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

[Anonymous]

Evenin' Y'all

How's things goin? Pretty good around here, but it oughta get cold tonight!!! Windchill of 0 F tomorrow. BRRRRR! I uploaded more pics onto my page at RailImages www.railimages.com/gallery/gregleck Hope y'all can view it if you want to. That's about all I got done today, still fixing fence from that calf that got out last night, and moving cattle around.

John A :[#welcome] to the Coffee Shop. Great place we got here, with a bunch of good guys. However, like the title says, we got some lousy food [:D].

Noah: Have a good Christmas break!! Mine has been busy ever since I got out last Thursday.

Well, it's getting late, I better get to bed, I'll have to get up early in the morning to go de-ice some cattle's water.
Greg

[der5997]

Jim:

QUOTE: Noah, if you tried lying down outside about now, you might be stuck like der's turnouts!

...and he'd come up all stringy gooey too! [(-D] That's what the glue turned to down in between the ties. Very glad it didn't get a chance to actually dry......

QUOTE: Der, does Bob have that many hands for all those yard switches?

...and these are Normal ones too. It would be fun to watch. Maybe we could sell tickets. [:D]
[#welcome] Joe. Krump pays for all the free refills, BTW.
Krump and Bob, I'll try to send Flip's card on tomorrow. Right now I've got to get to bed. Stayed up too late watching the Carol Service from King's College Cambridge on Vision TV. A one hour thing, that had been streached to 2 hours by really intrusive ads. [V] the service was great, though. [tup]

Goodnight all, and God Bless.

[PennsyHoosier]

Well, I'm here for a late night cup. But it won't have to warm me up as much as yesterdays. We were 30 degrees warmer today than yesterday. It felt like Spring! Tomorrow, however, SNOW! That's fine, but then COLD, COLD, COLD!

Phil and I are gonna have to stoke the home fires and make quick runs to the Coffee Shop. Catch you all tomorrow!

[JimRCGMO]

Good Evening, and can someone pass me my coffee mug? I think I left it in the dish drainer. Thanks!

QUOTE: Originally posted by lupo


Holland is heavily infested by those radar setups, but as I am familiar with all locations of these machines around here I planned the route I took carefully avoiding most of those things, and kept a nice steady 60 or 50 mph where I had to pass them.

Good to hear you avoided the traps, Lupo. On our side of 'the water', there are even some websites that warn about the notorious radar traps...[#offtopic]

Glad you can use the confetti, too![;)][:D]

Ed, thanks for the explanation of the stars.[8D]

Noah, if you tried lying down outside about now, you might be stuck like der's turnouts![(-D] Better to do your pics inside for now. We have a winter storm warning tonight and tomorrow - coming in rain/ice and supposed to turn to sNoah overnight - about 4-12 inches of the white stuff, depending on where in this area you live! Looks like the Ohio river valley will be getting the worst of it. Of course, that's if they are accurate on the forecasts...[;)] Good to hear you're making the most of the sNoah, too. Do you make house calls to Missouri, BTW? [;)]

Jim, sounds like Southwest Missouri is getting off easy - our forecast temps are in the teens or maybe single digits for Thursday night and around zero for Christmas Eve. Glad our pipes are enclosed in my building... But with the temp further north - let's see -37 C would be... (-34.6 F?)? Still plenty cold, by my reckoning![:O] Stay warm on your trip, and if we don't hear from you while you're up there, have a Joyous Christmas and Great New Year!

Teffy, (showing my age here) when I was little we had such a wind chill in the summer - got it from running through the sprinkler on our front lawn! [;)][:D]

Der, does Bob have that many hands for all those yard switches? [;)]


[#welcome] Hi Joe A! Have a cup of coffee on me! I wouldn't figure that a younger gal nowadays would be embarassed with that either. You must have met the one remaining shy girl in town. Anyway, this is the place to come visit and get a hot cup of caffeine, no matter how cold it is outside![:)] And you'll find you can get a lot of your questions answered here too - even those on-topic ones![}:)][:D][(-D] If you check around, there might even be a donut or cinnamon roll left (if Teffy or Ed or another of the guys hasn't finished them off already, that is)...

Well, I'm gonna head for home before the snow/icy stuff gets here. I think we're starting to get a bit low on the coffee, so can someone bring some in when you day shift people come in in the morning? Thanks!

Blessings and a warm night (especially for our Canadian neighbors in the frigid North),

Jim from Cape Girardeau

[Anonymous]

Paul, I dropped in! Got Cadrail figured out yet?

[fec153]

der- glad you and family got the X-Mas card. Would you please send it on to Teffy and Krump? I have tried 3 times to no avail. Heck, even Lupo got it in Europe but it stops at the Texas border and also in the northwest.
Hang on to the bottled cold till july and then ship it on down.
Flip.

[Noah Hofrichter]

Well folks, I'm in good spirits today, It sonwed all last night!! SNOW!!! MOOLA!!!!!!!! I made $25 alltogether today, I was busy (and up early) this morning. That just about pays my share of my new SD40-2's(my parents are paying the rest as my christmas present). So I'm in very high spirits(and also that could be because I'm on a sugar high too, we had our christmas party today at school)

I'm also happy as I have one more day of school tomarrow, and then comes Christmas vacation! I get eleven days off, including weekends. This means modeling time! I hope to strip one of my Athearn GP38 shells on Thursday, and get it preped for painting the next day it gets at least fairly warm(which it's supposed to be this weekend). Then I got to detail with the parts I'll get when I go to the hobby shop on Monday, followed by decaling. Hopefully I'll have it all done by the time I go back. I'd also want to work on the layout, I want to move a few sidings on my layout in the new part. I also have the building to finni***oo that I've been working on. So I'll have a busy vacation. But I forgot, I have to squeeze Christmas in there too!

Well, I'll see ya!
Noah

[Anonymous]

Hey, all. Not many in the coffee shop today. Must be the cold weather. I don't blame you guys one bit for staying in.

Not much happening here. I uploaded a few more pictures onto my site. Go, and check them out. A picture of myself, was one of them. Hope it doesn't break your screen.[:D][swg]

joe a: [#welcome] to the Coffee Shop. You've found a great place to be. You'll meet a lot of good friends in here.

'til later,

Robert

[Anonymous]

Hi every one,
My son gave me a t shirt with the inscription saying "I STILL PLAY WITH TRAINS".
It was lunch time ,so i went to the neighborhood deli for a sandwich. A young lady asked me what i wanted,then she looked at my shirt and said "do you still play with trains".I looked at her and said "i have too play with something". She put her hand to her mouth and ran off into the kitchen.I thought girls today wouldnt be embarrassed
at such a simple statement.

joe a.

[der5997]

Bob: Sorry for the 2nd. post, but I forgot this

QUOTE: John:I never thought about using a white glue dam to keep the diluted glue out of the switch points. I just keep working the switch points back and forth until the diluted glue sets. Give me something to do while I'm "track testing".

It's a glue and whatever ground cover zone really, and my theory is that once it's dry it should stop the dilute glue from advancing too far towards the turnouts. You would be busy moving this lot while the glue dried. There are 11 turnouts affected in that yard![(-D]

[der5997]

Flip:

QUOTE: It's going below freezing tonight but will get backto low 60's tomorrow. Thanks to all for sharing the cold.

Kris just came in from her walk with our neighbour Pat, whose daughter near Ottawa phoned last night to say that it had gone down to -26 Celcius (-47 Celcius with the wind chill). F and C meet at -40 folks, and Fs 32 is Cs 0.
The RR note in all this is that they had to stop running the VIA between Montreal and Toronto because the plumbing in the toilets froze. How much of that do you want bottled Flip? BTW, thanks for the complex Christmas greeting. [:D]

[lupo]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TEFFY

Lupo:

For your birthday you have nothing on me - I got to drive a Chrysler GRAND CARAVAN all day. THUBBBBBBBBBBBB ( a good razberry like Archie Bunker used to do.) We'll have to stop and tell all the youngsters who Archie is.

Saturday I had a good time "testing track". One of the lashups was a Genesis warbonnet "A" and an Intermountian "B". you're right - after almost ten minutes of "track testing" I realized that the truck side frames were a different color and it bothered me so much that I only operated the lashup another forty five minutes. I did think about you thou and wondered what you would have done. I couldn't find the Intermountian "A" to test run it. It sure looked good pulling those eight Walthers "Super Chief" cars. I used the Kato business car instead on the Tavern/obs and I like the way it looks.

Have a good day
Bob

Yeah you are right Bob those color differences! [8D][8D] Did you try wearing sunglasses? [8D][8D] that usually does the trick, the bigger tha difference the thicker tha glasses!
I once tried an UP F3 and an intermountain warbonnet together, but I had to wear welding goggles to make the difference in color acceptable [X-)][X-)] [X-)][X-)]


btw: a GRAND CARAVAN? always better than the VW Transporter diesel I use to transport myself !

[Anonymous]

Mornin Y'all

Couldn't drop in last night, had to catch a calf that got out. Anyway, it looks like nearly everyone else is having cold weather also!! Looks like we won't get above freezing here for a couple of days, bu it should get up to about 40 Christmas Day.

Teffy: Your machine shop sounds like our hardware store. The owner had his Christmas customer appreciation day yesterday, had his wife cook up about 20 boxes of different cookies. I said the owner had it, but his wife is really the one that runs the place[:D]. The sign out fron says Ron's, but everyone calls it Carolyn's.

See y'all later,
Greg

[Anonymous]

Lupo:

For your birthday you have nothing on me - I got to drive a Chrysler GRAND CARAVAN all day. THUBBBBBBBBBBBB ( a good razberry like Archie Bunker used to do.) We'll have to stop and tell all the youngsters who Archie is.

Saturday I had a good time "testing track". One of the lashups was a Genesis warbonnet "A" and an Intermountian "B". you're right - after almost ten minutes of "track testing" I realized that the truck side frames were a different color and it bothered me so much that I only operated the lashup another forty five minutes. I did think about you thou and wondered what you would have done. I couldn't find the Intermountian "A" to test run it. It sure looked good pulling those eight Walthers "Super Chief" cars. I used the Kato business car instead on the Tavern/obs and I like the way it looks.

Have a good day
Bob

[Anonymous]

Good Morning All:

I went to Beaumont and picked up my turntable motor yesterday. The coupling is 1/4" bore to fit the shaft on the bridge and the shaft size is 5/16" so it's off to the machine shop to get it bored. If my drill press wasn't so far back in the garage I'd do it, but the machine shop is on the way to work and it gives me a chance to talk to Freddy about what's going on in his life.

Flip:
The manufactores number for OK is 543 in the Walthers catalog. They're not in the 2004 calalog, I don't know if they're in the 2005 as I haven't bought one yet. Their "complete catalog of OK Streamliners" is available for $2.00 from OK ENGINES P. O. Box 355H Mohawk, NY. 13407

Ed:
Were you serious about no heaters in the house? Of course I know that you probably have a BIG ac but it looks to me like you'd want a small heater at least. We had an estimate done the other day about a new central heat and ac, he's talking 5 tons of AC and 85,000 BTU of heat. Since the house has electric heat (too expensive to run) I plumbed it for gas and we are using one 35,000 BTU dearborn heater to heat a six room house. Youse guys in Canada don't even know that a heater as small as 35,000 BTU exist.

Krump:
You're in beautiful BC so keep your cold. Have you noticed that the weather man gives us a wind chill in the winter and a heat index in the summer? I'd like a heat index in the winter when I need it and a wind chill in the summer. They're talking possable Snoah flurries Thursday afternoon. That means that all work will stop so we can watch the snow fall, but he says no stick just flurries.

Noah:
I thought the scenery that looked like a kitchen counter top was great. Look at how long and how many men it took to get that scenery just right. And I like the idea of submurged track, that's a good idea, it saves money. That way the train can go EVERYWHERE.

John:
I never thought about using a white glue dam to keep the diluted glue out of the switch points. I just keep working the switch points back and forth until the diluted glue sets. Give me something to do while I'm "track testing".

Ya'll have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

[krump]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jhhtrainsplanes

[:)]

. . . . . . . . . .L R . . . . . . . . Springfield .
Day . . . High . . . Low . . . High . . . Low

Wed . . . 43 . . . . 23 . . . . 30 . . . . . 10
Thur . . . 31 . . . . 16 . . . . 21 . . . . . . 2
Fri . . . . . 25 . . . . 10 . . . . 19 . . . . . 6
Sat . . . . 33 . . . . 20 . . . . 32 . . . . 20

Those look like your winning lottery numbers to me, or the combination of the local bank vault...
do you really want to make me tell you how cold it is here ?

[Anonymous]

Hi All [:)]

What the heck is going on with the weather these days? Two weeks ago I could walk the dog in a t shirt and shorts and now I will need a snowmobile suit. Here are the predicted highs and lows for Little Rock, Arkansas, and Bois D' Arc, Missouri where I am heading Tuesday morning.

. . . . . . . . . .L R . . . . . . . . Springfield .
Day . . . High . . . Low . . . High . . . Low

Wed . . . 43 . . . . 23 . . . . 30 . . . . . 10
Thur . . . 31 . . . . 16 . . . . 21 . . . . . . 2
Fri . . . . . 25 . . . . 10 . . . . 19 . . . . . 6
Sat . . . . 33 . . . . 20 . . . . 32 . . . . 20

In Missouri on Tuesday night and Wednesday snow is forecasted with 1 to 3 inches each day. [:(!] As if the 2 degrees wasn't bad enough, I get snow too. [:(!]

I will leave for Missouri hopefully by 10:30 am. But considering the weather I will shut the water off at the main and drain the pipes before leaving, and turn the water heater down. Needless to say, I am not thrilled with this week's weather forecast, cold temps, and snow. [:(] [V] [:(!]

You know something funny? A week ago my neighbor had 5 red roses bloom on her rose bush. A year ago she had beautiful yellow roses. I have a photo somewhere of the roses and it also shows the trees with no leaves. Our weather is absolutely crazy this year.

Well if I can get on my sister's computer I might say "Hello" from Missouri, but just in case I don't, I once again want to wish everyone A Merry Christmas and A Blessed New Year.

Everyone stay safe and be nice.

ohhhh Chris [;)] SHIP IT ON THE FRISCO [:D]

[philnrunt]

Ed- Too much time? If only. Now if you had said mis-spent time, poorly planned time or time to pay attention, I would have to agree. And it sounds like you have those cool weather plans down pat! Good man. It always pays to go with a proven routine.
As pennsyhoos will attest to, today was colder than it has any right to be. But that styrofoam I put around the trailer has worked out well, I still have H2O while others have lost both water and drains(knock on wood). Too cold, boys. 'Sposed to get to 44 today, then the bottom will drop out again for C-mas, possibly down to -6F. Well, whatchagonnadooo?
I've noticed that most model rails complain about loud motors in their engines, I always liked 'em loud, probably the only sound system I'll ever be able to afford. I remember on one layout I could'nt see the train coming, but I could hear it rolling thru the buildings, and it was one of those good memorys.
Anyway, just a thought.
Again, best wishes to all these coming holidays, and stay warm.

[PennsyHoosier]

Good evening all,

It was FREEZING here today in northern Indiana. Too cold to do anything except go to #2 son's baskeball game (his team won). Otherwise, just getting ready for the holiday.

Hope you all are well.

[Paul W. Beverung]

Jim; Yup. No loops. I had to take a grunt Capt. on a look for a fuel cach. He wanted to go low level and I wasn't to keen on the idea because I had been shot down two days before and my crew chief was killed. It happened only a few clicks away from there. Anyway my CO says do it fast. So I did.

Pedromorgan; Try putting your mold in a pressure pot after poring in the resin. I use an old 2 or 3 gal paint pot. Use 60 to 80 lbs pressure. This will take care of the bubbles.

Der; Looks like SNOAH to me.

I got Cadrail today. I guess I'll try working with it while I'm on vacation.

Well bed time. See you all tomorrow.

Paul

the Duluth, Superior, & Southeastern

" The Superior Route "

[Anonymous]

Hello, all. Nothing much to say, here. Just thought I'd pop in and say hi. See you guys, later.

Robert

[fec153]

Good evening all. Another 13 hour day without a lunchbreak. Had to sneak in a couple potty breaks tho. Put over 360 miles on the van and my callouses are getting calloused.
Thanks for the advice on the 60 footers.
It's going below freezing tonight but will get backto low 60's tomorrow. Thanks to all for sharing the cold. Please bottle it and ship it in July or August.
Frozen Flip.
[:)][:)]. Darn,its time to shower and get to sleep. Goodnight all.

[Noah Hofrichter]

Ed, I had the same thought(right after I posted it) but I was running late and couldn't do it then. I was going to sneakily fix it, but you beat me to it. BTW, nice picture. I tried taking a picture of myself to psot on here once, but the camera lense broke when I opened it to take the picture. Tried again (with a new lense) and it did the same darn thing![:D]

John, Truthfully? I don't know what I did. I tried pushing in a bump in one of the roating metal parts of the worm gear, and cleaned it, and that stopped the noise and made it run faster. And your right, that is THE caboose, the most famous and anticipated Model caboose in the shop all year(which finally got finnished a few months ago to much fanfare)!

Jim, don't you like how I made the layout look exactly like a countertop and kitchen! Really, my layout isn't very well lit, and normally I take them outside laying on my belly next to the black trim of the house, but not this time of year!

Well, I used my time today (45 minutes in the shop alone) so I better go! See ya!

Noah

[der5997]

Ed:

QUOTE: Ouch, John, the thought of gluing your turnouts give me shivers. But thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful with mine.

Forunately I caught them before the glue set up. So it was "just" a matter of wicking up the setting glue with pieces of kitchen paper and a suitable pick. Cleaning it all out, and from the flanges too took a while, but this sort of thing I'm told builds character [(-D] When i had all the glue cleaned out I re-oiled the throwbar ends of each turnout. They are free. I've yet to test their electrical properties. The surrounding ground is a prototypically oily colour.
The real disaster with all this is that the glue has not dried colourless. It looks as if we've had a fall of snow!

Note the oily ground around the turnouts, though.

The texture is there, but what to do about the horrible white? I'm thinking of mixing a cindery sort of paint, and painting over all the outside the rails areas. Inside the rails will be taken care of by the airbrush when I do the rails and ties.
Or, I may try the cindery paint and glop it on in smaller areas than I did the original paint, and dust on more ash.
The other difficulty is that the wettness of the dilute glue technique loosened the glue holding the track in place [V] Now of course all is set up again. It's not a widespread error, and I can live with some of it. Other bits wll have to be re-done. "There was no joy in Ashville"!
I'd hate to think that I will have to eventually buy Woodland Scenics "propper" ballast for the yards as well as for the main.

[egmurphy]

Good Morning Coffee Clubbers,

Starting to get down to the wire, Christmas-wise, and I still have one more gift to get. Maybe today. Our cool snap continues so I’m fairly sure it won’t be shorts and sandals on Christmas day, thank God.


Ouch, John, the thought of gluing your turnouts give me shivers. But thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful with mine.


Greg, yeah I really enjoyed the Cumbres & Toltec. I actually wrote up my trip here on the Coffee Shop. I’ll see if I can figure out what page the story is on. We hit the Durango & Silverton on the same trip. Another outstanding experience. Now I’m torn between wanting to return and do it again, or try out different roads.

QUOTE: CareGirardeauJim: I never did figure out how they figure the star(s) here. Nothing I found explains it. Plus, sometimes I post and my count doesn't change at all, other times it does.

It’s one blue star for 50 posts, two purple stars for 100, 3 green stars for 500, 4 gold stars for 1000, and 5 red stars for 2000. Each new post should count. Editing old posts doesn’t change the count.

QUOTE: Larry: Ed, I checked out your picture. It looks like you're on the way to fulfilling the quote in your signature…. I would put one up of myself. But that might scare everyone off and shut down the forum.

I’m working on it. I probably looked more haggard and less smiley faced before retiring. That’s helped. At least the photos don’t show up in your signature, someone actually has to make the effort to look at your profile to see it.

Yes, it was a good game. Sorry Peyton didn’t get more TD passes, but he’s still sure to break Marino’s record before the end of the season.

QUOTE: NorthernPhil: You guys are typing fools now let me tell ya! Or maybe "prolific" is a kinder way of saying it. Catching up on 5 or 6 pages takes quite awhile.

That’s what you get for spending more time at work or with the girlfriend than on the forums!! Some of us just have too much time on our hands.

QUOTE: What do you do if it gets cold? Eat extra Habeneros?

Well one thing I do when the weather turns cool here is to switch back to regular coffee and drop the iced coffee until spring. Plus, I’ve switched from my usual Cuba Libres to tequila. I don’t enjoy it as much when it’s hot, but when it’s cool out, I do enjoy sipping a good aged tequila in the afternoon.


Let’s see, -37ºC up at Gordon’s (I’m sure Molson enjoys going out to do his business in that!) and +18ºC (64ºF) at Teffy’s? There’s a spread for you.

When we lived in Houston we had an apartment with a small balcony that Fran had full of plants. For the handful of nights when it got real cold we made a curtain of plastic that could be dropped down to cover the entire front of the balcony. Then we left the sliding glass door open a bit so some warm air flowed out and kept it warm out there. Never lost a plant.


Be good, I’ll catch up with you later,

Ed

[lupo]

QUOTE:
Originally posted by egmurphy

Hey, Lupo - Sounds like you had a great one! I'm sending a hopper full of confetti your way! I figure you can use it for some interesting scenery paste mix, right? A Ferrari drive sure beats the black balloons they give most people for their 40th (I managed to slide by mine without anyone knowing - must be my boyish good looks, huh...) Hope they don't use those camera/radar setups some areas here in the US have (where they send you a photo of you speeding, along with your fine to pay by mail). But then again, it was a rental, so it'd be hard to trace it down to you!

Holland is heavily infested by those radar setups, but as I am familiar with all locations of these machines around here I planned the route I took carefully avoiding most of those things, and kept a nice steady 60 or 50 mph where I had to pass them.
Thanks for the extra confetti! I will add it to the pile they treated me to yesterday, my 7 year old son loved the confetti one of my friends gave him so much that he also emptied all the office perforaters he found around the house and office as well, have been vacuming for 2 hours, and still the stuff is everywhere, but I did not mind, the present was beyond belief . . .
[:D][:D][:D][:D]

black ballons at 40 ? so they have similar birthday practice at your side of the water as well,

[Anonymous]

Good Morning All:

It only got to 36 last night and is 42 now. The high for the day is going to be 64 so we're doing OK. I thought that I was going to have to bring the plants in yesterday but was granted a repreve. She has a front and side porch full of plants and then their are some out in the yard in pots. I figured that if we put them side by side and started in the downstairs spare bedroom we could get them in the bedroom and about half of the dinning room. Stephanie has two green thumbs.

I ordered the motor for my turntable and it should be in today. I'll probably go pick it up Wednesday. $42.50 plus taxes for that little jewel, and that's just the motor - no controls. Since it's a 12 V DC, I'm thinking about controlling it with an old DH121 at address 99. It'll require some playing with but then that darn track testing gets in the way and makes the job go slower.

Flip:
Those OK streamliner cars are 8 1/2" long and look pretty good on 18" radius. I just set a couple of them on my old layout with 18" rad. I'll get the instruction sheet out today and give you an address.

Ya'll have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

[CP5415]

Good Day Eh!

Greetings from the FREEZING COLD Great White North!!!!!!!
-37C with the wind chill
Igloo making wearther if I ever saw any!!!!

Time to dethaw the Cruiser

See ya's all later

Gordon

[pedromorgan]

good morning evvryone

i did my first few resin castings over the weekend. they turned out really well. much better than expected. there are a few air bubbles but they are in plaves that could be filled withought too much problem. i rather stupidly did the trailer guards standard coach first (they are only used on intercitys and even there there is only one of them so) i have cast 6 and that should be a lifetime supply. next i will do a open forst as this bodyshell is shared with the open second and an EMU which i want to kit bash. then i will do a sleeper (have you seen the prices lima Mk3 sleepers are going for on ebay £50+) i have 3 of them but at that price i dont want to go chopping them with a razor saw!

i am still to cast the roofs, underframes and bogies which are shared with all these coaches.

peter

[philnrunt]

You guys are typing fools now let me tell ya! Or maybe "prolific" is a kinder way of saying it. Catching up on 5 or 6 pages takes quite awhile.
Robert- i really like the modern look of the scheme, looks like a good design to me.
Flip- I took as big a helping of the cold weather coming your way as I could, it's 3 right now. I'm sure Lawrence also carved as big a piece as he could stand. But we knew that you folks get tired of all of that 70 and 80 degree C-mas weather, so we left enough of it to go around! Hang in there Ed, it might even make it down your way. What do you do if it gets cold? Eat extra Habeneros?
Went to the LHS (Veaches)in Richmond the other day, ended up getting 2 Athearn RTR tanks, wanted Atlas but they don't carry the rolling stock. I asked the manager about it and we ended up looking at his catalogs and he said he would consider picking up some and see how it goes. Someone in retail sales that actually listens to the customer is a rare event, they will get more of my money.
TW100- about 5 pages back you said the fleeing perp was lucky the dog got him, not the deputy. In my experience, you MIGHT be able to reason with a deputy, but the K9 is rather single minded in his pursuit, and there's no making him see it your way. When we bring in a dog, the officers are warned and generally clear the area to let the pup focus on his job.
Lupo- I would add my paltry b-day wish, but it sounds like your friends are taking plenty good care of you!
Happy Holidays to all, and don't forget our troops that are going in harm's way. They are the true heros of this world, and they don't make 40 million a year!