and is a good 40 years old, it was fine a couple of years ago but decided to play up. Just glad it didn't set fire to anything - will be finding a newer one for the job in hand (providing power to the shelf that I park G scale coaches on - result is that the lighting comes on and looks very neat).

Greg, have you ballasted the lower deck containers? I found the HO scale double stacks I have run a lot better after doing that and adding metal wheels. My brother has one of the Walthers N scale ones somewhere which tracks well enough but doesn't roll particularly well, it needs two Lifelike GP38-2s to move the thing.

Aggro, I know what you mean on the job front - not looking good here either at the moment, I'll have to start looking in a month or four (after graduating) and there don't seem to be many vacancies for International Politics graduates around here.

Bye for now

[grayfox1119]

Good afternoon gents...cloudy and cool today, only 38F now at 3:45. Dis some brush cutting on the south 40, LOL, actually it is about 200 feet on the south property line. The brambles and vines get out of control in summer if I don't get to them in early Spring when I don't get ***ed to death.
I have held up on layout design until I receive the books fro Amazon.com by Armstrong et al on layouts. I guess I am a designer first as opposed to a "plopper".

It looks like Microsoft still hasn't improved it's ability to get a new product to market on schedule with countless delays. The new operating system to replace Xp, which is called VISTA, was supposed to be released this Fall, now it will not be released until January , 2007. The Commercial version will be released in November though. Vista will support 64 bit operation, as opposed to present 32 bit. This is a far cry from the 8080 isn't it ?

ED We received a double whammy in New England sports, not only did Arroyo get traded, but arguably the best kicker in NFL has signed with the Colts!!! Adam Viniteri is GONE!! Money talks, not team. The word "team" is no longer an applicable document in today's sports, either by owners or players, it is the almighty $$ that speaks loudest. Only time will tell how these two evacuations will effect the teams.

DUKE The Positaps arrived today in the mail, the check is "in the mail" LOL
This should save a lot of wire stripping and soldering on the main bus and track feeders.

BEEGLE55 I was watching the Weather Channel at noon today, and they had a video of the cars on the interstate slidding around doing 360's last night. I guess you guys have had some tough early Spring weather in WV !!!!

Talk later guys,

[Anonymous]

i was just thinking that insulating the tracks on my yard might make wiring it easier
but didint know how bad the rails would move around at the rail joiners