Running Bear's February 2021 Coffee Shop.


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Morning!
Snowing at 20°F this fine Sunday morning. The temperature won't change much today, with an expected high of 22°F.
I'll have to go outside and shovel soon, before I start having ice forming on the driveway. Gotta keep the drive nice and clean.

Thought I'd better come in for a coffee before folks started thinking I'd abandoned ship. - Not so; I've just been busy with non-modeling projects that have a tendency to destroy motivation for doing any modeling. Like helping install a friends new garage furnace.

I don't have any new photos for you either. So, I'll just have to repost a photo from last year, that I like.
This photo has a lot of information regarding a small town rail yard. A couple of SD40 switchers, MOW equipment and early spring ground cover are shown. Plus there's proof that a small town with less than 10,000 population can have a transit service. - I like this photo:
Yard_WTS_2020.JPG


I'd like to comment on some of the work shown here the last couple of days, but, I'm kinda on a flyby run. I need to shovel and then get over to buddies so we can get the new furnace exhaust out the garage roof.

Just know that I'm paging through and liking everything I see here. Well done, all! Keep bringing in the photos.

Catch ya'll later!
 
Well a very positive sign of spring, the red wing blackbird. After filling the two feeders the cats were glued to the back door watching the birds and wondering what if. When I looked out as there were a lot of birds I seen two red wing blackbirds. They say they don't come back early so when you see them that is a good sign. Robins are known to come back too early though it is a good sign the red wing is even better.
 
Good Morning Everyone.......cloudy with light rain and ground fog. I'm glad I'm not driving down I-41 in this type of weather since I been there when the ground fog makes it almost impossible to see, yet the other drivers are still doing 60 mph or more. The highway has ramp gates to close the highway to traffic, but I've never seen it closed.

Yesterday, Cathy, Riley and myself met a relative and her new puppy at a local park. Riley likes other dogs and people and Riley's same size doesn't matter and she will greet dogs five times her size and four times as tall. Nice Spring like day.

Chet: I always enjoy your videos and especially the scenic areas on your and the the club's layout. Ginger looks happy with her new grooming. I plan to make some more videos with either my newer camera or Cathy's which is step about my in performance. The video I posted was my first and it had a lot of mistakes like the BNSF locomotive and the C&NW caboose. I'm not sure if U Tube is now charging to post videos and add music to your videos?

Jaz: a great job on the construction equipment. True to life weathering. You should do a video on your methods on how to weather the items.

Willie: You should post a video of yourself in that Tux and then when you were dancing at the wedding at 1:00 AM in the morning.

TomO: I like that power strip on your work bench. I have a two outlets attached to my bench and sometimes two outlets are not enough.

It's movie day at the household. I've picked out a movie about the Navy SEALS and it is based on actual events. Those SEALS are brave souls. I have a friend who was a Green Bret for four tours of duty in Vietnam. He lived with the various mountain tribes and taught the natives jungle warfare. He would spend an entire tour at a base camp. To this day he will not eat fish or rice!

We have a Dairy Queen in our town and the food and service varies with the seasons when the employees change. Some times the burgers are great and other times the burgers are bad. I stopped going there and limit fast food to the cabin. I like A&W Root Beer stands, their root beer and Black Cows now called "Freezes" a mix of root beer and ice cream. The A&W stands are becoming rarer and rarer. The one near the cabin has a 1950's interior and a vintage jute box. At home I mix milk with root beer and place it in the freezer to chill it to it's almost frozen. MMMMMM!

We have the garage guys coming Monday morning since we cancelled the last service call. Now the door will not open or close. They think it could be a bad sensor at the floor level. My last door didn't have those sensors to prevent the door from hitting an object or person.

Time to close......

Keep the photos and videos coming.

Greg

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Weathered SOO at Omro.jpg
The office and the entrance to the Omro Junk Yard. The building is an Atlas model with a metal roof and the sign's lettering faded in the photo. The caboose is ready for the cutting torch.
 
Good Morning all! 75 and overcast here in H-Town. Rain predicted tomorrow.

Jaz - Nice job on the heavy equipment. You seem to have an eye for detail.
Tom - Hope your right about the robins, there is between 30 and 40 in my yard now.
McLeod - like the bus. Is that a bridge behind the bus?
Justin - Rock work really looks good.

I did manage to lessen the severity of the "S" curve yesterday. The FEF-3 can now run the entire layout.

Archive photo

4 B&M RS-3's cross the Deerfield.jpg


STAY SAFE

LATER
 
CambriaArea51 said:
Well a very positive sign of spring, the red wing blackbird. After filling the two feeders the cats were glued to the back door watching the birds and wondering what if. When I looked out as there were a lot of birds I seen two red wing blackbirds. They say they don't come back early so when you see them that is a good sign. Robins are known to come back too early though it is a good sign the red wing is even better.
Click to expand...


Our Redwing Black Birds arrive every Spring at our feeders between March 14th and March 16th like clockwork. First a few and then the hordes of Redwings appear.

We have Robins year round and they are not seed eaters, but like to dine on berries. Last week I saw a flock of at least 25 Robins in a grouping of crab trees eating the left over berries.

Greg
 
I finally bit the bullet and ordered a cordless Dremel tool for my layout use. The price was right at $49.99, which I had thought would be more expensive and kept me from purchasing the cordless. I need to add a Kadee uncouple ramp and using this cordless tool will be my first project for the tool.

The ramp location is hard to reach and using my corded Dremel would likely damage some structures or scenery when cutting out the ties.

My current Dremel is at least 25 years old and I make a lot of use out of the tool.

Greg
 
Afternoon fellers. I hope everyone is doing well. Thanks to everyone for the comments on my rock faces. I'm gonna touch on this a little bit more and why I'm not 100% satisfied. Overall the faces look good and aren't hard to look at. Do they look like what I see around here? No they do not. What i have around here should be a slate gray with brown. I won out on the slate gray. The brown wash wouldn't take. That was the struggle. What I have is all slate gray as that's the only pigment that would take. Not to be defeated I found that dipping an actual paint brush into the pigments then dipping in water yields better results on sculptamold. Now if you have plaster casted rocks the pigments take really well! Too good in fact. Given the circumstances and what I have to work with the end result is very decent. Only drawback is not getting what I had envisioned. I'm not going to adjust the faces I have as I'd rather have decent rock faces compared to risking messing up the rock faces with any adjustments. So what you see is the end all be all. I will say that being the first rock faces I've ever made these turned out pretty well. It helped build some confidence in me that going forward I can pull off rocks on my layout. It's just a time consuming task that yields decent results. I enjoy working with sculptamold for my rocks. The working time is great and i can make my own faces with little to no effort. All of my faces i shaped myself. So there is a sense of pride in that. And I enjoy seeing my trains go by in front of them. Its definitely better than plain old white. So rocks aside I started another project. I started installing my grade crossing last night. I have the run ups set up on the town side. Once that sets I'll sand it down and get ready to add in my road. I do have some more faces to paint but those shouldn't take that long to do. Then move on to other projects. That's all I have for now. I'll try to stop by later if I get a chance.
 
Morning everyone. I'm working on the O'Neill's loading dock now. It's all board by board on a template. I'm working the template upside down to keep the work close to the edge of the bench and my eyes! The key to keeping everything square and properly spaced is in the manual, and in going slow and checking the fit and orientation each time. Joists on top of beams, decking on top of joists.

Loading Dock 1.JPG
 
Greg@mnrr said:
a cordless Dremel tool
Click to expand...
I have a cordless, but not impressed with run time
My province is still in the running to win the ladies' Canadian womens curling championship today. Possible 3 games, won the first, 2 more to go.
I remember going to A&W when hops delivered your burger to the rolled down window , on rollerskates!
TV schedule *08:00 curling; 12:30 curling, 1:30 nascar, 6:30 curling, & somewhere inbetween, have to find why one channel not recording to CD from turntable
 
moermusic said:
I remember going to A&W when hops delivered your burger to the rolled down window , on rollerskates!
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I still have a glass A&W root beer mug that I collected in the mid 60's from the local A&W drive-in, car service only, no roller skates. I was there almost daily since I liked one of the car hops and hoped to get a date. This A&W is long gone and it's remembered for some of the best burgers in town.

Greg
 
Justin- There are many different ways to paint rocks. If the overall look of the rock is slate gray then you could take a 1" brush and paint them as your base coat. Then add in your other colors with a small brush for highlights. Lastly you can use an airbrush to blend everything and spray a dark tone in cracks and overhangs for shadow effect.
 
Went to Harbor Freight and picked up a new spray gun , the one I was going to use had been sitting in the shed for the last 10 years and was a rusty PoS. I figured it was cheaper to buy a new one ($20) than buy a bunch of chemicals and spending the rest of my life trying to clean the old one ( i dont remeber whether i ran enamel through it or resin) . The gun was probably clean when I put it up , but the dirt dobbers have had their way with it. I did manage to salvage the smaller 4oz detail gun . Just waiting on the weather now.

Stopped in at Home Despot and Lowes to pick up some blades for the knives ( 24 mm ? HB doesn't have that size,Lowes didn't either) , They,re still in the plumbing isles talking about their busted pipes and trying to give each other the virus. Its like a game they play , the first one to drop dead loses? I guess I'll just wait a while , till they thin each other out . I don't need hot water that bad.
 
Thought I would make a short appearance this beautiful day out! Glad to see that most everyone is still "out and about".
The Spousal Unit has me hopping trying to keep her happy with her being more or less laid up since her knee replacement. She is doing great - scares me at times as she will hobble over to the fridge to get a water or something and not use her walker! I TOLD HER that she will never hear the end of it from me if she should fall and hurt herself; however, she is recovering pretty darn fast. Willie txt me yesterday to ask about her as I had not posted here is several days. I told him that I'm just sort of burnt out at the moment!

The daughter was let out of the hospital for a few days - them her BP went bonkers and she was rushed back to the hospital and a few hours later we have an 8th G Son - that's two from each daughter!
That was on Monday, but both of them are still at the hospital. Daughter was released yesterday afternoon but baby is improving and think he may get his walking papers tomorrow or Tuesday - he was having a few problems associated with being 5-6 weeks early. I normally think most newborns don't look much better than a squirrel, but this is one-good-looking-kid!

OK - enough of my blabbering!

Off to the grocery department for a few things -- the weather has been low 40's to mid 70's for a week now and next three days are showing full, cloudless skies. I think this may be a record setting month for the lowest amount of rain - four hundredths of an inch - for our normal wettest month of the year!
 
Sirfoldalot said:
The daughter was let out of the hospital for a few days - them her BP went bonkers and she was rushed back to the hospital and a few hours later we have an 8th G Son - that's two from each daughter!
That was on Monday, but both of them are still at the hospital. Daughter was released yesterday afternoon but baby is improving and think he may get his walking papers tomorrow or Tuesday - he was having a few problems associated with being 5-6 weeks early. I normally think most newborns don't look much better than a squirrel, but this is one-good-looking-kid
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Congratulations, Sherrel!
Personally, I think grandkids are better to have than the kids. They seem more fun and arn't so much work. - Really happy to hear the wife is ok!!!

Texas Hobo said:
McLeod - like the bus. Is that a bridge behind the bus?
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Yep, Hughie! That would be the rail bridge over the McLeod River. I'm still honored that the Gov'mt named a fine river after me ( other way around, actually)! Anyway, thanks for giving me a reason to repost my favorite rail photo that I've ever taken. It's this bridge:
CN 3053_ET44AC_11-2021.jpg

I actually had that photo made into a framed 11x14, and it's hanging above my desk.

Since there has been talk about past A&W activity, as soon as I have time, I'll take a photo of the glass A&W gallon root-beer jugs I still have from the early 1960's. Dad bought them when I was a child, and I still have them.

Have a good rear-end of the Sunday, everyone!
 
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