CoffeeShop XXXVII-5/1/2013


So...another Saturday has come and gone.

I was hoping to get at least one of my GP30's DCC-enabled by now, but dangit, I had so many distractions! First: My lawn took a lot longer than usual to mow because I had to clear away so many dead branches. Then I posted a reply "across the street" on the What Is Your Favorite Model Loco thread, and somebody asked me to post some pix of these four Genesis geeps I picked up yesterday - that took up a lot of time, wound up practically writing a review! Finally about 9:00pm I resumed work on the decoder install, but 30 mins later SWMBO returned from her "night out with the gals".

This is how things unfold when a railroad modeler has ADD...:rolleyes:

Joe - I'm sure you'll have those GP30s working again in no time! I've had to swap out the gears in every one of mine so far.
 
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Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

It's Sunday, May 5, 2013

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:cool:

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TIPTON IN
 
Good Morning!

It's 48° and overcast in Central NJ. Supposed to warm to 63°. It's also supposed to be sunny.

Ken, somehow, I knew you would be picking up the Genesis Geeps ;).
Good luck with them.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.

Joe
 
Lovely day, wife informed me washing machine no longer agitates. Found washer needs to be unhooked from the hoses to turn it around and inspect it, BUT the cheap plastic shut off valves in the house WONT SHUT OFF!! So its off to Home Depot to get new valves, so we can disconnect the washer, to figure out what's wrong with the damn thing! Then another trip to get parts. Who says the washer won't agitate. I'm agitated!!!!:mad::mad::mad:
 
WJLI26 said:
Those Penn Central engines look good for junkers, Jeffrey.
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I've already broken them down for parts. They weren't really that bad off. The owners could have sent them back to Bachmann and had them repaired or they could have repaired them easily on their own. One had a fried decoder and a locked up truck (piece of ballast which I easily removed) and the other had a stripped worm gear. Not the worm which is brass but the plastic gear beneath it. These are problems I could have fixed easily. Some people just don't have the skill or talent to do that I guess. However their sacrifice has not been in vain. I've reworked an old Bachmann Plus GP40 and breathed new life into it. The drive is a combination of new and old technology and is far superior to what was in there. Yes, I could have taken the easy way out and plopped the old shell onto a new drive but where's the fun in that? For me it's chop/cut/rebuild.
 
Well I see Karl has the washing machine blues. I wish you all the best on that my friend. Last time we had a washer that didn't agitate it was because of a bad transmission. That necessitated the purchase of a new washer.

*

Good morning. It's 54° with 54% humidity. Isn't that a coincidence. It'll be sunny with a high of 68°.
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I don't really know what I'll be doing today. I'll probably put a decoder in the GP40 I rebuilt yesterday. The parts all seem to get along with each other considering they're from two different eras. As the frame was missing one coupler mount and the other mount was damaged I body mounted Kadee 242 draft gear boxes. They had to be put together in a stacked configuration with each stack being two boxes thick and held together by super glue and a screw.

I feel better today than I did yesterday though I still feel like crap. At least I don't feel like I'm freezing anymore. I've come to the conclusion that I have a really bad cold.

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kbkchooch said:
Lovely day, wife informed me washing machine no longer agitates. Found washer needs to be unhooked from the hoses to turn it around and inspect it, BUT the cheap plastic shut off valves in the house WONT SHUT OFF!! So its off to Home Depot to get new valves, so we can disconnect the washer, to figure out what's wrong with the damn thing! Then another trip to get parts. Who says the washer won't agitate. I'm agitated!!!!:mad::mad::mad:
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Got the brass valves to replace the plastic ones,,,,,screwed them into the PCV and promptly split the piece they screw into...back to HD for more parts,,,got that fixed, figured out what parts I need, and ordered them....Nascar time!!
 
Today I put a Digitrax DZ125 decoder in the rebuilt CN GP40 and it now runs like a dream. I started on another GP40 this afternoon using parts from a GP40, a GP38 and a GP30 and a few parts from other sources. You can look at the photo below and decide for yourself which is which. The shell is pretty obvious. The GP40 is about the easiest Bachmann diesel to rebuild. So many of the parts are universal.

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Most of my day was fairly slow. I only ventured outside once and that was for a very few minutes. I'm still quite weak. I doubt if I could fight off an anemic Cub Scout in my present condition. At least I'm not cold anymore. Neither the a/c or heater have been turned on at all today.

Time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.
 
Evening y'all,

As of now I have decoders installed [though not fully 'tuned'] in all of my road locos except for one: An old LifeLike Proto2000 E8. It's too late in the day for me to start working on a totally unfamiliar chassis, so I'm postponing it til tomorrow. It's a very archaic mess of wires on its light board, but according to what I've found online, I will not have to completely disassemble it to isolate the motor from the frame [*whew!*], just need to snip a few wires. But the wire colors are totally 'backwards': light blue for the right-rail pickup, red for the left rail pickup. Won't really matter as long as I can see the pickup wires and the motor wires.

Karl - sorry to hear about the washing machine malfunction. [And here I thought I was the only one who ever got hit with "sequential" part failure situations!] Hope that NASCAR race was able to get your mind off it for awhile.

Hafta go to bed now, tomorrow's gonna be a long Monday...
 
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Good morning. It's 51° with 88% humidity. It'll be sunny with a high of 75°.
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I had a relatively uneventful day yesterday. I finished rebuilding an old Bachmann GP40 and put a decoder in it and got the base programming done then started on another GP40 project that involved using parts from at least three donor locos. I got it completed mechanically and the wiring was done but it still needed a decoder. I had one ready to go in but didn't feel up to it so I set the shell on the chassis loose so I could just lift it off and set to work. I got to bed 12:45am and woke up at 7am. I don't recall anything in between. However it seems I was somewhat busy at some point during that time. When I went to lift up the body shell I lifted it all right. I lifted the whole darn loco! What the heck was going on here? I didn't put the screws in to anchor the shell. Did I? No, I distinctly remember that I didn't. I wanted to just lift the shell and start working. What was this? The loco was completely put together. Not a thing out of place. I popped the fuel tank off, removed the screws and took the shell off. There was the new DZ125 decoder completely installed (and programmed) and it was a very neat job. The decoder is just to the rear of the rear headlight and the wires are very neatly bundled in a straight line and taped down so they can't get in the way of anything. I did a very neat job. Too bad I can't remember doing it.

There's nothing on my schedule today so I figure I might as well get some rest.

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Been with my father most of the day. Breakfast at his place then out to the VA center at Fort Polk so I could file for an appointment there. Hopefully I'll be able to enroll there and maybe get something done about this foot of mine. All Medicaid seems to cover is the docs time to scratch his head. No new appointments until sometime in June. Well, it's a start. Then to Wal-Mart to pick up some items. I got two boxes of gauze pad, a couple rolls of tape and a bottle of 91% alcohol for the aforementioned foot. I also got a jar of Black Bean and White Corn salsa to go with a bag of tortilla chips I have. I also made up sixty invitations for a certain persons upcoming wedding. Not mine so don't even start celebrating.

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Oh no. They're not for me. They're for my father.

*

Been a busy day for me today and now I'm relieved it's time to sign off. I guess we found out last night that I truly can install a DCC decoder in my sleep! I hope nothing happens tonight.

See y'all tomorrow.

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Good morning. Wet and dismal here in central MD.

Jeff, your dad didn't wast much time, did he!:D

. . .
I got the last of my road diesels decodered yesterday - my E8, which will power the only passenger train to ever grace the rails on my layout, a short one with three non-matching coaches. [1970 was long past the glory days of rail passenger service.] I have a Walthers SW1 still sitting on the workbench, but that is very low priority. The effort level required for me to convert it would far outweigh its usefulness for op sessions.

Next project: Find the resistors I need to wire-up the ISS dwarf signals that arrived for me yesterday.
 
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