Its Monday 5-23-05, Weekend modeling accomplishments

T

TomPM

Another Fried Egg Fan
Oct 15, 2002
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Drexel Hill, PA
www.trainweb.org
We had a busy weekend with softball and baseball games on both Saturday and Sunday. We also had to do the normal bi-weekly grocery shopping. My daughter spent the weekend up the Pocono Mountains camping with her Brownie troop. If you can call staying in someone’s vacation house camping. She went fishing for the first time and caught a fish which she brought home and her and mom cooked up for her grandfather.

I was even busy modeling this weekend. I decaled one side of a pink hopper for Ralston-Jefferson. It went from this:
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To this:
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This one side involved cutting and placing 36 separate decals! Now I have the other side plus some decals on the bottom of the bays.

I also ran some trains around the layout. I even played with my new digital camcorder recording the trains. I haven’t quite figured out how to download it to the computer yet. I did some downloading but still need to work on the quality some more.
 
My family and I had a great time at the train show Saturday.
I came home with alot more than I expected. I should have enough projects to keep busy till the next show.
We got together with ezdays, It was great to talk to Don in person again.
Our power was out most of the day Sunday so my son and I spent the day assembling kits and repairing rollingstock.
These are a couple of Athearn F7 chassis I got. I'm not sure what kind of motors these are, but they run great.
 

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Yep, like Ray had a great time at the show. Spent some time with Ray and his family, met Sam (S 3/6), a new memeber here, and a few guys from the Train forum. Unfortunately, Jim Currie had to work and couldn't make it to the show. Also chatted a while with Vern Niner, who spends time on the Atlas forum and also writes articles for N Scale magazine. Bought a few things at the show, just not nearly as much as Ray (who says he was only going to "browse":rolleyes:). I said it didn't appear that Ray had bought that much, and his wife let me know that this was the second load.:D They had already put a bunch of stuff in the truck. Way ta go Ray.....:thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:

On top of this, I was able to finish painting my backdrop and start sketching out where I want track on the new part of my layout.

All in all, a good weekend trainwise.:)
 
What my plans were:

Catching Revenge of the Sith with my boyos.
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Check! Great movie.

Will pick up a quart of desert dirt tan Oopsies from the Borg for my midget OneTrack module
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Check, not exactly tan, not actually a quart, but for a buck, it should do the trick!

, paint it, collect and sift some sand for it over the weekend.
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Nope, nope, and nope.

May play with my airbrush some as well.
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Nah, but I did move the airbrush from its wierd (but eye catching) original packaging to a tote.

I would be installing decoders in my two Mountains and playing with some new toys, but the etailer had my old address and I didn't find out until I got the shipping notification. grrrrrr, probably go over to my old address and find out what they've done with my expensive package.
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don't know, I think the post office caught it and sent it back, as I got a new shipping notification today. Also found out that my old house is for sale again... hmmmm, now if I hadn't taken that rideaboot last year, I might be able to buy it back. Oh well....

What else I accomplished over the weekend:

Did some maintenance on a balky cylindrical hopper. Replaced the trucks on an MDC Husky Stack. Weighted half of my intermodal containers using split shot fishing weights and FunTak. Built one of two Deluxe Innovations intermodal container truck chassis. And, the most significant MRR accomplishment: I got my "control panel" wired up and functioning. Only about half my loco roster is DCC, and I've been switching between DC and DCC by disconnecting the wires and swapping them. A couple months back I'd purchased a "party tray" to convert into a portable control panel, and have occasionally been taking potshots at getting it finished. Yesterday I picked up the final washers I needed, wired up my first DPDT switch, stuck on the Velcro mounting squares, cut the appropriate wires and crimped on connectors, and voila! I can now switch between DC and DCC with, well, the flip of a switch. As an added bonus I mounted a programming track to the panel.

Some lessons learned in this project are 1) don't use a large twist bit to drill unsupported "melamine" type plastic, it will crack and spall. 2) Don't lose your wire.

:wave:
 
I spent most of the weekend installing sprinklers and moving 6,800 lbs of landscaping rocks (actually only 3,400 lbs, but I moved it twice) in my backyard. I laid down under my layout about 7:30 Sunday night to do a little wiring and woke up 3 hours later.
Doc
 
Well I painted the F-7 for my friend. I had first painted it model master aluminum and masked off the pilot, skirts and side grills, then I sprayed testors matt sea blue. It worked well until I sealed it all with testors dullcote. now the blue has a slight white haze on it. not that I'm really complaining, I was going to weather it slightly anyhow and now it looks like it has a light coat of road dust on it.
Next I started the work on the senery module for my club. Another member had already build the benchwork, roadbed, laid the track and added the backdrop. so far I've made the hillside framework using cereal box cardboard cut into strips and woven into a mat for the hardshell to go on. I plan on leaving some of the cardboard mat visible so people can see the different stages of senerywork.
Finally I painted all the rockwork on my layout, about 4-5 square feet of it! it takes more time and paint that I thought it would and I'll be posting pictures of it soon. Next I'm waiting for the narrow guage track to show up so I can get that laid and finalized before I can finish the senery forms in the logging area.
 
Let's see:

Friday - Nothing
Sat - Made it to the LHS for some supplies so I could work on some hoppers, out of what I needed -
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Put together a covered hopper kit Sat night and ran trains for about 2 hours, tweaking some engines.-
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Sun - Nothing

Hope everyone had a great weekend!!-
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Pretty busy weekend on the layout--I installed fascia and skirting boards, and got some practice using the wheel report/switch list operating scheme I worked up a while back (up until now, I mostly just made up switching destinations off-the-cuff.) Definitely a little more challenging when you have to operate from a list, although my scheme is pretty flexible.

I also built a little HOn30 logging engine, inspired by my trip up to the Northcoast last weekend--photos once the paint dries!

I also took a couple of layout shots:
haggin_fascia.jpg

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I kind of like how the fascia makes everything look a bit more clean, as well as hiding and directing my lightng setup.
 
i like these pictures, how long did it take to decal the hopper? I didnt do anything this weekend besides playing PS2,fixing one of my R/C cars and being online
 
Livesteam said:
how long did it take to decal the hopper?
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Thanks

I started it on Saturday night and finished it Sunday night. Actual time I would say for the Ralston-Jefferson about an hour and a half (Sat. night). For the rest of the hopper it took about an hour (Sun. night).

Now I have the other side to do. It took me about a year to work up the nerve to do one side. Hopefully it won't take as long for the other side. :D
 
well I thought I had already posted here, but have not, I have been so busy over the last week, that I pass myself going out, as I`m coming in...

been working on an exo layout in HO, made the bench boards,(me) layed track,(geof) and started the seanary,(me,geoff, and john)and sean atended to the wireing.( I had help, there`s 4 of us building this layout) I got handed a little box of left over kits, broken kits, ect and told to make somthing out of that lot... I decided to make a passenger footbridge from platform to platform, I have nearly finnished it just have to put hand rails on one side and clean it up a bit..dosent look to bad if I say so my self,( will post a pic or two when I get some), also I am building an oil refinerary,(cornerstone kit in N) for the Felton ranges(geof`s layout)....so apart from that I`ve done nothing else....have a good one... steve
 
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