Hiya Gang!
Got this Email from my LHS today,,
"Today is the last day to place your orders for the new Western Maryland and B&O engine.
It has features that will blow you away - DCC / Sound / Smoke and working wipers. Plus this is the first engine that can operate on both HO / O and G Scale track ! Please don't miss this one - should sell for about $800.00. ( WM version will be in Fireball)
Thanks, The Moose Caboose"
Um Duh, it is April Fools day eh??
Ken, I assume you got it too?
Been busy with the work week, and the trains have taken a back seat till today. The brass consolidation's paint has laughed at 95% alcohol, lacquer thinner, and liquid furniture finish remover. Today it got a bath in carburetor cleaner (Trichloroethylene) . Now its asking me to close the garage door, cuz its cold out there!!
Its nekkid as a jay bird! Lacquer took the paint off the tender and the chassis, but barely budged the boiler paint. I don't know what they painted it with, but whatever it was it was tough! (and thick!) This weekend the boiler is going to be baked at 225° to melt out all the low temp metal the previous owner put in there. So much weight it crushed the suspension springs. (I've already got new NWSL springs.) Then the rebuild can begin. Oh, and I have to finish a brass caboose for a customer.
On another note. Several of you have seen my articles in MR and RMC over the years. 3 months ago I let me MR subscription lapse. I just got the May issue, with a big "This may be your last issue" sticker on it. This makes the 3rd month I have received a "final issue". Why have I not renewed? Several reasons. Probably the main one is the insulting of my (and everyone elses) intelligence. Fast forward back to January. I get a mailer from MR with a "special subscription renewal rate for our valued subscribers". $42.95 for a year. Wait a sec. Thats the same rate every Tom, Dick, and Harry can renew for, in fact, new subscribers get this rate, plus a booklet with 8 track plans in it. Some appreciation! Meanwhile, more and more content gets shuffled to the video, extra cost side, and the rest of the mag turns into "noobs with trains" and ooooh, pretty pictures!!
Meanwhile, they have sat on a kitbash article of mine for over a year now, without publication. (even though I have been paid)
Meanwhile,,
RMC gets sold to White River , Steve Priest becomes editor, and RMC, with the emphasis on Craftsman, is reborn. WOW, what a change! If you have not checked them out lately, you are missing out on some good stuff! When was the last time you saw detailed scale drawings of a locomotive in a magazine?? Kitbashing a cast steam loco into a prototypical model? Not in MR! Vive le differance! If there are future articles of mine they are now going to be directed to RMC again. So RMC does not pay as well as MR. So what? I for one appreciate the fact that publication in itself has its own rewards. Mainly in the thank yous I have gotten for taking the time and effort to explain how something is done!
Oh well, thats my 2 cents for the night,
"The opinions expressed above are not the views of the station management, its staff or advertisers"
just little old me,,