Running Bear’s August 2019 Coffee Shop


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This is the Super Hokuto DMU we are riding on this very moment back to Hakodate, where we will catch the Shinkansen to Sendai. The Shinkansen goes through the Seikan Tunnel, which connects the island of Hokkaido to the island of Honshu, the main Island of Japan.

I believe it is a diesel hydraulic and as it accelerates and you hear the whine of the turbo, it sounds a lot like my former Dodge RAM 2500 with Cummins when you gunned that.

Hokkaido is not as electrified as the rest of Japan and so you get a lot more diesel run trains than elsewhere. And the Sapporo and Hakodate stations smell a lot more like diesel fumes.

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We made it to Sendai on the Shinkansen. Rainy here. Typhoon is a day or three away, though the last I heard not expected to hit land.

They have a thing called a mini Shinkansen that runs on dual tracked lines (narrow and standard) at a slower speed to areas without shinkansen. They have a narrower loading gauge compared to standard shinkansen But they run at full speed coupled to a standard shinkansen on the normal shinkansen line before they split off or after reforming with the standard. At Morioka we were stopped for a longer period, 10 - 15 min, where the mini Shinkansen from Akita was coupled up to us. This is a pic of the coupled shinkansen I took after we got off in Sendai. (We were in the blue-green standard shinkansen)


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Louis: Hope you feel better soon. You work harder than you think...be careful with your health.



The Amazins won again....It's beyond Amazin, it's incredible. Just think, two months ago, the media was clamoring for the managers head, now he's a genius.

Boris
Thank you Boris, I'm doing much better this morning. I can be mindless when working, but I'm working on that and I have done much better. I don't concern myself with how long I take making deliveries, I go slower and take many more breaks now. I turn a blind eye to yard work and other chores when I am not feeling my best and or the heat and humidity is too high. My wife supports me 100% and she is happy I am taking better care of myself.

Those Mets are playing well and the Nationals swept the Giants. The disappointing thing for me would be to have the Mets and Nationals square off in the wild card game. It would be disappointing because it's only one game and we would miss seeing one of those great starting rotations. I'm hoping one of those teams can win the division and we can see them battle in a multigame playoff series.

Managers always look like geniuses when their players do well. I've heard people complain about the Orioles manager. Do they realize most of his pitching staff should be in AAA? For the record I think Orioles manager Brandon Hyde is doing a fantastic job! Even after being swept by those damn Yankees the Orioles are 20-20 in their last 40 games. That to me is amazing!
 
We made it to Sendai on the Shinkansen. Rainy here. Typhoon is a day or three away, though the last I heard not expected to hit land.

They have a thing called a mini Shinkansen that runs on dual tracked lines (narrow and standard) at a slower speed to areas without shinkansen. They have a narrower loading gauge compared to standard shinkansen But they run at full speed coupled to a standard shinkansen on the normal shinkansen line before they split off or after reforming with the standard. At Morioka we were stopped for a longer period, 10 - 15 min, where the mini Shinkansen from Akita was coupled up to us. This is a pic of the coupled shinkansen I took after we got off in Sendai. (We were in the blue-green standard shinkansen)


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That's a very unusual arrangement, especially that they can run at full speed, coupled.
 
They certainly do. He was always at the front door to greet me when I come home. Have his collar hanging by the door now so I am still greeted by him.

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Chet, that is a heartbreaking picture, but I understand completly.

My beagle Tucker was a rescue dog and he almost never barks, that's very unusual for a beagle. The vet and I think he was beaten to stop his barking. When I come home he repeatedly and loudly howls and jumps at me nipping and licking at my nose. I call him my "flying beagle", he leaps through the air, over my little beagle Sophie to get to my nose. Normally he always takes a back seat to Sophie, he gives her first crack at everything, even food, but when I come home he will not be denied and shows his love in his own way.

All dogs are different, but as King Toot correctly said, their love is unconditional.

I know these first days, weeks, even months are very difficult, I cried when I lost my English Cocker Spaniel Bessy. As long time dog lovers you and I both know the sadness will slowly turn to happy memories of the love we share with our dogs. Their lives maybe in the past tense, but our love for them lasts forever.

God be with you my friend, I believe Hank will always be with you as well.
 
Good morning Everybody!

It's warm and humid in southeast Baltimore. We had another strong thunderstorm yesterday, but as usual, no power outage.

The weather man called Tuesday's weather event a "micro burst" some places got as much as 5" of rain in under 2 hours. There was flooding on the east side of the harbor in historic Fells Point and trees were down all over the city and surrounding areas. Fortunately no problems in my neighborhood.

Time for me to have breakfast.

Have a great day Everybody!
 
Thank you Boris, I'm doing much better this morning. I can be mindless when working, but I'm working on that and I have done much better. I don't concern myself with how long I take making deliveries, I go slower and take many more breaks now. I turn a blind eye to yard work and other chores when I am not feeling my best and or the heat and humidity is too high. My wife supports me 100% and she is happy I am taking better care of myself.

Those Mets are playing well and the Nationals swept the Giants. The disappointing thing for me would be to have the Mets and Nationals square off in the wild card game. It would be disappointing because it's only one game and we would miss seeing one of those great starting rotations. I'm hoping one of those teams can win the division and we can see them battle in a multigame playoff series.

Managers always look like geniuses when their players do well. I've heard people complain about the Orioles manager. Do they realize most of his pitching staff should be in AAA? For the record I think Orioles manager Brandon Hyde is doing a fantastic job! Even after being swept by those damn Yankees the Orioles are 20-20 in their last 40 games. That to me is amazing!

Louis- Only thing that would have made the baseball week better is if Philly could have shown up for more than just 1 night in the desert. As for the “Amazings”, their test comes up during this next week, as they have 3 games a piece vs the Nats n Braves. A far cry from the Southsiders & 3 last place clubs.
 
Good morning fellas. Hey Flo, I’ll have a couple rooster bullets over hard, a cuppa black and some American fries with a side of scrapple or porkroll. They don’t know either of those up Nort here. PATY.
 
Good morning. it's clear and 66.
Chet, I'm sorry to hear about your four-legged kid. They never seem to live as long as we would like them to.....
 
Good morning, 61 and sunny. Shaping up to have a long string of nice days.

Chet-- really sad to hear about Hank. I am certain he had a wonderful life in your home!

Louis-- those Howes pics are very nice. Thanks for posting them

chadbag-- really interesting photos you are sharing. Glad you are posting them as well.

Patrick-- I have been logging lots of overtime as well. Funny how the money seems to disappear.

Willie-- I like the dancers, also the back side of the tavern.

I had 9 hours in by 2:30 yesterday afternoon. Wife was still out celebrating her birthday so took a snooze, ended up sleeping 3 hours before she got home. I am glad I don't have to run around with her when I am worn out from work and she is bored from staying home:rolleyes:

Plan on getting some work done on the section house, probably lay the parts out and maybe start some painting, later this afternoon. Possibly be going up north this weekend, should be able to get off early tomorrow.

more later, Dave
 
Good morning everyone. 69 and cloudy out there. Rain in the forecast for the next three days. I'll have pancakes and eggs, Flo, please, and a big cup of coffee!! Cream, no sugar.

Chet - RIP Hank. 'Nuff said. I've lost a dog and a cat over the years - I know the feeling.
Chad - Love the photos from Japan. Did you get to Mt. Fuji during your time there?
Louis - Beautiful photos from the historical society.

Not much to report today. Sugar diabetes acted up yesterday evening because I skipped breakfast and only had a cup of soup for lunch. (Discounting four cups of coffee during the day). So spent part of the evening sitting down and getting myself back to normal. Once I felt better, I headed down to the train room, ran trains for a while, and took a couple photos. Here they are: The first one is the back of the Farm Supply building. The worker is waiting to load a customer's truck. I was originally going to put a sign above the door, either "Deliveries" or "Customer Pick-Up" but decided it just looked odd, so I left them both off. This way that door functions as both.

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This one is of the Farm Supply building on the layout more or less where it will be for good, with a couple of trains running by in front of it. That building to the right of the Farm Supply is a trucking company building which I may move to another part of the layout.
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Have a good day everyone.
 
Good morning y'all. Sounds like a good day for Taylor Ham, eggs and potatoes on a Portuguese roll, with salt, pepper and ketchup, and a container of black coffee.
70° and murky this morning going to near 90° once it clears up.

chadbag: Thanks for sharing all of the photos of the rail systems over in Japan.

Willie: I also liked the dancers. ice work on the Saloon.

Louis: Orioles fans are used to winning, and that has not happened recently. It's not the manager, in this case, it's the owner. It's been painful to watch them the past couple of seasons, and they seem to regress each year.

Boris
 
Good Morning All. A little cooler today at 77° and some scattered clouds on the horizon. Only managed 99° yesterday, forecasters had called for 101°. We'll try again today. Not getting much accomplished in the mornings with this physical therapy schedule interrupting everything, but today it is at 5:30 pm since that was the last slot available for this week. Today is grocery store Thursday, seem to be out of everything at home except big hunks of red meat. Took my wife out for a surprise lunch at a ground-level BBQ dive yesterday, as cabin fever seemed to be setting in. I figured that it would be a good choice for the low-carb Keto diet that she is still on, maybe smoked turkey, no bread, coleslaw and some low sugar BBQ sauce that the place carries for diabetic customers. So she orders all of the above PLUS a side of deep fried breaded okra! :rolleyes: So much for good intentions, but she is a Southern girl at heart!
Sausage grits and eggs over easy for me this morning Francine.

Thanks to all who commented or liked yesterday's scenes; Louis, Jerome, Garry, Chet, Sherrel, Phil, Justin, Ken, Chad, Dave, Johnny.

Out in the train shed, I painted an asphalt parking area for the diner and added a bit more ground foam along the main line. Looked through the structure stash and found a structure to place to the left of the gas station. It's a Woodland Scenics model called Fresh Market. It's really just the old DPM kit called Robert's Dry Goods, but the walls are cast in one piece and all the modeler has to do is paint it (if wished) and add the details.
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Downside is that there are numerous holes in it for the details; you either have to add them where they want them, or fill in the holes and paint over them. It was a birthday gift from one of my daughter's. More to come.

Dave - I am fond of inserting small mini-scenes here and there on the layout.
Johnny - Nice scene you're setting up there.

OK, I'm not a baseball fan at all, but who are these Amazins everyone is posting about?
Everybody have a great day.
 
That's a very unusual arrangement, especially that they can run at full speed, coupled.

I believe the reason they run the mini Shinkansen coupled with a regular Shinkansen on the normal Shinkansen track is because they only have to schedule one train instead of two. The Shinkansen run regularly and they have to keep a tight schedule to get all the runs in. I am pretty sure JR East (which these are) does not run as often as JR Central on the Tokaido Shinkansen (which is Tokyo and South) which can run every 6 minutes I believe during the busy times.

The mini Shinkansen run full speed coupled together wit the regular (using a type of Shibata coupler [Scharfenburg variant]) and then are uncoupled and run separately when they split off to cover territory that is not covered by normal Shinkansen tracks (the dual narrow and standard gauge tracks I mentioned). Normal Shinkansen tracks are standard gauge and dedicated to only Shinkansen. Once they split and run on the shared dual gauge track they run at the slower max speed of the normal track (which is like 130 kmh or so -- normal Shinkansen r8n 275-320 kmh)

chadbag: Thanks for sharing all of the photos of the rail systems over in Japan.
Chad - Love the photos from Japan. Did you get to Mt. Fuji during your time there?
chadbag-- really interesting photos you are sharing. Glad you are posting them as well.

Glad to share. I find the Japan rail system very interesting and much different than the US (or the European, where I have also spent a lot of time riding in the late 80s and again in the early 90s in Germany and a little in France and Switzerland and Scandinavia in the early 90s and again in Sweden / Denmark in 2016). Japan is really a rail oriented society and much of life revolves around the system and stations. And they are also a rail modeling society -- you find model trains all over the place in large electronic oriented department stores, large toy stores, and specialty hobby train shops.

To the Fuji question -- I've not been to Fuji on tis trip or on any of the previous 8 trips to Japan in the last 19 years. One of these days we will get there. We are usually based out of Amagasaki (near Osaka) and this time out of Kobe (also near Osaka but a bit farther away) so Fuji is not that close and we have just never put that on the agenda.

ETA: we leave Sendai in the morning heading to Tokyo and Yokohama, where we will visit a ramen museum, and then to Kobe on the Shinkansen. Sunday we'll take some local trains again to visit services, and Monday back to Tokyo for a few days of Disneyland and then in a week we fly home.
 
Good morning ...

Justin .... I like the photos you posted. The picture of P&LE GP38's reminds me. GTW purchased second hand GP38's from P&LE. For a while they retained black paint with the GT logo, but eventually they were repainted into the GTW blue color scene.

Louis .... The B&O photos look great. In particular, I like the curved double track tunnel. I have some curved double track tunnels on my layout, but CB&Q never had ny of them.

Johnny ... Seeing your Gramp's tank car reminds me of Jefrey Running Bear who had some of them. I kidded him about them, and I asked if they hauled bulk Geritol. ..... We had some good laughs about that. LOL .

Willie .... Looks like you will soon have another good downtown store on your layout.

Chad ..... Your photos are interesting.

Everybody .... Happy model railroading.
 
Willie, it's the Amazing Mets. After the 1969 World Series and again in 1986 they will always be the Amazing Mets. Personally I don't think they are so amazing, lucky is maybe more like it! Keep in mind that's coming from a biased and bitter Orioles fan. The 1969 Orioles were arguably the best team of the 20th century. Certainly the best to lose the world series!

Boris, mark my words, the Orioles will be back! We have had a terrible run of pitching. No matter how much the birds offer top flight pitchers they don't want to pitch in what I call the "matchbox" known to others as Camden Yards. All we have been able to sign is over priced mid-level has been pitchers.

The Birds have known this for sometime and have been drafting pitchers mostly, with our top 10 picks, but injuries have plagued our minor league pitchers. We finally have some healthy young arms coming. I hope they have a good sinker ball!
 
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