Weekend Update 5/26/19

[up1950s]

https://www.army.mil/article/126803/families_raise_gold_star_awareness

https://www.military.com/benefits/survivor-benefits/gold-star-lapel-button.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/31/us/fallen-soldiers-baby-photo-shoot-trnd/index.html

[Dave V]

Memorial Day and Veterans Day can both be rough for some of us, but it's also my mother's 80th birthday so I'm heading to Lancaster, PA to surprise her...so it should be a good weekend.  I'll only be there a short time...heading back to Colorado on Sunday.  Too much going on!  My new job starts June 10th and I have a bunch of prep work to do and all the first week of June is Jacob's Eagle Scout project.  I'll take time to remember though...I always do.

This week was cold and snowy in Colorado Springs (7" fell Monday night alone...yes, in late May) so I pushed to get Ridgway to a more finished state.  I still need to scratchbuild the roundhouse and a number of ancillary structures, but at least now the first thing a visitor to my basement sees is something other than bare Styrofoam painted tan.



This is almost an identical (although compressed) version of the track arrangement at Ridgway minus two enginehouse stalls.  The turntable lead that wraps around the sandhouse should align with a stall, but I just didn't have the room to make that work correctly.  No worries...doesn't bother me in the least.



The turntable comes from Kitwood Hill Models...a very well-designed laser micro-plywood kit.  It comes with a finely geared slo-mo motor that I control with a repurposed N scale Digitrax Atlas GP38-2 drop-in decoder I had on hand.  It's actually a model of the Durango turntable (65') rather than the Ridgway turntable (50') but the real Ridgway turntable couldn't turn any of the 2-8-2s.  As I have a fleet of K-27 2-8-2s and no wye north of town to turn them on, I went with the longer turntable.





I did not have room for the half-scratchbuilt version of the Ridgway office building I was working on after I realized how big the roundhouse would be (my frenetic construction pace sometimes causes me to get ahead of myself!).  For now, this Main Street Heritage Models yard office is filling in until I can build a compressed version of the prototype that fits.  It's placed temporarily, hence the "gap" between foundation and dirt.





Lastly, the fun stuff.  After I finishing wiring all the frog juicers I noticed I must accidentally have pulled one of the power leads to the turntable decoder.  Time to fire up the soldering iron again!

[wm3798]

I did some ballasting.  Raised about 30' of half of my driveway about 4".  It has been sinking over the past couple years due to all the rain.



Also installed some of the lighting to my TTrak Challenge module...


More in the Challenge thread:  https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=46708.0

All the best!
Lee

[ai5629]

I never thought I would ever buy any BNSF equipment since it is too new for my chosen era.  But, I did find use for two Athearn BNSF two bay center flow hoppers.  I removed the lettering and turned them into two Conrail CE12B’s.  These Athearn cars are the nicest covered hoppers in N scale IMO (waiting on Scale Trains PS4785’s to see if they will take the crown from Athearn).  However, the assembly leaves a lot to be desired. They also do not stand up well to handling.  I am going to have to replace the stirrups with BLMA ones due to them being bent so many times when I was holding them while decalling the cars.  I was not rough, they are just really fragile.  Thanks.

Jeff

[Cajonpassfan]

Getting burned out on wiring and other boring grunt work, so I took the UP local (Leon Turn) out for a spin. Today’s train is too long for a wimpy FM diesel, so a steam Mike came to the rescue! (Unfortunately, it’s a USRA stand-in by Model Power. At least the Vandy tender is correct). Somehow, I can “live with it” until something better comes along
She took a 17 car train up the 2.2% grades like there was nothing to it... makes the grunt work worth it!
Otto K.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

PS: I have no clue why the pics ended up in the middle of the post...  (not sure why either, but I fixed it. -gfh)

[ai5629]

I have always liked the Mini Trix covered gondolas even though they are 2.5 feet too short.  I looked past that and decalled two Conrail G36M’s that operated without covers.  I will not mix them with my BLMA 52’ 6” cars as they would look out of place.  Thanks.

Jeff

[up1950s]

I did some ballasting.  Raised about 30' of half of my driveway about 4".  It has been sinking over the past couple years due to all the rain.



All the best!
Lee

I've seen parks smaller than that vista .

[wm3798]

We have 3 acres, and the driveway is about 400' long with a loop at the end.  The back half is pretty much wooded, so it's not too bad to keep cut.

But I'm really going to need a lot of white glue mixture to keep those rocks in place!

Lee

[pdx1955]

We have 3 acres, and the driveway is about 400' long with a loop at the end.  The back half is pretty much wooded, so it's not too bad to keep cut.

But I'm really going to need a lot of white glue mixture to keep those rocks in place!

Lee

Sounds like the perfect place to have a 1.5" scale railroad so you can take the train to the mailbox and back

[wm3798]

I have always liked the Mini Trix covered gondolas even though they are 2.5 feet too short.  I looked past that and decalled two Conrail G36M’s that operated without covers.  I will not mix them with my BLMA 52’ 6” cars as they would look out of place.  Thanks.

Jeff

I painted mine up for the Laurel Valley, my freelance road.  They had them custom built because they specialized in shipping 47'6" loads!  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!



Lee

[wm3798]

Sounds like the perfect place to have a 1.5" scale railroad so you can take the train to the mailbox and back

Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind...

[johnb]

[bbussey]

Making progress. Hopefully a wrap by next Weekend Update.

[nscalbitz]

I did some ballasting. ... It has been sinking over the past couple years due to all the rain.


Lee

A proper drain would probably help Lee...   .  I'm free to lay half-pipes and covers if you can afford the air fares.... 
cheers dave

[wm3798]

A proper drain would probably help Lee...   .  I'm free to lay half-pipes and covers if you can afford the air fares.... 
cheers dave

Thanks for the offer... but we're on Delmarva, think somewhere as flat as Kansas and as wet as Florida...  We're at about 8' above sea level, but lately it's been more like neck and neck... Heavy clay soils and no bottom... as they say down county, there are game wardens that are still sinking...  The stormwater just doesn't run off very quickly, and it doesn't absorb in.  As you can see we have bar ditches down both sides of the driveway, which do a reasonably good job, but the now 40 year old base of the driveway is just on its way to Middle Earth, and all one can hope for is to keep the last 6" of stone added visible for a few years before having to do it again.

We want to have someone come and drag it, but a new base down and then put a nice surface on it, but there's some other work we want to do that might involve a concrete truck, so not major expenditures on the driveway till the bull elephants run...
Lee