Elliotts Trackside Diner (est 1-1-07)

[gear-jammer]

Dick,

Your day sounds similar to mine.  I am trying to burn more wood.  Our power bill came and was almost $100 over the highest ever.  With the freezing weather over the holidays, and the train room in the other end of the house,  the heat pump was running full tilt.  I am painting figures now so I can do that anywhere.

How much detail are you doing with your planning?  Are you doing that with software?  We only did the mainline and spurs to our logging area and to the sawmill.  We will have a wye by the sawmill when the area behind it is complete.  We plotted out our inclines also,  3% up to the sawmill and to the log camp with one spur of 6% on the logging landing.

We did not plan any businesses, but are watching for kits at sale prices.  We are still working on names of some of our places.  That allows us to keep dreaming.

Have fun with your design.  Sue

[Paul W. Beverung]

Hi Gang:

Dick: I have a concept for your space in my head. If you would E-mail me with your regular E-mail address and some of your specs like minimum radius I'll put it on paper and scan it and send it to you.

Well just tomorrow and it will be over. I'll see you all later.

[SilverSpike]

Been a couple days since my last visit!

Chloe, got any of those doughnuts left from this morning?

What are you all up to these days?

We have a severe storm warning that started at 6:00 AM and goes until midnight tonight. Snow started falling around 8:00 AM and has been slowing down now. The weather is supposed to turn to sleet and then rain this afternoon.

So check this out! We were sitting in the living room Tuesday evening and watching TV, fireplace on, all snuggled and comfy! Well around 8:30 PM I started to smell something burning, I calmly got up from my Lazy Boy, walked around the whole house and could not find a thing that was burning or on fire, or what! So now I am starting to get worried! I went back into the living room and by now Monique and Ben are up too looking for the source and none of us can find it. The burning smell keeps getting stronger, but still not smoke or fire. I noticed that it was stronger near the HV/AC floor vent, lo and behold there was no air blowing out of the vent but the burning odor was getting stronger.

Now I am in survival mode (once again), I ran to the thermostat and opened the intake filter vent and sure enough it was a stronger odor in the air intake. I turned off the heater and then went outside to flip the circuit breaker to the first floor heater. Come back inside and the burning odor is still strong. What could it be? Now I run back into the garage, get my knee pads on and a flashlight and then go crawling under the house to see if there is anything on fire under there? Nope! No sign of a fire, burning, or smoke! What could it be? Well, needless to say we kept the first floor AC off that night! Oh, did I say it got down to 17 degrees that night too!

The burning odor finally diminished, at least the smell was not getting stronger or more intense, it was dissipating, and that was a good sign.

Long story short, the capacitor for the blower was only putting out around 1.2 Amps, the technician said that was less than half of what was needed to keep the blower running. What happened is the blower stopped running while the heat pump coils continued to heat up, thus overheating and the burning smell was most likely the coils overheating. He did not see any burning from the blower motor or any other parts. So, $161.00 later and we are up and running again, and thank the good lord we did not have a fire! We were all kind of shook up for a few minutes there.

I'll stop for now and check in with you again later!

Cheers,

Ryan

 

[JimRCGMO]

Dick: I have a concept for your space in my head. If you would E-mail me with your regular E-mail address and some of your specs like minimum radius I'll put it on paper and scan it and send it to you.

Uh, Paul - once you scan your head, how big a file will that be?

Jim in Cape Girardeau

[grayfox1119]

Good afternoon everyone......and thank you Sue, Paul and Jim for your ideas, they are very welcome, many minds working together can accomplish great things...LOL 

JIM: I have topo maps of all the New England states, so I have all the railroads shown. I also have gone to Google maps 3d, and have checked that out as well.  I am strongle considering what you mentioned Jim regarding software......can you suggest any layout software that you would recommend?

PAUL: I have sent you my email address, you should now have it.

SUE: I am not doing any detail work in the layout yet, just trying to get the track locations settled, leaving enough room for several buildings that we have already purchased that are exact replicas of what is along one section of track for North Conway, NH through Crawford Notch, NH.

We built this house in 1967, and installed Electric heat at that time....the going rate was $0.016 per Kwh at that time for special electric rate. It was great until about 1988 when the electric comapnies lost a court battle for offering special rates to home owners with electric heat, so then the rates climbed every year until in 1996 I said "enough". My January electric bill that year was $425!!! I converted the system over to forced hot water, oil fired furnace, with power vent ( no chimney required ) myself, for $4500. Contractors wanted $8000. I loved electric heat, quiet, clean, individual room control, very efficient, and zero maintenance in 21 years. Now the price of oil has risen here from $.45/gallon in 1996 to $2.78 this year (contract), plus $125 for contract and cleaning each year. Sometimes I wonder!!!!  Soooo, we bought a Pellet stove for the large Family room upstairs in the split entry ranch, and have a Dutch West wood burning stove in the lower level. The wood burner does a great job keeping this house warm. Since September, we have used 524 gallons of oil. We are on a hill 1000 foot elevation, winds from every direction, house is about 2700 sq ft on 1st level. So I would use over 1200 gallons of oil if we didn't have those stoves. How do you like the Heat Pump? Do you have buried pipes horizontally or vertically as I have seen in places?

[JimRCGMO]

Ryan, sounds like you got things checked out just in the nick of time! Wow, that could've been a rather big problem, except for your quick shutting things down.  Good to hear that things weren't too expensive to fix.

Jim in Cape Girardeau

[SilverSpike]

Today, I am still working on the layout, the hardest part for me has been trying to decide what I can fit on an around the room layout, how much of Northern three states of New England I can really include in the layout. Certainly, I cannot layout the area to HO scale miles, so there must be some " layout license " that I will apply. One track run around the entire layout would be 52 feet, which in 1:87 scale is 4524 feet, not even ONE LOUSY MILE of real life !!!!!!  Have any of you guys run into this same dilema, or, do you just model a small section of a RR?

Later,

Yep, I have come the same conclusion! So selective compression is the only way out of that, and buy creating several distinct scenes, and then creatively dividing them you can approximate the illusion of having a longer run, or multiple areas being modeled. For example, my total main line runs equate to 2.49 scale miles in HO. But the areas I am modeling are actually hundreds of miles apart, go figure!

 Oh and Happy Belated Birthday! RT

Ryan, sounds like you got things checked out just in the nick of time! Wow, that could've been a rather big problem, except for your quick shutting things down. Good to hear that things weren't too expensive to fix.

Jim in Cape Girardeau

I too was amazed that it was not the blower that needed to be replaced, that could have run into big bucks too! We are just so grateful that it was not more serious, as in burning down the house!

[grayfox1119]

RYAN:  WOW, that is enought to keep you awake all night!!!! We had a similar situation a year ago, it was our Artesian well pressure control box melting. Water had leaked onto the box and gotten inside on the electrical contacts and wires. The contacts oxidized, turning them into one big carbon resistor which in turn overheated and started to melt the plastic cover....boy did that ever stink the house up!!! Yes, it can be very scary until you find the source of the smell. One family in a neighboring town was not so lucky a few years back. They had just finished installing vinyl siding when their house caught fire and was severely damaged. It seems that a nail was driven into a wire inside the wall ( nail was too long  for the job ) and right into the 120V feed wire to a wall outlet. It caused the hot lead to spark and arc without blowing the breaker, until the wood in the wall caught fire. They were lucky because the fire didn't break through until daylight when everyone was up and out.

[JimRCGMO]

Hi again, all.

Dick, good to hear you've checked those places on your RR. On the software, since I use a Macintosh, I'll let others here suggest what they'd recommend for you. I have heard a few suggested here in the past, so you should have some good possibilities to pick from.

Don't blame you on the heat - change over from one thing to another, and the new heat source goes up in cost! Is that part of Murphy's law (not Ed - the other Murphy)?

 

Jim in Cape Girardeau 

[SilverSpike]

RYAN:  WOW, that is enought to keep you awake all night!!!! We had a similar situation a year ago, it was our Artesian well pressure control box melting. Water had leaked onto the box and gotten inside on the electrical contacts and wires. The contacts oxidized, turning them into one big carbon resistor which in turn overheated and started to melt the plastic cover....boy did that ever stink the house up!!! Yes, it can be very scary until you find the source of the smell. One family in a neighboring town was not so lucky a few years back. They had just finished installing vinyl siding when their house caught fire and was severely damaged. It seems that a nail was driven into a wire inside the wall ( nail was too long  for the job ) and right into the 120V feed wire to a wall outlet. It caused the hot lead to spark and arc without blowing the breaker, until the wood in the wall caught fire. They were lucky because the fire didn't break through until daylight when everyone was up and out.

Electrical fires are a nasty critter! And you have to use CO2 class C fire extinguishers to put them out. Amazing that in the case of the nail that the fire burned within the walls for such a long time before penetrating through.

[Paul W. Beverung]

Jim It won't take a whole lot of memorie.

[gear-jammer]

Dick,

Just came in from limbing some of the trees that are down.  I'll work on it some tomorrow.  It is next years wood so it will sit out there  until late summer.

Your heating sounds like ours.  We are on a hill with normal daily winds of 5-20 mph in the afternoon, except  in the summer when it would help cool things.  We have a lot of glass which I expect to be some of the problem.  Our bill was $440 for the January statement.  The heat pump is forced air with electric furnace.  The train room is on the northeast corner so it can get a little chilly when the sun is shining on the thermostat.

Are you still trying to figure out which software to use?

Sue

[james saunders]

Hows it going guys, been a couple of days...

 JimCG - I'm doing my lessons with a private company, on a side note, I work full time.

Ryan - CLOSE call, at least you were home when you started smelling it, i'd hate to think if you were out.

 

Onto other news, I hope to order my track in the next week or so and begin the layout, HOn3.5 track is quite pricey here, so i'm due to spend a few dollars.
The ADSL modem at home broke on Wednesday night so we've got to get a new one today sometime.
Also, I'm going to see INXS with a couple of my friends on April 1, I need a good night out, should be a good night.

 

All for now,

Oz 

[Pdragon]

Dick

I read about your planning struggle. I had the same one. Being a 'Boston boy' at heart, wanted to cover the area from Beantown to White River Junction. My layout is only 12X24 so I compromised with short trains and long distances hidden in tunnels. It wasn't so much the long trains over the long runs (would've liked it, though) as much as I liked the operation and switching more. I run from Boston's Somerville yard (I was born there - Somerville, not the yard) to the Woburn loop (raised there - Woburn, not the loop) up through Billerica, Methuen and Merrick, NH. Here, trains are moved on to White River junction or Northern, NH.

If you really don't need the long run and long trains, shorter trains running more often over shorter distances might be your answer

  

                                    Pulling out of North Station

   

                                    Woburn Station on the Loop

  

                                    Methun Station

   

                                  Town of Merrimack, NH

  

                            White River Junction Service Yard

  

                              Mills and lumber yards in Northern, NH

[TRENT B]

Jeepers RYAN!! Glad your alright!!! Sounds like thes were watchin over ya.

Hey ladies give Ryan the FIREHOUSE special!!

Jim at the cape- We haven't got those #'s yet but we were selling so much that I could'nt keep my shelves full! I'm still trying to recover the boxed stock and my non-boxed took a major hit! We are looking for more collections to fill the empty spots. Out of the N-scale coll. we got before Christmas we have only half left. 

RT-

This weekend we start tearing down the old layout so when you visit my house bring a hardhat or you'll end up w/a! lol!

Later all

[rtraincollector]

RYAN:  WOW, that is enought to keep you awake all night!!!! We had a similar situation a year ago, it was our Artesian well pressure control box melting. Water had leaked onto the box and gotten inside on the electrical contacts and wires. The contacts oxidized, turning them into one big carbon resistor which in turn overheated and started to melt the plastic cover....boy did that ever stink the house up!!! Yes, it can be very scary until you find the source of the smell. One family in a neighboring town was not so lucky a few years back. They had just finished installing vinyl siding when their house caught fire and was severely damaged. It seems that a nail was driven into a wire inside the wall ( nail was too long  for the job ) and right into the 120V feed wire to a wall outlet. It caused the hot lead to spark and arc without blowing the breaker, until the wood in the wall caught fire. They were lucky because the fire didn't break through until daylight when everyone was up and out.

Electrical fires are a nasty critter! And you have to use CO2 class C fire extinguishers to put them out. Amazing that in the case of the nail that the fire burned within the walls for such a long time before penetrating through.

I was always taught once you secure power to a class C fire its becomes a class A (paper type fire) so you then can fight it with good ole H2O But normally you wouldn't want to do that as the water could cause more damage to the electrical parts but in an emergencey thats what you can do.

[grayfox1119]

SUE: I have not decided on any software yet.....I have never used CAD, so whatever I would choose, I would want something that had a short learning curve.....I have patience to read manuals, but I would want the program to be intuitive. Do you have any experience in this arena? I would greatly appreciate hearing of your experiences.

PDRAGON: Wow, another born New Englander living beyond the Berkshires!! Thank you for your suggestions, greatly appreciated. Seeing that you are a Patriot by birthright, you sure know New England well, so you can relate to what area I speak of. My layout will start in Portland Maine and have several routes. One to Millinocket to lumber mills, one to Berlin NH to paper mills, one through North Conway and Crawford Notch to Whitefield. From Whitefield the line goes to Gorham and Berlin, the other line runs out of Whitefield, NH to St. Johnsbury VT, and then along the CT river to White River Jct and then to Bellows Falls, and back south to Portland. Another line runs from Essex Jct, VT to Rutland VT and then to Bellows Falls. This route would be the famous Milk run from the Dairies in VT to the cities further south in New England. I paln to have most of NH and VT on two of the large tables that measure 5'-6" wide by 16' long, while Maine will be on the east wall which measures 30" wide by 16' long. There are 36" X 30" returns at each end connecting the eat and west wall tables.  Short trains are not a problem because most of the rail traffic was short trains in the northern states anyways. Only the former Boston & Albany ( B&A) now Amtrak and CSX main line to Selkirk, NY had long drags, and of course pulled by the famous "Berkshire" locomotives. The southern NE layout is my plan for a year or two from now on the 2nd floor of the garage which has a floor of 28 feet x 16 feet wide to play with. I love your layout, excellent job !!!!

[JPowell]

Evening all -

  Not much to write right now, so I'll keep this msg a short one.

Lee - Check your Email!

JimCG - Check your Email - I need the Walther's catalog number so I know what I'm looking for, please!

JP!

[Pdragon]

  Grayfox

   Plan sounds so great I'm getting homesick. Like to see you post a copy of your layout plan when you get it done. Keep me updated!

[underworld]

About 22 degrees right now....supposed to be highs in the single digits the next several days.

 

underworld

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Got my camera this morning. It takes dazzlingly clear pictures. Too bad I don't have it anymore. The cameras software was not compatible with Windows 98, which I already knew. That's why I bought an SD card and a card reader to go with it. The camera and the card worked flawlessly. The card reader on the other hand was a PITA! The drivers had to be downloaded from the companies internet site. Try as I might, the driver wouldn't download. The INF files downloaded as did the instructions. But the driver would not download. I took the card reader back to Wal-Mart and exchanged it for a different brand. Got it home and had the same thing happen. By this time, I was really pissed off! That was it! I had had it! I packed everything up and the whole * mess back to Wal-Mart and got my money back! Without the card reader, the camera was worthless. Now I have money for trains when I go to Alexandria tomorrow. Hare's Art and Hobby, look out! There's a tornado coming!

[underworld]

Wow....hopefully you can get the camera situation worked out.

 

underworld

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I got tired of that hassle and took the whole dang mess back to them. It's worked out. I don't need it if the most important part isn't going to work.

[Paul W. Beverung]

Evening Gang:

Pdragon: That is a great layout. You do very nice work. Could you post a layout plan?

Would you believe that on the way home I drove through a snow storm? The snow wasn't cold enough to stay on the ground. As soon as it hit it melted. It was strange and rather pretty.

Tomorrow willbe the last time I have to listen to the alarm clock. Oh Happy day. Right now I'm tired and I do want to get up alittle early and get donuts for the guys.

You All have a good Night and I'll see you tomorrow.

Dick: I got your E-mail. What do you want for a minimum radius curve?

[rtraincollector]

Jeffery I have the CD33 I believe they still sell it at walmart for about the same money and I use to run it on win98 I believe it does good pics and all heres a close up I took of a ogauge size double seater house

and heres one at the grainery I took of a truck being dumped (18 wheeler)

[der5997]

Good evening TSDs:  It was another sunny day on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore, but that came to an end this evening. (by which I mean a change in the weather, not just sunset!)  The snow for tomorrow has already started.  However they were saying rain maybe…you can guess which one I’d prefer…

I thought that it was going to be warmer on my walk last night, so I didn’t wear my leather mits, just regular ski gloves.  Bad mistake.  I ended up with fingers so cold it was like being back in grade school, (some pain you never forget Dick) where my winter memories have many instances of trying to button up my shirt after changing from soccer gear, but being unable to because of the pain of thawing fingers.  Bad circulation, that has never improved. 

 

I’ve decided that my Omega 3 fish oil plant needs an office building and lab space, so I think I can shoe-horn in a 40x30 cut off to 15 (is that a rhombus?) two storey where I put a small hill off the road going down to the wharf. (extreme left of photo) That will also tie in the mini tank farm.  It will be close to the tracks, but hey! Isn’t that our favourite locale?  Here’s the tanks, vents, AC units, etc.  That vent up by the gable end, BTW, is a cut down “keeper” from a One Touch blood test lancet.

 

Mike:  Hope your back is better today. Take care on that ice!  It can happen so quickly, can’t it?  We’ve each got a pair of “crampon” like things that fit on our gum-boots by Velcro straps.  Great for a trip to the mail box, but not a long distance fix!

 

This afternoon, when I started this, (I’ve edited so as to disguise that so far!) my Netscape had been really weird.  It crashed 3 times while I was on another site, and it wasn’t able to bring in the Yahoo mail page all the time I’d been reading in the diner.  The diner page wasn’t in it’s usual format, no graphics opened, and no “Reply” button was visible!  The page wouldn’t load below Dick’s post that had his remark to Mike.

MIKE: Good Lord man, be careful when you step out on ice, you can be permanently damaged!!!!!! Keep

…that’s where the page ended. Up to now in typing this I haven’t tried to get into the diner. I hope things are better this evening.  I’ve had two meetings in the Harbour, this aft, and this evening, but now it’s free time, and snack time too.  What’s good tonight Chloë?

 

Dick: From what you’ve been saying, I think that perhaps you are trying to get very specific about the places you want to model, and they don’t “ “fit” with each other because of the space restrictions of your layout area.  That’s why I’ve gone for “feel” rather than specifics.  Since you’ve got 3 states to cover (in your mind’s “ideal”) I think you will be really challenged to make that happen.  “Happy” is a relative state maybe. Speaking as a Canadian, compromises may have to be reached. (seems we are noted for that sort of thing )

 

Ryan:  Scary stuff on that capacitor thing.  Very disturbing, especially when you can’t see quickly what the source of the burning smell is.

 

CapeJim:  (Re Paul scanning layout space for Dick) Your thinking must be almost as twisted as mine!

 

Pdragon: to the diner.  Great layout shots! Thanks for showing us.

 

underworld: also.  Have I missed seeing you around here before?

 

Jeff: That’s a disappointment on the camera. I can see why you would be not a little annoyed. I’m still getting used to the Kodak C330.  Its software has usurped the normal Windows photo download function, and most of the time when I “Save as” and file, the photo ends up in the trash!!!!!.  Now I know this, I can deal with it. I don’t mind too much as the Kodak photo edit works quite well for most of what I want to do.   RT’s granary photo reminded me of the shot I took of the plastics factory at Truro.

 

Too late tonight to start any more on the layout.  I need to let the sawdust / glue mix I put on the other day dry some more anyway.

So, I’ll say all, and God Bless.  Prayers for all in need of healing, comfort, and peace.

 

[grayfox1119]

Last call for Coffee on the east coast!!!

PAUL:  I can use 18" radius in some places because locomotives of this time era in New England were mostly Mike's, Pacifics and Moguls in Northern NE.

PDRAGON: I will indeed post the layout plan when I get it to my satisfaction.

DER JOHN: The towns are small, and I believe that I can make this work with space compression, Green and White mountains used to great advantage.

JEFF: Win98 may be the problem. I have used those readers and with XP and now Vista  OS,  they work fine. I also can load directly into PC via USB port with VISTA, don't need a reader at all. Don't smash that camera yet.

Bon Soir,

[sunsetbeachry]

      HI ALL::

S P & S-------Spokane Portland and Seattle

 This was the only RR on this part of the coast [west Oregon ] also went to spokane and then to Seattle by way of GN. Area around here was taken out in '56 all the way to Astoria,Astoria to Portland is still here but is a short line. The MRR that I'm trying to do is the logging road from a site called Camp 18 [ which was somewhere around 18 miles from the end of the old SP&S in Seaside which is 18 miles from Astoria . 18 miles from Astoria to Seaside south. Torn out was a bridge across the bay which was about 1&1/2 miles long. Then 18 miles to Seaside and maybe??????? a roundhouse and shop area ??Most of the logging road is just paper trail. Camp 18 is a very good rest. and at one time the camp for the logging road......

   [ garbage sail ] is my funny for yearly sale and trade for garage sale, where a lot of RR stuff is bought or sold or traded mostly SP&S also GN ; WP and whatever you have. This is put on by historical society

                      Chuck GOD BLESS and keep you all........

[wetidlerjr]

Good morning ! from Indiana.

02-02-07

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Today's Weather for:  
Sundown, LA  71446-6114      2/2/2007 

Sundown Fire Dept., Station 23
 
Wind Chill:  34°F
Humidity:  95%
Dew Point:  39°F
 
So Far Today
High:  42°F
Low:  40°F
Rain:  0.00"
Rain Rate:  0.00"/h
Gust:  9mph N
 
High: 44 °F
Low: 38 °F

Today  High: 48    Mostly cloudy. Highs in the upper 40s. North winds 10 to 15 mph.  

Tonight  Low: 28    Decreasing clouds. Colder. Lows in the upper 20s. Light and variable winds.