Good Morning All. Cloudy and 60° here at the SFW estate. Possibility of scattered isolated thundershowers this morning, but the radar shows them moving east about 45 miles south of here through the Dallas/Ft Worth area.
My friend the plumber came by yesterday to help me with the installation of the tankless water heater. It took longer than expected because he is a perfectionist and he wanted everything to look neat and orderly. It's out of sight and I didn't care, but he cut out the old plumbing and added fittings, rerouted it a bit, and soldered it all back together. OK, it looks neat, but it would have worked either way. He is afraid of electrical work, which I did mostly on Friday and finished up yesterday. It works as it should. Beat my wife to the shower, although I invited her to join me. She declined.
Finally received our stimulus deposit overnight Friday. That will pay for the water heater and a lot of hobby supplies. We really didn't need it, but I wasn't going to turn it down. We discussed donating some of it to the local hospital for PPE, which we will do Monday.
I'll take Mel's omelet this morning Flo. Throw in some extra bacon and a toasted English Muffin on the side.
Thanks everybody for the likes and comments yesterday, for the rest of the downtown area;
Guy, Karl, Tom, Garry, Chet, Joe, Dave, Bob, Phil, Alan, Curt, Paul, Chad, Jerome.
So, what did I do in the train shed yesterday? Pretty much nothing to speak of. I did do some work on the next structure over from Hal's Hobbies. It's a fire station that is from LifeLike. It's the same one that Johnny has been showing off. I didn't take a picture of it, but here is a picture from the Internet.
I took a picture of the problem. This goes back to when it resided in the old train room (non-varmint/insect proof), and I didn't notice it until I started to tidy it up this time. A dirt dauber had built a nest in the area under and behind the staircase on the right.
Difficult to access and clean, especially with the hose racks inside. A considerable amount of work with a small screwdriver and an Exacto #11 blade eventually yielded this.
By the time I was done, I had broken three of the four legs of the hose rack, so I just cut it out completely and I will remount it.
Next to that structure is an old time favorite, Superior Bakery. It was originally a kit by Revell, but it was a ConCor kit by the time I purchased it.
The basic building walls were used by ConCor to make an engine house which I have and I believe a newspaper printing office. More on this structure later.
Garry - I like how your piggyback yard is progressing. I grew up near ATSF's Zacha Junction TOFC Yard in Northeast Dallas in the 60's. It was like yours but on a bigger scale, and slowly watched its transformation into a COFC yard over the years. They sold it to KCS when they opened the Alliance Yard north of Ft Worth in the early 90's.
Chet - Too bad that the transplanted Californians cannot be taxed at a higher rate than native Montanans. We're beginning to see the same sort of thing here in Texas, although they haven't taken over the local school boards yet. They are contributing to a leftward tilt in the states political climate though. They definitely don't like the "open carry" laws here, but that won't change anytime soon.
Curt - Best wishes on the window assembly. While I love that type of window, I would probably only do ten or so a day before my eyes started getting crossed and blurry!
Louis -
People should not work hard all their lives only to end up in poverty.
I can't comment on a lot of folks, but I know a few that chose not to save when they could well afford to, and are now struggling. I used to warn some of my self-employed friends who bragged about not paying taxes and Social Security that it would catch up to them later. Those who laughed are now faced with Social Security checks that are barely worth the paper that they are printed on.
The national news continues to be nauseating.
Our Governor has ordered face masks to be mandatory in the stores that are still open and I guess it applies to all public places.
Kudos to him.
Joe - These pandemic rules that vary from area to area are really bizarre. An example that I use is WalMart and similar stores are allowed to stay open and sell the same things as Hobby Lobby, Sears or Kohl's, most of which are ordered closed. Then there are a couple of states that were behind the curve, whether by ignorance or intentionally. I give you Mardi Gras and Spring Break as two very glaring examples.
People are getting antsy everywhere. It appears that some states are taking notice, others are still going overboard. People in Florida are not allowed to sit on their own private beaches! To me social distancing,
common sense and PPE should be the responses rather than lockdowns and stay at home orders. Although I do admit that some states do need the lockdowns. Yours might be a good example. You're just too close to NYC.
It looks like our state of Texas is going to relax some of the rules rather soon for non-metropolitan areas.
Everybody have a great day today, whichever one that it is.
