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

[Anonymous]

QUOTE:
Big_Girl:
I recieved 17 e-mails today and then got the error message, some of the e-mails came in twice. I don't know. I thought I was only having trouble sending, but now I don't know. I'm going to try the oven fried chicken Sat as that's my day to loaf around. No pun intended. As to your mother, I'm also diabetic. I've been able to control my blood sugar with diet and weight. I lost 50 # before the stroke and the four weeks that we were in the hospital I gained 30 of it back, probably the stress and the fast food. I'm now back down to 205 and shooting for 180 again. Last night was not a good night as I ate a bunch of cashews while watching THE GAME and the blood sugar was at 157 this morning. I take a pill (500 mg Metformina that's the generic for Glucaphage) if it's over 130. This month I've only had to take four pills. I have a cashew fetish and shouldn't have them around the house because I'm like an alcholic and can't stop eating until they are all gone.

Hi Bob,

You'll have to let me know how it turns out. I was lucky enough to escape the cashew addiction. Now roasted salted in the shell peanuts. When I go on a bender it is quite a sight to see. I have a few more recipes I am working on typing in to Word and then will have them off as well.

[egmurphy]

Chris,

It was probably "Two Mules for Sister Sarah" with Shirley Maclaine as his costar. That one was set in Mexico, and it probably was the one filmed there. I had a mind block thinking only of his earlier work.

I've got a real old (+/- 20 years) but still unused Badger 350 single action air brush. I'd probably go with water based paints so it's not a question of solvent, just getting up enough nerve to use it, and enough patience to clean the jar, the suction tube, disassemble and clean the brush, needle, etc. Got a couple of cans of propellant too, for use on the test run. Up to now, whatever small amount of spray painting I've done has been with regular spray paint cans from the hardware store (matte finish, or course).

Today's big news is that after a nine+ month move/storage, the layout (such as it is) actually saw the light of day. [^] The Vice-President in Charge of Real Estate, also known as DW, okayed setting it on the table in the bedroom. It's not much of a layout at this moment, as it only has the base course of foam, plus elevated foam under all the elevated sections of track. About half the cork roadbed is glued down. No permanently fixed track. After looking at it a while, with the benefit of having run trains over the route in my head for the past few months, I can see about 3-4 areas where I really need to make some changes before gluing the track down. I hate to rip out any of the little work I've actually done. But I'll have enough operational problems with the things I can't fix (like the too tight radius needed to fit on the 3' door width) so I probably need to change the few things that I can do something about.

We'll see if I actually make any progress on it tomorrow.

Hasta mañana,

Ed

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TEFFY

Good Morning All:

Has anyone else noticed how many people read "coffee shop"? For every post their are ten others that just stop in. Why aren't these peepin tom's saying "Good Morning or Afternoon" and letting us know something about them? It isn't like this is a closed club.

Big_Boy:
You're right - apparentlly I've made a mistake and have the layouts confused. That's very easy for me to do. I haven't heard of choke cable controls in years. When I was in high school we used to go out to the junk yards, take out the choke control cables, bring them home, clean 'em up and use them on the layout. For years I didn't know that you could buy them brand new, but I knew where all of the cables were and how they were routed on all of the cars. Most of the hood latch cables ran close to the battery so they were usually eaten up or coroded.

Big_Girl:
I recieved 17 e-mails today and then got the error message, some of the e-mails came in twice. I don't know. I thought I was only having trouble sending, but now I don't know. I'm going to try the oven fried chicken Sat as that's my day to loaf around. No pun intended. As to your mother, I'm also diabetic. I've been able to control my blood sugar with diet and weight. I lost 50 # before the stroke and the four weeks that we were in the hospital I gained 30 of it back, probably the stress and the fast food. I'm now back down to 205 and shooting for 180 again. Last night was not a good night as I ate a bunch of cashews while watching THE GAME and the blood sugar was at 157 this morning. I take a pill (500 mg Metformina that's the generic for Glucaphage) if it's over 130. This month I've only had to take four pills. I have a cashew fetish and shouldn't have them around the house because I'm like an alcholic and can't stop eating until they are all gone.

Have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

Well Bob with regard to the coffee shop, the views are running about 10:1 over posts. Part of that comes from those of us who post here regularly, looking to see what someone has said. I know I look here a lot more than I post, and I suspect that many of us dothe same. I'm sure there are others that look in and say nothing. That's fine, but everyone is welcome here, and it would really be the bedt place for newbies to check in, though I can understand how they might feel a little intimidated. The truth is we don't bite.

Actual choke cables are kind of outdated, but there are a lot of interesting substitutes on the market today. There was even an article in MR within the last 6 months, about making a version of of one. There is a cool new product that use a mineature "armstrong" lever connected to the choke style pushrod.

By the way, I'm a diabetic, and I love cashews too.[:0][:(][:I][dinner][banghead][sigh]

http://www.humpyard.com/

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dgoodlander

Elliot,

You are correct about the Addam's Family House model. My son saw one on ebay and had to have it. It is made by a company called Polar Lights, which bought the original molds from Aurora Models which was a big company in the 1960's. They were big with comic characters, Spiderman, Superman, Batman & Robin. I had several of those. Some of the old models are quite collectiable, use "Aurora" in the search bar and see what I mean.

Actually I think there is a newer version, with lots of detail and fairly pricey. I want to say $150 ?

I remember those old Aurora models. Unbuilt kits of the monster / super hero characters are rather collectable.

[Anonymous]

ED:

I know that at least one Clint Eastwood western was filmed in Mexico, because it said so in the prelude where the movie names all of the actors and the companies involved in making it. And what kind of airbrush do you have? I have a Paasche, and it's very easy to clean (as long as you have solvent!!), in fact it takes me longer to clean out the paint bottle/pickup tube than it takes me to dissassemble, clean, and re-assemble the actual airbrush! (I only use airbrush-ready acrylics for right now, though.)

NOAH:
Right now it's only going to be a 4x8, but I'm planning to eventually add on a module or two to give it a little more operating interest. I'm going to try to get the curves up to 22" radius, or else I won't be able to run my heavy Mikado (It either derails or the tender and cab roof bump each other on 18" radius sectional track). I also want to increase the size of it from a basic 4x8 to something larger so an ABBA set of Genesis or Stewart F's won't look so odd on it. And WOW, just for benchwork lumber and hardware it set me back $110!!! and I barely even have any track or structures, let alone a soldering iron or rail cutters![:O][:-,]

Also I have an album on RailImages.com, I don't have any photos in it at the moment, but as soon as I have layout photos on there I'll give you guys some links to it.

Now it's time to decide where I will have the layout based so it would be realistic to have the CB&Q, GN, and NP all featured....The Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Montana, or Southern Minnesota? Hmmmm.............

[krump]

how may hours are you away from "ForumTime" ?"

what a concept that is... the forum tells me it's 5:04 pm, but the sun-dial in BC tells me that it's 3:04 pm
Lupo is probably having a midnight snack

cheers

[Anonymous]

Hey Lupo, haven't seen you on MSN for a while, where have you been[?]

[lupo]

evening all:
well Bob and Ed,
thanks for the tips, you are right, [^] I should have stayed with steam those disiesels are not my main interest indeed , I also have some steamers on my roster:

IHC camelback UP 1586
roundhouse shay UP 61
spectrum saddle tank 0-6-0 UP 89
spectrum consolidation 2-8-0 UP 721
spectrum mountain 4-8-2 UP 7009
rivarossi challenger 4-6-6-4 UP 3716
rivarossi challenger 4-6-6-4 UP 3985
rivarossi big boy 4-8-8-4 UP 4002
rivarossi big boy 4-8-8-4 UP 4005
rivarossi big boy 4-8-8-4 UP 4006
rivarossi big boy 4-8-8-4 UP 4013
rivarossi big boy 4-8-8-4 UP 4023
rivarossi FEF3 4-8-4 UP 840
rivarossi FEF3 4-8-4 UP 844

btw: [}:)] do not tell anyone else wich class-one I model-collect
I see the juvenile lynchmob allready gathering! [:p]
and things around here were so peacefull lately [8D]

[:D][:D][:D]

[Anonymous]

Elliot,

You are correct about the Addam's Family House model. My son saw one on ebay and had to have it. It is made by a company called Polar Lights, which bought the original molds from Aurora Models which was a big company in the 1960's. They were big with comic characters, Spiderman, Superman, Batman & Robin. I had several of those. Some of the old models are quite collectiable, use "Aurora" in the search bar and see what I mean.

[Noah Hofrichter]

Chris, Congrats on finally gettig the space. How big will the actual layout be?

Phil, Thanks for the compIiment. I used Testors yellow spray paint, avalible at your local Walmart. It's more of a golden yellow, which is what the prototype is so it's perfect.

Still waiting on my order from life like for my new switches. They should have shipped yesterday, so that means with my luck they'll get here on Thurday, the day I go back to school. If I didn't have to wait for them I could be back running trains again, but oh well. This weekend will be track laying and balasting. I can't wait to get going again. Well I gto to get going, got to mow the lawn later, need more money for the $50.00 worth of switches I bought.

See you later,
Noah

[der5997]

Good afternoon people. It's just gone 2:00 p.m. Atlantic time, so it's afternoon now for a whole bunch more ! The remnants of one Tropical Storm have departed, and we await the next tonight.

TEFFY, phone # coming across when I get to emails next.

Don't have any cattle cars for those steroids, sorry[(-D]
I may be able to scrounge up a length of HO flex so we can "run" your visiting power. However, we may also have to reprogram it if the present address is above 32. Limitation of my system.

Our marketing department advises me that the Maritime Trunk rate structure is kept competitive through shipping MT, regardless of Scale! (Dilbert fans will of course know all about the reliability of Marketing Departments)

Got my decoder installed in a pair of RDCs. (One powered, one dummy) Fixed up lights so the rear car had headlights when direction was changed. Small problem, no lights on either the test track, or on the program track, or on the layout. [:(!] Unit ran well enough.
MRC tell me that the decoder is old stock, and to send it back, they will upgrade it (for a nominal fee) Since it's the only course of action that may get me running by the time TEFFY gets here, I'm going for their offer. I know that the LHS won't have a clue as to what the problem is.

Once the lights are working, I'll look at rear markers, which I think will look really cool. I've got the fiber optics worked out, but am wondering if those tiny LEDs might be better.

lupo: Nearly missed your question "John (der5779) I read you are in a different timezone as well, how may hours are you away from "ForumTime" ?"
Best way I can answer that is to say that I'm posting this at about 2:35 p.m. Atlantic Time. Check to see what the posted time is when it shows up on the Forum. (Long way round to say I have absolutely no idea![:I])


Must tidy up the workbench from all that instal/uninstal.
Regards.

[egmurphy]

Morning all,

Lot's of activity here in the last 24 hours, I'll try not to forget all the points I was going to make.

Chris, you're ahead of me if you jumped in and used your airbrush. I'm still holding back (probably due to fears about clogging nozzles or fear of 'cleanup' afterwards). But I may be ahead of you benchworkwise. Of course, mine came as one piece (a hollow core wood door)!

You commented:

QUOTE: other than through a few Clint Eastwood films I didn't really know what Mexico looked like...

I could be wrong, but most of the famous 'spaghetti westerns', like 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' (one of my favorite all time flics, by the way), 'Fistfull of Dollars', 'Hang 'em High', etc were actually filmed in Spain with a lot of Spanish and Italian actors and extras. But, like yourself and most people NOB, before they transferred me down here the first time I really had no idea what the country was like either. But like most large countries, it has a wide variety of landscapes ranging from beaches to high mountains (some snow covered all year), lots of desert up north, jungle in the south, high plains in the middle, and even has some pretty deep canyons that do a pretty good imitation of the Grand Canyon, but with a train running through it! Check out the following link on the Copper Canyon (Barranca de Cobre) and the Chihuahua al Pacifico train that runs through it. (Note, the 'English' button for the site is in the upper right hand corner of the main page.

http://www.chepe.com.mx/

It is nice country around here, but I'm not sure it's all that well suited for camping. Not much (if any) public lands, no developed campgrounds, probably too hot and humid to be comfortable most of the year. I think the concept is starting to catch on, but is probably practiced more up in the mountainous areas.

John W - like I was saying, "...one of those mythical places that you need to see at least once in your life like Cajon Pass, Tehachapi Loop, Sherman Hill, Promontory Point, Tatamagouche....... [;)]

The diorama work was easier than I had feared. Way back in the Coffee Shop earlier pages I included several shots of it as I was forming it. I think the last one was the one that Lupo commented about being painted with a very sandy colored latex paint

The news about additional oil reserves is great news, not just for Mexico but also for the U.S., as Mexico is one of our more stable suppliers. Where we live was in the middle of the early oil field activity in Mexico. Now the production from this area is way down from it's peak. I'm modeling the area in the '45-'60 time frame. Even then most of the crude really moved by pipeline, but in my little world, the F.C.V.N. got it's share of product to carry. I have 6 unbuilt Intermountain 8,000 gal tank car kits waiting for a little energy on my part.

Bob, good advice to Lupo about getting some steam power. It has the added benefit of significantly reducing problems in non matching color schemes. "Let's see, does this black engine with white letters match the black with white letters on the rest of my roster?" [:)]

Anyway, time to get off the keyboard and on to model railroading...............

Hasta luego,

Ed

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by lupo

Good evening All!
Bob , you are dead right about the color difference and other problems with my Santa Fe FA and B units, It is beautiful to look at, and I do not have a problem with the color anymore, [:D] but:
I noticed a differentce in the rounding in the roofs of the MRC B and the Intermountain A units, so the sides of the B unit are a wee bit higher than the sides of the A units. Is this prototypical [:)] , or does this mean I am becoming a [:-^] "Rivetcounter"

take care
stay safe

LUPO

LUPO:
Quit "rivit counting" this is a leisure enjoyable hobby. I see three solutions (when your in the trench it's hard to see the whole war); 1) hook the MRC "B" unit to an MRC "A" unit, 2) set the MRC "B" unit on the mantel by itself, 3) don't worry about it. Number 3 is my solution. If you'd get a steamer or two you wouldn't have time to worry about it as you'd be worring about how to keep all of those darn wheels going the same direction and on the same track, and where is that rivit that holds the side rods together? If you get a steamer then you need to be a rivit counter.

Would you send me your address. My e-mail is [e-mail]

Have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

[Anonymous]

Good Morning All:

It's a great day THE COWBOYS WON LAST NIGHT. For those of you that aren't into football, the number one team in AMERICA is the DALLAS COWBOYS. Now I don't want to hear about the packers, steelers, giants or any of the other has beens.

Has anyone else noticed how many people read "coffee shop"? For every post their are ten others that just stop in. Why aren't these peepin tom's saying "Good Morning or Afternoon" and letting us know something about them? It isn't like this is a closed club.

Now down to the important things:

John:
Your instructions are great I shouldn't have any trouble finding you but I would like a phone number so I can call you when we are on the road and let you know what our ETA will be. Is their a possability of giving the MT some steroids and bulking it up to HO? Does the MT have lower rates because it has smaller cars? My sense of humor is in top form today.

Big_Boy:
You're right - apparentlly I've made a mistake and have the layouts confused. That's very easy for me to do. I haven't heard of choke cable controls in years. When I was in high school we used to go out to the junk yards, take out the choke control cables, bring them home, clean 'em up and use them on the layout. For years I didn't know that you could buy them brand new, but I knew where all of the cables were and how they were routed on all of the cars. Most of the hood latch cables ran close to the battery so they were usually eaten up or coroded.

Big_Girl:
I recieved 17 e-mails today and then got the error message, some of the e-mails came in twice. I don't know. I thought I was only having trouble sending, but now I don't know. I'm going to try the oven fried chicken Sat as that's my day to loaf around. No pun intended. As to your mother, I'm also diabetic. I've been able to control my blood sugar with diet and weight. I lost 50 # before the stroke and the four weeks that we were in the hospital I gained 30 of it back, probably the stress and the fast food. I'm now back down to 205 and shooting for 180 again. Last night was not a good night as I ate a bunch of cashews while watching THE GAME and the blood sugar was at 157 this morning. I take a pill (500 mg Metformina that's the generic for Glucaphage) if it's over 130. This month I've only had to take four pills. I have a cashew fetish and shouldn't have them around the house because I'm like an alcholic and can't stop eating until they are all gone.

Philnrunt:
I new since you left (?). That's what I like about DPM, you can kitbash so easily. My first kit of theirs was Drywell Inks. It sat around for months until I felt like messing with it and I was pleased with the results. I buy their bulk kits now so I've got a lot of pieces to play with. I found out that if you use a sheet of glass as a tabletop to build the walls they come out a lot better.

Tom:
I just saw my "little" enveploe come on and wallah - there was your e-mail along with five others that I'd already received. You've probably heard this before, Where is "old" Harris? I'll give you a call when we start the trip and then I'll be able to tell you when we might be there. This is a liesure trip and if we see something down a side road that we want to go look at - off we go.

YNCS/Peter:
I can't remember if you said that you let people see your layout or not. If you do I'd like to stop by sometime in early Oct. If you'd send me an e-mail at [e-mail] and include your phone I'll give you a call.


The "boss" says it's time to go to work so let me go and get dressed, I've got to mask and paint the bathroom in the house next door. The carpenter got the wall finishing up Sat so now I need to go in a fini***he job.

Have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

[der5997]

QUOTE: Originally posted by egmurphy

Okay sports fans, here are a couple of pictures of the infamous diorama. The first one is just an overview of the diorama. After all the agonizing I did over the small trestle you can't even see it in the photo. [:(]



The second one has my first attempts at painting and lettering cars (remember the dry transfer rant from a couple of days ago?). You can see the letters are none too even. I didn't even try to do anything with dimensional data. A good heavy weathering effort ought to cover it up pretty good. But this is what I wanted the diorama for, to have a place to photograph cars.



It's H(orribly) O(versized) ballast. Yeah I know the grains are too big for N. I wanted to be able to see something grainy without using my optivisor. [8D] In these photos you can easily see that it's code 80 rail. In real life it doesn't jump out at me as much. I tried painting a test section of rail to make it less obvious (inspired by Tom's example) but decided to leave well enough alone at this time. Maybe later.

Anyway, now that the diorama is done, on to the layout.

Hasta mañana

Ed

Ed: Very encouraging photos, as I'm doing foam for the first time, and haven't got around to making it look anything like real!
Re your PEMEX car, came across this in a newsletter this morning.

"There was some great news for all from Mexico yesterday as it was
announced that there has been a new oil reserve discovered... Pemex, the
state owned oil monopoly, announced that this reserve will more than
double the nation's known crude oil reserves. That would take Mexico's
reserves to 102 billion barrels, more than the United Arab Emirates
(which has reserves of 97.8 billion barrels), Kuwait (94 billion) and
Iran (89.7 billion), and almost as much as Iraq (112.5 billion)."

Gonna need a bunch of those tanks, get building.[(-D]

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by philnrunt

Started building some DPM kits the other day, then got a bit nutz and started kitbashing them, don't know quite yet what it will turn out to be, but I am having a blast cobbling it together.Right now it has an equal chance of being the Empire State Bldg or the Addams Family house at 1313 Mockingbird Ln!

The Munsters lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, I don't know the Addams' address, all I know is [:-^][:-^]"They're creepy and they're spooky, mysterious and kooky, they're alltogether ooky the Addams family"....

Actually I love the Addams Family, especially Gomez and his train set. As one who does Lionel, it does however pain me to see all of those nice old collectable trains blown up.[:0][;)]

I think that someone made a kit of the Addams' house. I swear I saw it in one of the magazines.

Have a great day everyone, I'll be back later. Big Girl and I are taking the kids to the State Fair. Maybe we'll go into the haunted house.[swg]

[philnrunt]

Ed- It looks like you live in an absolutely beautiful place! I don't know what, if any, critters roam about there, but it looks like a prime camping area. Man, that is some pretty scenery.
Tom, John and Lupo, thanks for the welcome backs. I missed you guys too. Sometimes things go stoooopid in life and all it takes to get back on track is getting back in touch with the basics, and that means railroading!
Started building some DPM kits the other day, then got a bit nutz and started kitbashing them, don't know quite yet what it will turn out to be, but I am having a blast cobbling it together.Right now it has an equal chance of being the Empire State Bldg or the Addams Family house at 1313 Mockingbird Ln!
Noah- Thanks to der5997 (John from the beautiful province of Nova Scotia) I just saw your TC, and I have to say you did a great job on it. I love the yellow, it looks so right for a TC, what actual color did you use? And keep up the fine work!

[Anonymous]

Well I have a layout now-sort of.[:D]

I have the room plus the lumber, I don't know when it's going to get built, but probably this weekend or next Monday. I also have the name for it-the Burlington & Great Northern Pacific. (My signature shows that plus the roads I'll be showing, though)[8D]

And I finally used my airbrush, albeit to paint a few Kadee couplers rust. Sometime I'll build a few jigs to hold trucks and wheelsets so I can weather/paint them too.

Ed:
That looks more like parts of Minnestoa or Illinois, maybe even Wisconsin than Mexico! Of cousre, other than through a few Clint Eastwood films I didn't really know what Mexico looked like...[;)]

[der5997]

QUOTE: Originally posted by egmurphy

The Station Inn.........sounds great. I especially liked the photo on their homepage with all the railfans in rocking chairs watching the trains across the street from the hotel. Talk about convenience. Even though I'm not particularly a PRR fan, I'd like to get to Horseshoe Curve someday. It's one of those mythical places that you need to see at least once in your life (like Cajon Pass, Tehachapi Loop, Sherman Hill, Promontory Point, and the list continues). Okay, done, added it to the list of 'places to visit'.

Enjoy your trip.

Ed (looking for the 'envious' smilie..........)

There's a Train Station Inn at Tatamagouche on the north shore of Nova Scotia. Guests can sleep in a variety of cabese, as well as the old station building. Regretably, no trains to watch from the porch. [:(] http://www.trainstation.ns.ca/main.html
Just in case you are at a loose end on a visit to NS.
Regards,

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Big_Girl:
As of Friday, I can't get my e-mailer to e-mail anything out and it only receives one or two e-mails a day. I've got to call my ISP and find out what's wrong. Anyway, about the only thngs that we don't eat is bell peppers, broccoli, and carrots. Supposelly the GI's brought broccoli back from Europe after WW II, they should have left it over there. GOD didn't mean for MEN to eat broccoli

Hope your email troubles are fixed. I sent off an email of a few recipes. Let me know if you get them. I agree about the broccoli, when I worked at Burger King and prepped salads the broc was the worst part 'cause it would come in a sealed plastic bag. Boy did it stink when you would first open it.

Happy cooking. BTW if your email still is a pain I can try adding the recipes to my profile and you can just copy them from there into the notepad and print from that.

[krump]

thanks fec153, I'll let you know when they are here.

we recently had a 3.5 minute feature clip of the club layout aired by the area TV station. my 5 yr old son was thrilled to meet the weatherman (a superstar out here) who doubled as the interviewer for the feature.

now, time for a coffee, Mocha please.

cheers,

[fec153]

eg- thanks for the link. One of the train shows on tv had an hour of the South African rr
and great shots of the loco.
krump- the decals are in the tiny hands and feet of snail mail.

[Noah Hofrichter]

That sounds about right, as the real rock i know has sever different shades. Thanks for the info.

Noah

[egmurphy]

Noah,

Nope, just the photo. It's actually more of a pinkish. Well, now that you mention it, and that I take the package into the good light here by the window, maybe it does have a slightly purpli***inge. But don't trust my eyes for color matching, see my 'Brunswick Green or Brunswick Black" thread for more on that.

It's Arizona Rock & Mineral's HO scale number 102-2 New york Central Kaibab Limestone. It's got a real salt and pepper look, as it has pieces that are real light, some medium, and some a lot darker. These guys are supposedly out of business but a lot of hobby shops still have back stock. The stuff is real crushed stone, so it was pretty easy to ballast. It didn't tend to move when I put on the wet water or glue mix.

Regards

Ed

[egmurphy]

The Station Inn.........sounds great. I especially liked the photo on their homepage with all the railfans in rocking chairs watching the trains across the street from the hotel. Talk about convenience. Even though I'm not particularly a PRR fan, I'd like to get to Horseshoe Curve someday. It's one of those mythical places that you need to see at least once in your life (like Cajon Pass, Tehachapi Loop, Sherman Hill, Promontory Point, and the list continues). Okay, done, added it to the list of 'places to visit'.

Enjoy your trip.

Ed (looking for the 'envious' smilie..........)

[Noah Hofrichter]

Ed! Nice diorama! What color is that balast? It looks purplei***o me. I ask as that's the color the WSOR uses, it's mined at a quarry about 15 miles from my house. UP uses most of the balast, and they actually own the quarry. I plan on putting this color balast on my next layout, as it'll be lookin' like the WSOR balast. If ti is purpleish (the material in Real life is quartzite around here, where did you get it?

Noah

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by TEFFY

Good Morning All:



Big_Boy:
From the picture that I've seen of your layout it's about like mine - how are you controlling your switch machines? I thought about the DS54 from Digitrax as I like being able to throw then from the throttle but then someone from across the room can't see how they are thrown and may try to run a switch thrown the wrong way. I had origionally thought about using caboose hobbies ground throws but then you have to be right there and if someone is in the way then you're out of luck. Besides that my Branchline engineer may be operating from outside the layout since that's where the branchline ends.


Have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

Well Bob, right now I don't throw any turnouts, are you sure you are thinking of the right layout? When I do finally get things going, the plan is to have the mainline turnouts all handled by a computer which will act as a CTC dispatcher. The local industrial turnouts may use a choke cable type manual control, though I'm considering groung throws for those close enough to reach and motors for remote locations.

Keep in mind that my layout is 3 rail O. I will be using Lionel's version of command control, called TMCC. One of the cool parts about that system is the hand held remote can preform a lot more functions than just the train control. I haven't had any reason to look into DCC, but TMCC uses 16 bit commands, and turnouts are easily addressed, but that's not going to be used.

What you are trying to deal with is more of an operating problem, and something of a rules issue. There should only be one train, and one engineer authorized to use a particular piece of track at any one time. Are you doing walk around on your layout? If you are planning on having more than one operator, then you need to communicate about who goes where and when. Once you have that decided, how you throw the turnouts should fall into place.

If you decide to use hand held to do the throwing, then each opreator needs to have one. In my opinion, if you have multiple people operating, each person should be with his train, and then he can see the turnout alignment as he approaches.

This might be worth a seperate topic, to get input from the masses. Seeing your track plan would help too.[:)]

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, how is everyones day going? I am very happy tomorrow I am going on vacation to Cresson, Pa. I am going to a bed and breakfast named The Station Inn. I am going on vacation there till Thursday night. I cant wait! Cresson, Pa is around 10 miles west of Horseshoe Curve (Altoona). If you want to check out there site it is www.stationinnpa.com . By the way, lupo our time is one hour ahead then the trains.com time. Well I talk to all of you when I get back. Bye.

[lupo]

Good evening All!
Bob , you are dead right about the color difference and other problems with my Santa Fe FA and B units, It is beautiful to look at, and I do not have a problem with the color anymore, [:D] but:
I noticed a differentce in the rounding in the roofs of the MRC B and the Intermountain A units, so the sides of the B unit are a wee bit higher than the sides of the A units. Is this prototypical [:)] , or does this mean I am becoming a [:-^] "Rivetcounter"

Ed, i allready checked out Veracruz and surroundigs: [8D] [8D] [8D]
but the base color you painted your diorama let me think it was going to be all sandy

Phil, good to see you back, maybe see you around tomorrow morning ( tonight )

John (der5779) I read you are in a different timezone as well, how may hours are you away from "ForumTime" ?

take care
stay safe

LUPO

[egmurphy]

Thought I'd show a couple of rough pics of the area around here (outside the town) that are representative of the area, and thus give an idea of the look I'm going for in the diorama and the layout. the area is rolling, but no high mountains (they start a short bit inland from here) which is good for a layout that needs to be stored vertically.





No Lupo, no desert around here. Veracruz is probably one of the lushest states in Mexico. The desert areas tend to be up in the north central and northwest parts of the country.

Tom, I'm going to try taping the dry transfers on and see how that goes. However I think that'll only work for some of the larger letters. The small ones I'm using for reporting marks are only about 1/16" square, so the idea of taping them together is about as daunting as trying to align them.

Good to see you back Phil. I see you're still covering night shift for the coffee shop!.

Bob, the eyes are all for a larger scale. Unfortunately I'm in N due to space restrictions. What I really need to do is just recognize when "enough is enough" detail-wise and not try to emulate everything that I see in forums on the web. I took my career real seriously, I'm trying hard to keep from being too serious about my hobby.

Hasta luego,

Ed