Weekend Update 10-25-2009

[BCR 570]

Thank you David - I will check out the links you provided.

Tim

[sizemore]

This was another week of hell at the day job.... This weekend ACME Labs managed to get the LRV GP-20's into the paintshop. Base coats are complete, next up is tuxedo stripe masking and final coat of RDG yellow then the painters can move onto numbers and letters.

The S.

[Zox]

I was down with a cold for most of the weekend, but I managed to get some bits of sidewalk and curbing made for the bridge module, as well as experimenting with getting some subtle "road grime" coloring into the roads via Corel Draw:






Unfortunately, I think my "concrete" paint mix may be too dark, because these parts should be a bit lighter in color than the road. I also need to figure out why the two pieces of road, printed sequentially from the same laser printer, are not the same color...

[wm3798]

Not to be outdone by Acme Labs, the Hagerstown Shops completed its first painting project for a revenue customer.  This started out as a Kato Santa Fe SD40 in the familiar blue and yellow warbonnet scheme...



Added some of the major body details, such as the sun shades, plows and MU cables.  I'm really happy with how this turned out.  Next up, a second SD40 in the Red, White and Black scheme, which will take the life of a Conrail SD40, unless someone can swap me an undecorated shell first....

Now I feel like I should go back and re-do my pair.


I also shucked the first oysters of the season...  Fresh from the Choptank River!   Mmmm.

Oh, and the first vestiges of the layout expansion arrived several days ago from Fresno... 75' of cork roadbed.  Huzzah!

Lee

[daniel_leavitt2000]

No trains for me this week. I am in Songkhla, Thailand. Joy and I had our official wedding Sunday in the traditional Thai manner. We started at about 830am. We didn't get to eat until everyone else had, and there was no cake left. Apparently this is normal as the wedding ceremony is to honor the guests rather then the married couple. I'll start a new thread with pictures when I get back in November. It was really interesting, but I am really ready for the rest of the vacation!

Next stop: Bangkok then Chang Mai.

[Hiroe]

The wires are coming.

Spent about 12 hours sat and 8 hours sun working on four of these two-track span support towers:









Took me about an hour to figure out what i was doing, then the first two (towards the tunnel) took about 3 hours each. Today, i managed to shave that time down to about an hour and 15 each, and built the two closer towers, which are pictured above on my "jig". The "footings" are actually sections of 1/2" hardwood dowel, cut about 3" long and hammered into 1/2" holes drilled in the subroadbed, then drilled with a #8 bit to act as sockets for the poles. (I would have preferred using square footings, but square holes are a lot harder to drill.) More photographs of the first two, plus assembly of the 4th, are available here.

I was supposed to be reusing a lot of the cat off the old layout, but it's vastly complicated by the fact that they painted everything (poles, wires, and insulators), and used steel music wire; so now it's covered in grunky paint and loaded with rust. Anything i do want to reuse has to be thoroughly cleaned before it can even be disassembled; as even with my 400-watt grandpa iron i can't get good heat transfer to painted/rusty metal. If i'm going to try to salvage any of it, i might just coil it all at the bottom of a new 40-gallon rubbermaid trash can, and soak it in vinegar for a week or two to clean the rust off. (Will vinegar also remove the old paint?)

I'll probably build a few more span towers for around the curve (behind the camera) before hanging the actual running wire. Yes, the equipment *will* run off the pans.


Dan, Congrats on the wedding!

--Drew

[Chris333]

The closer it got to being done the more times I dropped it on the floor

Hope the floor was carpeted...?

Fantabulous job--naturally. Where'd the lasered hoppers come from, BTW?

Yeah carpet, but I still had to straighten out the stirrups and touch up the paint.

Robert did the hoppers, I drew, he flew  ;D

[Philip H]

I pulled out every locomotive i had and ran it on th etest track, noting problems, maintenance needs, etc.  Not surprisingly (!) my first generation Life Likes (yes, with the two weights and spring drive shafts) still run better then anything.

I also started a little scenary work, by carving out the drainage ditches that go go alongs ide my track work.  Next up - fixing two recalcitrant runners (a LL GP38-2 that Bev-Bel painted in IC's Deathstar scheme and an undec Bachman Spectrum c40-8) and finishing some weathering. ???

[asciibaron]

i'm digging that WM SD - real nice.

[wm3798]

Thanks, I was marveling at Drew's cat towers, myself...

Lee

[sizemore]

I also shucked the first oysters of the season...  Fresh from the Choptank River!   Mmmm.

Lee

Drool over both...Ryleighs in Federal Hill should start getting the New England oysters in too, can't wait for Surf and Turf Tuesdays!

The S.

[wm3798]

New England?  Feh.  Choptank River, baby.  Or for the best on the planet, Chincoteague Primes...
Lee

[tom mann]

I've been working on a bunch of gons in N, Z, and HO.  That is all.

[bbussey]

The wires are coming.

Spent about 12 hours sat and 8 hours sun working on four of these two-track span support towers:

Drew, that is awesome!  I'll have to do something similar when I get to the point of building the basement layout, which will be the New Haven between Bridgeport and New London.

[sizemore]

New England?  Feh.  Choptank River, baby.  Or for the best on the planet, Chincoteague Primes...
Lee

Well they get those too, I just like variety!

The S.