Let's see your Corona projects

[CRL]

Good to hear you’re feeling better. If it’s any consolation, you can be sure they have a lot more people involved in immediately notifying those with “positive” test results than the negatives.

Then again...

[hegstad1]

Who doesn't love these old helium cars?  They have no business in Missoula but who cares?  I added a new roofwalk (wood per prototype), stirrups, z scale couplers, trucks (incorrect as these things had crazy outside clasp brakes), and some weathering. 

[CRL]

Now if you can figure out how to make it float above the rails.

[Erik W]

I'm feeling better for sure.  But no test result.  For those of you playing along at home, this marks day 7.

Sheesh.  You'll recover fully . . . and then they'll get you the results, with action items for you to follow. 

Erik

[CRL]

Here’s something I ran across on another site... explains where the bottleneck is in testing:

From North Carolina

As of March 14 at 8:00 a.m., the state of North Carolina has a total of 680 public (i.e., non-commercial) coronavirus test kits.

So the big question is, “Why don’t we have more tests?”

Here’s the situation:

First, there’s a difference between “test kits” and “extraction kits.”

Extraction kits = extract RNA (genetic material) from nasal swabs.

Test kits = test RNA to see if it’s coronavirus.

We started with a national shortage of test kits. That happened because the CDC - after rejecting the WHO kits and deciding to make their own - had a manufacturing error that allowed their test kit to produce false positives. So they had to start over several weeks in.

To make matters worse, while the CDC was fixing their manufacturing error there were many other labs across the country (academic and commercial labs) that wanted to produce their own test kits. But they needed federal approval to move forward, and getting that approval took a couple weeks - a serious amount of time, given the prospect of exponential viral spread.

It appears we are now seeing the production of test kits ramp up from both the CDC and commercial labs like LabCorp (which happens to be headquartered here in North Carolina).

BUT that leads us to our second problem, and the current major bottleneck: extraction kits.

Before you can test the RNA sample from the nasal swab, you have to extract it. Doing so requires a specific chemical. The majority of this specific chemical (called a reagent) is produced by one company with production facilities in Germany and Spain.

And now that specific chemical is in very high demand. The whole world wants it.

A few weeks ago, the FDA started allowing independent labs to develop alternate chemical processes for RNA extraction. It’s unclear how much progress has been made.

So, looking now at the big picture, we basically have a two-track testing system: public testing, which involves our main state lab in NC using the re-manufactured CDC test kits (and in NC, we currently have 680 test kits) and then there’s commercial testing.

Regarding commercial testing, we really don’t know how much is happening. The commercial labs aren’t required to disclose test results unless they’re positive. In North Carolina, we have LabCorp conducting commercial tests. In Charlotte, we also have our two major hospital systems - Atrium and Novant - now saying that they are going to provide “screening.” It’s unclear whether they are simply collecting swabs and sending them to LabCorp (where they may face the same extraction kit bottleneck) or whether they’ve developed in-house capacity to actually produce their own test results.

But it’s important to note that BOTH public and commercial testing appear to be hitting a bottleneck when it comes to extraction.

As a result, we are not screening nearly enough people.

Ideally, anyone who displays flu-like symptoms would be eligible for a public test, free of charge. That’s how we would address this like South Korea and provide for wide-scale testing on the order of tens of thousands per day.

But - due to the shortage - that’s not the case. Instead, the CDC guidelines (which NC is currently following) currently state that you have to 1) display flu-like symptoms AND have had direct contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case OR, 2) you have to display flu-like symptoms AND lower respiratory symptoms (cough, shortness of breath) AND a negative rapid flu test.

A simpler way to say that is we are currently rationing public tests because we don’t have enough capacity.

Congress is now providing more funding specifically for these issues and commercial labs are reportedly innovating rapidly, but this is essentially a race against time and increasing our testing capacity within the next ten days is absolutely critical. It’s also possible that the window of opportunity for containment - at least in some regions - is now closed and we’re going to have to rely heavily on social distancing to slow the rate of infection.

You should also know that in the process of piecing this together I had many, many conversations with state and local health officials and every single one of them was on the same page, knew exactly what the bottlenecks were, and were working the problem. These folks get it, and they’re working around the clock for us.

More updates soon,

Sen. Jeff Jackson

[Dave V]

At this point, there's no point in testing my sample.  My pneumonia is improving, I never did develop a fever, and according to the new CDC guidelines:

CDC posted new guidance on when people who have had COVID-19 and have been isolating at home can discontinue isolating in Discontinuation of Home Isolation for Persons with COVID-19. • Persons with COVID-19 who have symptoms and were directed to care for themselves at home may discontinue home isolation if: • At least 3 days (72 hours) have passed since recovery—defined as resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and improvement in respiratory symptoms (e.g., cough, shortness of breath); and,
 • At least 7 days have passed since symptoms first appeared.

[altohorn25]

Working on modifying a Con-Cor 4-6-4 into the Santa Fe Blue Goose 3460.  I cut the NYC style skirting away under the cab and added firebox detal from a Kato GN northern shell.  Carved new skirting for under the cab.  Painted all the running gear.  Altered the cab windows (still need to finish this).  Replaced the tender with a correct tender from ATSF N Scale Models with all wheel pickup https://www.atsfnscalemodels.com/projects/steam%20engine%20tenders.html  Still lots of work to do including adding DCC and finishing painting, but its progressing nicely.  I wish the tender was about 1mm shorter as it doesn't quite line up with the engine, but it's close. 

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[Iain]

Perfect weather for painting, so I shot some black today.  Photos will land in the weekend update.

Also, got my hands on @bbussey's ESM wheelsets, and, golly, they look nice.

[C855B]

At this point, there's no point in testing my sample.  My pneumonia is improving, I never did develop a fever, and according to the new CDC guidelines:

CDC posted new guidance on when people who have had COVID-19 and have been isolating at home can discontinue isolating in Discontinuation of Home Isolation for Persons with COVID-19. • Persons with COVID-19 who have symptoms and were directed to care for themselves at home may discontinue home isolation if: • At least 3 days (72 hours) have passed since recovery—defined as resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and improvement in respiratory symptoms (e.g., cough, shortness of breath); and,
 • At least 7 days have passed since symptoms first appeared.

Good...ish news. Glad you're feeling better, thank goodness. Robyn seems to be in the same boat, although her symptoms were milder and honestly we're not at all sure what it was.

More in the main COVID thread.

[Maletrain]

OK, not a high quality modeling product, but I finally got time to start my ops test layout.  It is basically Kato track spaghetti in a race track motif.  The object is to have somewhere to break in locos and test equipment like coupler types, uncoupling techniques, etc. in N scale operations.  So, I sandwiched in an engine terminal, yard, A&D track, and an industrial switching area.  Track is down and fitted, with most of it electrically tested.  Now I need to hook up all those wires to a real control area.  Don't expect to hear about that getting completed for a bit.

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[ns737]

Maletrain what is the size of your table?

[Maletrain]

Maletrain what is the size of your table?

9' x 41"

It's a 4' x 8' piece of 2" foam with the piece cut off the long dimension cut in two and added to the ends to get 9' from the 8' + two 6" wide strips.  Painted it flat "Dark Toast" with Valspar acrylic interior paint from Lowes.  The dried paint has the nice side effect that it slightly sticks the Unitrack in place, so that it doesn't slide around.

[ns737]

thank you. I like the setup of your test layout. ED

[delamaize]

Been doing some work on the module, Planted a lot of trees, Need to get/make some more. I also have done a lot of decoder installs, Including milling out space in my First "Good" locomotive for a decoder. A Kato F7a in SP Bloody Nose! Thanks to Jim (MVW), My first loco has a proper shell again. Also replaced 2 Kato Mikado Drawbars, and I now have a total of 3 running in my fleet. 1 has a NP W3 GHQ kit on it, and 2 are bone stock. I also figured out how to put a Bachmann long tender behind a mikado, using a Kato Mikado drawbar....

I really have not taken any pictures, except this one:
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[Philip H]

who needs fancy laser cut MDF paint racks when you have a small wood shop worth of scraps and offcuts:



Gotta love what the humidity has done to my camera!