Running Bear's Coffee Shop June 2018


Good afternoon, everybody !

Johnny ... You are right about removing the trees making the view better. The reason why we did it was they were large softwood trees too close to the house. If one fell in a storm, damage to the house would be major. Ed who was on the Branson train lost a Jeep to a fallen tree at his house here in recent years. The Jeep wa totaled.

Willie .... OSHA ? .... This is Redneck Country. Nobody complies with any regulations.

Chet .... Your combine looks great with people inside and with lighting.

Sherrel ... Where did you get the sticky bun? .... Are there more of them?

Mike in Hub City .... Welcome. ...

Jesse ..... Sounds like you have good ideas for the layout.

Currently, I am working on some scenery.

Here is a photo of the Santa Fe FM's ...... I'm still operating them...

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Afternoon All,

Did some chores inside and outside, then cut the grass before the afternoon storms start. One of my RR friends that lives in the downtown area visited the MA&G and based on what he saw took his existing layout down and built a brand new layout based on the South. Tom now has a amazing Southern based layout.

VA Ken- That sounds like a great day railfanning.

Garry- Fun times with tree trimming. Four years ago we had 3 cut down and the rest trimmed back for the same reason. Great looking photo.

Mike- Welcome.

Willie- I have just learned over the years to just say you like what she likes. It's quicker, easier to deal with, and frankly I usually could care less between 4 different models of the same thing.

Chet- Nice looking Combine, yard and rail photo.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
90°, 65% humidity, due to drop to mid-70s tomorrow, and were only expecting scattered showers.
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Good afternoon, everybody !

Johnny ... You are right about removing the trees making the view better. The reason why we did it was they were large softwood trees too close to the house. If one fell in a storm, damage to the house would be major. Ed who was on the Branson train lost a Jeep to a fallen tree at his house here in recent years. The Jeep wa totaled.

Willie .... OSHA ? .... This is Redneck Country. Nobody complies with any regulations.

Chet .... Your combine looks great with people inside and with lighting.

Sherrel ... Where did you get the sticky bun? .... Are there more of them?

Mike in Hub City .... Welcome. ...

Jesse ..... Sounds like you have good ideas for the layout.

Currently, I am working on some scenery.

Here is a photo of the Santa Fe FM's ...... I'm still operating them...

42718243722_0240b822b5_b.jpg

Thank you. I still plan to build my cotton mill and the town around it, but I'm also trying to make use of otherwise useless rolling stock that I purchased cheap, without knowing why it was cheap to begin with.
 
Another club member from Birmingham sent out an email this morning talking about the visit. He mentioned that the layout purchaser brought his wife to view the layout set up with all the rolling stock. The wife was seeing the layout her husband bought a house to put the layout in for the first time!
Oooooh! I wonder how that went.
 
Back home now. Things got real quiet there about 11am. I fell asleep on the bench. Decided to go on down to Galitzen to see the Tunnels. Sat there for awhile in the hot sun then went into the little museum. Not a whole lot to see in there or on the tracks.
Headed home and stopped in at Mainline Hobbies and bought a few things.
 
I have to attend a re-cert class on some of my trainer credentials and am in Greenville, NC. First, I hate staying in hotels. Won't get much sleep the next couple of nights. I used Google Earth to scout the area around the hotel and found this:
Greenville NC.jpg


Parked where the crossing used to be on the right hand side but did not feel comfortable leaving the car for very long. Did get a couple of shots.

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Just finished my morning walk, tryin to decide what to do today.
I need to put a new front tire on the bike, I need to log a new loco onto JMRI, I will meet a friend for lunch to plan some new turnout controls, I need to vacume the carpets, I need to stop at Best Buy to get a wall mount system for a flat screen TV then get another walk in this afternoon.
 
Just finished my morning walk, tryin to decide what to do today.
I need to put a new front tire on the bike, I need to log a new loco onto JMRI, I will meet a friend for lunch to plan some new turnout controls, I need to vacume the carpets, I need to stop at Best Buy to get a wall mount system for a flat screen TV then get another walk in this afternoon.
Have you noticed that now you've retired, you're so busy you aren't sure how you ever had time to work?
 
Good Morning All. 73 and cloudy, very slight chance of rain around noon. High today predicted to be only 84°. Demolition started and was completed yesterday in our bathroom remodel. We now have an empty bathroom with absolutely no floor, stripped to the joists and studs, and the cats are peering up (and probably climbing also) at me. Found a pinhole leak in a water pipe inside one of the walls, some of which were also partially removed. There's a pile of fixtures in the yard, the only one we're reusing is the toilet. Wife actually suggested using the old bathtub as a planter! I am going to use the old vanity minus the sink as a cabinet in my shop. Since my wife both forgot to obtain cash for supplies and hasn't made up her mind on the tile, we are having to meet the contractor at Home Depot, 25 miles away, at 7:00 am this morning with the credit card. Duh! She even drove by the bank twice yesterday. Never mind the fact that I reminded her before she left home!:rolleyes: All supplies that the contractor needed yesterday like 2" x 4"'s, 2" x 12"'s and 2" x 6"'s, I already had on hand thus speeding the job along. Foundation is in good shape, reinforcement and new floor and sub-floor are necessary since we're going to tile the whole thing as well as a tiled walk-in shower. It may be overkill but I am more than willing to go for it.
Other than stay out of the way, he charges extra if I help, I mowed the south yard and chainsawed several tree limbs that were providing too much shade on one end of the garden. Yielded about three days of firewood. Picked about a dozen tomatoes too.
I did run a train for the contractor and his helper yesterday. I was also able to paint additional windows on the court house. Not sure how much time I will get in the train shed in the upcoming days. Even though I am supposed to stay out of the way, he (contractor) has a lot of questions regarding the job that my wife can't answer. Plus I am going to do the electrical work for him. Saves him from sub-contracting that to someone else.

Johnny - Great Father's Day gift from Dena. I didn't spot her purchasing anything.
Chet - Combine and passengers looks really good.
Jesse - Surplus freight cars don't have to have destinations on the layout, they can be used to "fill out" through freights.
Garry - After 43 years and much training, OSHA (Occupational Stupidity Handling Administration), is still ingrained in me. Your guy though is better protected than me. I do my chainsawing in shorts and tennis shoes much to my wife's horror. Too bad that the trees that you removed are softwoods, as they burn rapidly and coat the chimney with creosote.
Curt - Yes dear has always been a part of my daily vocabulary!

Gotta go now to the store. I'll have to catch up with everyone else later.
 
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OSHA, ha. While building the deck on the back of my house in 2011, there were a couple of 6x6 posts that had to be cut off at about 12' off the ground so I could lay support beams across them. The ground was also on a bit of a slope too. I only had an 8' step ladder and decided a chain saw was the quickest way to cut them off. Yep, standing near the top platform, got them cut off.


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Good morning everyone. 74 and sunny, heading for 87 and chance of storms today. Rain should really get going tonight, and they're calling for a pretty good soaking for the next 3-4 days. We need it. But watch - - in 4 days I'll be complaining about too much rain:rolleyes:

Garry - tree removal protects your house and opens the view - great! Say hi to Ed and Julie for us.
Willie - Your br remodel sounds like @fun@ - - we're preparing for exactly the same thing in our master br - not underway yet, but very soon.

Didn't run any trains yesterday, just kept painting the MR-IV windows and trim. Nearly finished with that phase.

Well, the coffee pot has finished perking, and the aroma is calling me - - LOUD!! Have a good day everyone.
 
Good morning. It rained most of the day yesterday until the sun peeked out early in the evening and managed to get up to 59 degrees. Cloudy this morning and 48 degrees and if we're lucky, we may get up to the low 60's.

Garry - Another excellent photo of the FM units.

Sam - Interesting photos. I will have to come up with something to compete with your rail photos. Nice shots.

Ken D&J - Now that you're retired, you may find yourself busier than when you were working. I can relate to the 8 foot ladder. Occasionally the dish for our DirecTV would get covered with snow in the winter and I would have to climb up on the roof to clear it off. I keep my extension ladder in my shop, hundreds of feet from the house and would use an 8 foot step ladder to get up on the roof. It could be fun and games if you did this in the dark. When we replaced the roof a few years ago, we did move the dish to the front porch. Getting too old to do that roof climbing in the snow.

Willie - Planning ahead on construction projects really do make things a lot easier. Greg has his new kitchen and you'll have a new bathroom.

Don't know if I can top Sams rail photos, but here goes.

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Later
 
Lookin good guys, excellent shots of excellent work. Been layin back chillin. No action on the layout until Aug. Going fishing for ALL of July, gonna sit in a boat or sit by the fire for a few weeks. Should have the scooter fixed soon and I'll be back on the road during daylight hours. BIG plans for the layout this fall. Hope all you fathers had an excellent Fathers Day. Enjoy summer while it lasts.

Later Taters.
 
Good Morning again. Continuation of this morning's post which I didn't finish.

Terry - I noted the same thing regarding retirement. I am much more busy now than when I was working. For me, a lot of it is catching up on stuff that I put off while I was still working. It's kind of leveling out now, after three years, but I also intentionally keep up the pace just to keep mind and body active.
Sam - Those pictures were pretty nice. They showed track that looks like it's busy.
Chet - I'll have a new bathroom for sure, but may lose a wife before it's done!o_O She's in panic mode regarding this tile. I don't care about the color or style one bit. I don't use the damn room to entertain! It's the master bathroom used only by the two of us! I didn't want tile anyway, too cold on the feet.:rolleyes: I chose not to argue.

OK now. The contractor wants to show me the rebuilt sewer lines for both bathrooms now. Only needed one but they're back-to-back and why not as long as everything is so accessible
 
Willie - in this case, scenery is best. The are High Speed Reader's Digest giveaways. While some could be made functional, I think it is best to sacrifice them to abandoned sidings, stationary locales, and maybe even a wreck scene. No since losing good stock for those features. At just under $10 per for cars and 2 dummies, I'm comfortable making them guinea pigs for ideas.
 
Willie - We had both of our upstairs bathroom down to the studs a couple of years ago. The wife survived just find. We went with a white subway tile with an accent band. Simple but effective. As you said, nobody but the two of you use it. Tell her not to sweat it. Just let us know what room you're in at the hospital. Grin.gif
 
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Have you noticed that now you've retired, you're so busy you aren't sure how you ever had time to work?
I also, most inaccurately I might add, assumed that once I went into business for myself and could control my hours that I would have more time to do what I wanted. You know they say about assuming, right?
 



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