Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[James Costello]

I know it's just the base coat / colour but it already looks very effective.

[Cajonpassfan]

Blue skies, smiling at me,
Nothing but blue skies, do I see
Nice going Mike!
Otto

[rodsup9000]

 Gosh, I really need to make a trip over there soon. I know I've been saying that for a few years now, but with the skies almost done and able to run trains, it got to happen soon.
 Progress is looking great.

[C855B]

Server Crash

Hey, guys - the HD on my web server crashed hard this afternoon, so images here aren't visible until I put it back online. I'm also in the process of restoring from backups. Since the backup wasn't completely fresh I don't know how much was lost yet. I'll know more in a few hours, although I do know some are gone. We'll see.

[davefoxx]

Boy, blue skies sure can turn gray quickly.   

DFF

[C855B]

Server Restored

Very funny, Dave.

Looks like backups were better than originally thought, everything important is back. Still having a little trouble with certificates for the e-mail server, but that doesn't affect the image library. It appears I lost all of November's railcam snapshots, but I intentionally don't back those up since they consume 6GB per day.

Time to shop for a solid-state drive. The 1TB Seagate lasted a whopping 10 months. Ridiculous.

[peteski]

Server Restored

Time to shop for a solid-state drive. The 1TB Seagate lasted a whopping 10 months. Ridiculous.

10 months is really bad!  I wonder if that has something to do with the data density (size of the drive), I have some hard drives, like a Seagate ST3250310AS 250Gb drive which has been running pretty much continuously since 2008.  It shows 3709 days of being powered-on, 211 power cycles.  Not too shabby.

Remember that SSDs have finite life too (especially for write-intensive applications). But should be ok for things like photos where you write them once and then just keep reading them over and over.

[C855B]

Server Down Again

It went down again a couple of hours ago with the replacement drive and won't even boot the recovery partition now. So it likely wasn't the HD to start with, tho' both are now toast. The 1TB drive was beeping, which according to Seagate info is a death-is-imminent warning. Whatever is wrong with the CPU, it danced all over two drives. The replacement HD was making all sorts of unhappy noises (the head banging against stops?) on the last boot attempt.

[...sigh...]
 
I'll pick up a new Mac mini on Friday (unless Best Buy is open tomorrow) and re-rebuild from backups. S#!+!!!!

EDIT: Ordered and paid for. Pick up tonight (Thursday), they open at 5 p.m. Maybe back on the air this evening.

[C855B]

Ongoing server saga in Crew Lounge. What a pain in the tuckus.

A couple of interesting tidbits on populating the layout. A friend from our N scale club has been dabbling in 3D printing since filament-based output became a thing. I gave him the STL files for the Kelso depot a while back to try. We both knew the resolution at that time wasn't going to render the Spanish tile roof with any fidelity, but he tried a partial print anyway which only proved the point. However... apparently he has been using the challenge of this structure to up his game in a very big way.

In chatting over the weekend, he related that as a result of improvements to his output engine he has been printing the entire structure including the complex portico as a single piece, at double the previous resolution. He said the roof isn't there quite yet, but he had a new printer coming with finer nozzles, and was optimistic that he will have something we can use. Considering that Shapeways wants ~$500 to print the same pieces, you're darned tootin' I will assist the cause.

The other good news was a new book, Jeff Asay's Union Pacific in the Los Angeles Basin. It is a huge volume with lots of details of, oh, about 25% of my layout's theme. Most important (to me, at least) were photos of the modern Pomona station, a specific memory of my time railfanning the area. Photos of the apparently-scorned modern structure built in the early 1960's but razed in '86 have been impossible to find generally, so now having references for the station puts a scratchbuilt model back on the to-do list.

[Cajonpassfan]

Jeff Asay's book isn't exactly new, it came out in 2010, but I agree, it is a fantastic resource. That, and Signor's Los Angeles Division are my two favorite go-to books. If you don't have the latter, while about the ATSF, it also covers some of the joint territory.
Otto

[C855B]

Well... a new acquisition, then. I know Jeff from UPHS, and had just been putting off adding his book to the collection. I picked-up his second-edition Union Pacific Northwest at the '15 or '16 UPHS convention.

I should really get John's book, too, but to my detriment have been rather blasé about his (many) books. They are all well-researched and nicely produced, the "blasé" part is having known John (and Julie) for 45 years. I have Tehachapi and, of course, The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. John created the orange and black "Everywhere West" logo I use for my avatar, back when our mutual railfan clique was producing a railfan newsletter of that title... having absolutely nothing to do with the CB&Q!

[James Costello]

Jeff Asay's book isn't exactly new, it came out in 2010, but I agree, it is a fantastic resource. That, and Signor's Los Angeles Division are my two favorite go-to books. If you don't have the latter, while about the ATSF, it also covers some of the joint territory.
Otto

Likewise, the equivalent SP book is awesome too:
http://www.goldenwestbooks.com/product/southern-pacific-los-angeles-1873-1996/#1480455724911-e2000f5f-32eb

[Ed Kapuscinski]

You know, this actually all reminds me.

I don't actually know the area you're modeling at all.

[C855B]

Mostly California, Nevada and Utah desert, basically. Apart from the L.A. basin, think vast nothingness. Not much documented railfan interest on account of the remoteness, sheer difficulty of access, and, these days, not quite the traffic it used to have. After the SP merger there were rumors it was going to be abandoned between Las Vegas and SLC as "redundant", but then UP's big traffic meltdown in the late '90s changed those plans.

Once the layout gets to SLC, there's a magic transportation to the plains between Cheyenne and Gibbon. I'll be moving it all to a domed stadium to model North Platte.

EDIT: My odometer just ticked over to 7000 posts. I need a life.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ah, cool. I wasn't sure what the plan was because I'm not familiar with the names but I first thought it was one of those, then the other. Now I know it's both.

No wonder you needed that giant space!!