Running Bear's December 2021 Coffee Shop


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СHRISTIAN said:
Hello Happy Fellow modelers !
And now a little bit of culture in this wild world. I'm currently reading this wonderful book (in French of course !).
I don't understand all the concepts but it's still extremely interesting. And yes, we also know how to read in France.
Incredible isn't it? :)

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And for those who don't believe me, I really have this book !

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Good afternoon.
My work life has become more complicated.
First, the good news: I was given a $1.75/hr raise, effective Jan 3.
The rest is pretty much not good news. We go on a 6 day a week schedule at the same time my pay increases. Also, without any explanation, we are now required to wear a mask any time we’re in the building, or when there are any customers nearby. It doesn’t matter if we’ve had our shots or the virus. We are also participating in an indoor show of RVs next weekend. Thousands of people elbow-to-elbow, but they’re worried about a handful of customers at our facility. Management is not effected by the mask rule, so they’re running around maskless while we are wearing ours.
The joys of corporate thinking…
 
Afternoon All,

Got most everything done in the train room. I fixed the coaling tower, resoldered the feeder wires (4 sets), rerailed the locos around the turntable and diesel servicing tracks. I also added the 3.5" extension on the 3rd storage track and put the first layer of ballast on it. I should finish it tomorrow and then take some pictures. Next up will be fascia along the left side of the layout. After that I will take a break from scenery for 2-3 weeks and start the build of the FOS REA freight house. I believe it has a footprint of 26"x 7". It's going in the peninsula at its base on the right side.

Willie- Very cool gift.

Terry- Great video.

Guy- I look forward to seeing your layout progress.

Mikey- Great looking loco and cars.

IB Ken- Prayers for your wife.

Troy- Prayers for your MIL. We're starting to go through this with Dad.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
TLOC said:
How can they cancel 400 flights out of one airport? Don’t they have computers doing the crew scheduling and shouldn’t those match the # of flights to fly. Seems to me, don’t schedule flights if you don’t have available crews. What do I know? I for got to hit reply before midnight yesterday when I wrote the response.
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TOM = They are former G-ment workers! One hand knoweth not what the other does! LOL!
It's a very complex question to answer.
1. The flights were scheduled months in advance and tickets sold for travel.
2. Pretty sure that many pilots are not Vaxed and many may be off due to being sick. I am not sure what the current policy is for them working.
3. a flight may be arriving from another a/p and the departing crew for the departing flight is missing a few necessary folks?
4. The arriving crew is likely out of duty time/hours to depart again on another flight which would wreck their monthly schedule creating more problems down the line.

Back in another age - I can remember the company did whatever they had to do to meet demands shuffling crews and planes all over. I think that today the system, arrivals, departures, parking, gates, cannot handle it.
TWA was a pretty large carrier - we had 3600 pilots .. Not sure, but I think United today had 25-30 thousand. I was snowed in on a flight to Hartford, CT on a 707 ( 3pilots and 4 stews) and we were there for 6 days; the crew schedule completely lost track of us.
 
santafewillie said:
Wonderful day spent at my brother's home with many siblings and their second and third generation relatives. 42 of us this time.
I forgot to post this earlier, my wife doodles in various forms of pencil and watercolor arts and she gave me this yesterday.
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I particularly like her conifers, and someone who doodles for the other half I appreciate the effort she put in
McLeod said:
Good Evening! ; from a place that is -32C. Tomorrow morning, 9:00am it's supposed to hit -40C/F. It's cold enough, the dog don't even care to go outside.
There's a fella sleeping in the foyea of our local bank; down on his luck, I suppose. Plus. I believe he's an addict. If the proper authorities don't help him, he's a dead man for sure. A person can't survive in this cold without food and shelter. - If I were him, I'd steal 6 donuts and get myself thrown in jail for the winter.

I'm saying hello from the wife's PC. Mine crashed the other night, when I was trying to post some photos and a message on this forum. So, I went out today and got a new hard drive, then installed it today. Tomorrow, I'll try to install the operating system from an old Win10, USB3 stick that my son has.

Since it's so cold and I'm not going outside to play, I may as well consider what to do to start layout modeling. Perhaps I'll start on the automobile roads and parking lots. I'm fairly new at this, so it's all trial and error.
This is one of the photos I was trying to post when my PC crashed:
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It's only one module board of layout, but, it's a start. - Now to figure out how to start!

Oh-Oh! The wife wants her PC back! See ya'll when I get mine back up and running.
Have a good one!!
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i wondered how you were getting in…nice wife to let you use. It though
 
Spent some train time yesterday, running my Eurostar for an hour or so, and sorted out a few alignment issues where the track crosses over the board, as one side has been vertical for a few weeks it does seem to go out of whack by a mm or two, tried sorting out my lights by the turntable, but can't seem to find the right resistor, either it makes no difference or they simply don't work, which is weird, as all the other DB's have the same resistor fitted and they are working ok.
Had a quiet day today, nearly, daughter is staying with me for a few days, but I live in a one bed apartment, so she's in my living room, on a inflatable bed, which sprang a rather large leak last night, woke up with her ass on the floor, she was not impressed😢 Today is a Bank Holiday, so had to order one online, but replacement wont arrive till Wednesday, so she can either go home (her apartment is 40mins away), or she's on the sofa for the next two nights.
Got the F45 converted to DCC, then promptly dropped the motor and broke the female UJ, so that's u/s until I can find a replacement part here in the UK. And finally remembered to finish off my log load for my one and only flat car, think it looks ok.
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bnsf971 said:
Good afternoon.
My work life has become more complicated.
First, the good news: I was given a $1.75/hr raise, effective Jan 3.
The rest is pretty much not good news. We go on a 6 day a week schedule at the same time my pay increases. Also, without any explanation, we are now required to wear a mask any time we’re in the building, or when there are any customers nearby. It doesn’t matter if we’ve had our shots or the virus. We are also participating in an indoor show of RVs next weekend. Thousands of people elbow-to-elbow, but they’re worried about a handful of customers at our facility. Management is not effected by the mask rule, so they’re running around maskless while we are wearing ours.
The joys of corporate thinking…
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Well the pay rise is better than a kick in the teeth. I wear a mask most of the time after I found it stops you catch colds and the flu as well.
 
Still alive and back to normal. Covid-19 isn't the worst illness I've ever had but that thing sucks all the energy out of you for days on end, even after the congestion passes.

I had enough in me for video games and to start taking inventory of my 1970's freight cars with JMRI. My intent is to use JMRI to build different show trains for me to keep things interesting. But, with 100 cars now logged the realization hit me that I have well over 300 freight cars. What the hell for? I don't have a layout and I can only keep two trains at club (Club #2 doesn't allow any at all due to space). So it's like my collector mindset is now fighting with the minimalist outdoorsy mindset. Figuring out this self-induced dilemma will be interesting.

Otherwise I'm embracing the latter mindset for a while and working on some big boy tools. This fancy tomahawk came out of the box with a terrible cutting edge for what I need it to do. This is meant to be a camp axe for use at my cabin but the thing was too fat to split anything. Rather than ask for new stuff I asked my uncle to reprofile the blade for me as a christmas gift. Glad to say he did good work and I am looking forward to using it over the next year. Eventually it's getting a handle refinish with boiled linseed oil.

That, and we have a ratty old 3lb axe I want to try fixing up. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos on restoring older tools and I'd love to try. (Especially with comparable new ones being close to $70).

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Good afternoon all you Model Railroaders out there.....! The Christmas Holiday is over and the two family members from Arizona returned home safe and sound. It was a bit hectic here while the family members were here and we had other family over on Christmas Eve. Riley enjoyed our niece who gave Riley a lot of attention and walks during the couple of nice days that we had during their stay.

Really going to miss Garry's contributions to the Forum. I enjoyed seeing Garry's modeling skills at work in his photographs and his additions to the Forum. He will be missed.

Tomorrow, I have to get down to the layout room for a change and do some model railroading. I need to run some trains which is something that I haven't done in a year or so.

Been doing a lot of watching Jason Jensen and his modeling of structures and how he uses stains to achieve the George Sellios look with his models. I did order some stains from his supplier and they arrived in short order. I have a couple of Bar Mills kits that I can use the stains on to color the bare wood. Years ago during the "Bad" years of the Packers, I constructed a wooden truss bridge at the kitchen table during the Packer games. I finished the kit and installed the bridge on the layout on a Sunday. On Monday, Cathy was folding towels and one towel hit the bridge and it came down in pieces.

It was good to see Chet (Montanan) back on the Forum. He's making some major moves with a new condo and living 400 miles from his former home.

I if it hard to believe that I been in retirement 10 years come June. Time sure flies.

Another week or so I need to start working on my 2020 Income Taxes.

That's all for now.......................

Greg
 
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CambriaArea51 said:
Got some paint from Microscale. The Microlux flat clear sprays nice, covers nice. I'm also trying some Vallejo airbrush paint. I used some of the flat aluminum with a regular bristle brush and worked good. I also got a titanium tweezer from them. I'll be getting a few more of them.View attachment 137697
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I've used Vallejo paint's on smaller projects, depending on the type of airbrush your using, you might have to thin the colours down more than you think.
 
Good afternoon all! A mostly cloudy day here in H-Town. Predicted to be warm most of the week. This warm weather has the grass inching up. I suspect I'll be mowing one day this week.

So I started one of the Bar Mills structures I received for Christmas. I chose Swanson's Lunch thinking it would be quick. Not! The attached pics are day 3. The wooden decking still needs to be added.
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I also set it where I think it's going to be planted. I'll leave it there for little bit, see if it works there or not.
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STAY SAFE
LATER
 
BOY , It sure is nice to see the daylight getting longer each day. I get depressed each year starting around early November.
Have come to the conclusion that I need a winter home in Australia and a year-round 72-90F degree temperature with 20-30% humidity!

NICE, HUGHIE! What is that about a half inch square?
 
Back in business, folks! I loaded an operating system onto the new hard-drive, and I'm back to using my own PC. It's got a nice new 1TB solid state drive in her. - There were a few times I was wishing Patrick was my next door neighbour.

I'm so happy for the success, that I thought my first posted photo with the new hard-drive, should be the first photo I ever took of a train. Here's the photo from February 13, 2020:
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That photo is from about the same time I joined the forum.

Tomorrow morning, coffee will be on me. Have a good one!
 
Today went from zero to weird in an hour today. The IT guy from the new company set up all new computers for everybody Thursday, took all the old ones, which he wasn't supposed to do, then put in a firewall that won't allow anything to come in or go out--then went radio silent through at least today. Nobody can get hold of him, nobody can modify the firewall.
 
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