Running Bear's January 2022 Coffee Shop

[OBTC 1909]

So here's a dumb question for you all. I just received an Accurail 36' box car kit I purchased via the HO swap email group. I want to do things "right" with it instead of slapping it together and watching it derail while simultaneously looking terrible.
My question is, where to start? Not sure what order I should do things in. My mind tells me it would be most logical to do decals, followed by weathering, followed by assembly. But I'm not sure. Is that a logical order or do you have a different process you use?

 

[PNKFLOYD]

I also changed the hair color on a few. They all come with black hair to begin with.

Willie- That is because everyone in China has black hair. lol

 

[PNKFLOYD]

Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Takes me an hour to read all the musings after half a day away!

Sherrel- that is much better than seeing only three posts over the last 24 hours.

 

[Montfort]

Christian, nice rolling stock!

 

[Patrick]

Morning all,

46° and cloudy this morning. Temps went up overnight.

Had an interesting morning that resulted in me having to get a new debit card. Wife started to balance the checkbook and asked what I purchased from Apple on Thursday. Turns out there were 5 purchases made on what turns out was my debit card. Money amount not huge in the grand scheme of things, but since I got the new card in November, I get flagged every time I want to make an online purchase, but these 5 to Apple didn't. Bank has me coming in for a new card on Monday, police have been here to file a report, which when the office said they'd probably never find the perpetrator, didn't surprise me. Now it's almost lunchtime and I feel I haven't gotten much accomplished....

I did get the new railings for the SD-9 painted yesterday. 2 coats of primer and a single coat of black. Hopefully get to those again later today or tomorrow.

 

[truckdad]

I sat down to eat and watched the show 2 and a half men (125 episodes recorded) -- I think that is one of the funniest shows ever made - wife hates it. I only watch it when she is not here! I Really don't think it is as good after Charlie Sheen left? I fell asleep

Sherril, I watch those once in a while and they are funny, but I'm amazed how some of the stuff they did on there got past the censors. And while I'm thinking of 2 1/2 men, is anyone following Jeopardy these days?

 

[bnsf971]

Good afternoon. It's very sunny and 33.

Most everybody here knows we had to have our dog put to sleep last Sunday.
Imagine our surprise when my wife called the pet hospital to cancel the wellness plan for the dog, since, obviously, she won't be able to use it, and we were told we had to continue paying until the plan was up for renewal.
There was an extremely--terse-- conversation, in which the company refused to budge from their official position, no exceptions.
There will also be something of a surprise for them next month when they try to ding my credit card for the fees, and find out they've been blocked.

 

[Boris]

Good morning, (what's left of it), 25°, and sunny, going up to 32° according to the guessers.

Yesterday evening, the humidifier on my furnace started leaking water. Fortunately, I was able to shut it off, without affecting the furnace, and squeegee the painted concrete floor. No harm, just the house will be drier until I decide whether it is worth replacing. Note, it's serviced annually, and the drain and filter was replaced around Thanksgiving, so something else caused this.

Last fall, my Yellow Box Atlas S-2 failed. Last week, I removed the hood and cab, and put it on the layout. It runs, although it takes more power to start, and has a tendency to stall at throttle setting 2 (of 28). Otherwise it runs very quietly. I'm going to repaint the cab, and re-number the unit to conform with the PRR 1966 road numbers, replace the #5 couplers with Kadee scale whisker short shank couplers, lubricate the engine, clean the wheels, and possibly replace the decoder. The NCE decoder I used is no longer sold by NCE, but I recall a current TCS decoder that will work.

F7A #988 and 2-8-2 # 4493 on the B&O at Dayton, OH 1954

 

[Greg@mnrr]

Good Morning Everyone...sunny and getting warmer, but windy. Cathy has Riley out for a walk and for a small dog like Riley she likes the cold weather and playing in the snow. Cathy is taking the Christmas decor downstairs to the storage room. I keep telling her to use smaller boxes for the decor and they will not be too heavy to carry downstairs. Our storage room was a mess so we went to U-Haul and purchased a bunch of moving boxes to pack and stack in our storage room. The arrangement of same size boxes made for a neat and organized storage room.

Our Capital One card was used by someone in a small county in Africa to made charges of only less than $50. The small amount was likely a test to see if we would notice the charges. This happen twice with different card numbers.

TomO: Where that rail separated from the tie plate is in my opinion due to when bending the track to the radius you wanted, the rail just pulled loose from the plate. This defect is something that one would not immediately notice. This is more likely to happen with the better quality track that has the smaller tie plates (spikes) than track like Atlas which has larger spikes that holds the rail(s) in place better. Expansion affects the wood members of the bench-work which in turn usually results in buckled track. Model railroad rail is not subjected to the extremes of cold and heat that 1:1 rail can experience. There's a lot of different views on expansion affecting model railroad construction and the reasons it happens..

TomO, I been to Cottonwood on the way to Jerome and stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. I loved Mingus Mountain and the scenery in the area. We spent the day driving the mountains and ran into snow, rain, thunderstorms and sun all in the same trip. My late Brother-in-law being a native of Arizona knew the area and was a great tour director.

Terry: Unbelievable that the company wants to continue to charge you for the wellness plan. I would talk to the owner of the pet clinic and if the owner doesn't cancel the plan for you suggest to them that you will contact the media and ask them to do a story on your dilemma. This may get results.

Looking for some dummy units to work in my consists. I have a reverse loop and I made the reversing portal just long enough to fit my longest single locomotive. The portal was small due to space limitations and that I never planned to run consists. Now that I've seen so many consists, I want to run them myself.

Live and learn.

Sherrel: Thanks for your comment, but pails maybe too small to be effective as debris in my water settings. I like a lot of junk on the right-of-way and in water scenes.


This is an abandoned freight station on the former mainline of the CM&N Railroad. I scattered a bunch of debris in the scene and to the left is a pile of boxes and the remains of a stone foundation. I'm a fan of discarded pallets on my railroad.-Greg

That's all for now...

Greg

#################

 

[Boris]

is anyone following Jeopardy these days?

Dave: My wife has not watched since Alex Trebek passed.

 

[santafewillie]

So here's a dumb question for you all. I just received an Accurail 36' box car kit I purchased via the HO swap email group. I want to do things "right" with it instead of slapping it together and watching it derail while simultaneously looking terrible.
My question is, where to start? Not sure what order I should do things in. My mind tells me it would be most logical to do decals, followed by weathering, followed by assembly. But I'm not sure. Is that a logical order or do you have a different process you use?

I don't think that there is a right or logical order for assembling any freight cars, much is just personal choice. With Accurail cars, I fully assembly them first, adding weight if needed to bring it close to NMRA recommendations; adding metal wheels and Kadee couplers. Then I run it a bit to test for reliability. Then comes decaling if needed and finally weathering last. The reasons that I do the weathering last are that I don't want to "over-handle" the car after the weathering since I mainly use powders; I can cover up any accidental glue smudges, and I can better blend the weathering where different parts are joined. Some of this may not be applicable in all situations.
You posted about derailing, It is rare to me that any freight car derails when properly assembled and weighted. I always use the truck tuner on every car, and while I use metal wheels on all of mine, I don't really think that their use reduces derails. Other than the occasional car that needs some filing on the underbody, almost all derails are the result of poorly laid or defective track. Engines are another thing though.

 

[CambriaArea51]

Assemble, paint, decal, weather. As Willie said you don't want to be handling it a lot after weathering.

So here's a dumb question for you all. I just received an Accurail 36' box car kit I purchased via the HO swap email group. I want to do things "right" with it instead of slapping it together and watching it derail while simultaneously looking terrible.
My question is, where to start? Not sure what order I should do things in. My mind tells me it would be most logical to do decals, followed by weathering, followed by assembly. But I'm not sure. Is that a logical order or do you have a different process you use?

 

[BigGRacing]

Only a short drive to get to woodlands or mountains for hiking

Not a lot of mountains except for the Cape Breton highlands; about a 4 hour drive from Halifax. Lots of hiking trails around though for sure.

 

[Smudge617]

Well, finally had my first HO locomotive and freight train runout

 

[TLOC]

Good Morning Everyone...sunny and getting warmer, but windy. Cathy has Riley out for a walk and for a small dog like Riley she likes the cold weather and playing in the snow. Cathy is taking the Christmas decor downstairs to the storage room. I keep telling her to use smaller boxes for the decor and they will not be too heavy to carry downstairs. Our storage room was a mess so we went to U-Haul and purchased a bunch of moving boxes to pack and stack in our storage room. The arrangement of same size boxes made for a neat and organized storage room.

Our Capital One card was used by someone in a small county in Africa to made charges of only less than $50. The small amount was likely a test to see if we would notice the charges. This happen twice with different card numbers.

TomO: Where that rail separated from the tie plate is in my opinion due to when bending the track to the radius you wanted, the rail just pulled loose from the plate. This defect is something that one would not immediately notice. This is more likely to happen with the better quality track that has the smaller tie plates (spikes) than track like Atlas which has larger spikes that holds the rail(s) in place better. Expansion affects the wood members of the bench-work which in turn usually results in buckled track. Model railroad rail is not subjected to the extremes of cold and heat that 1:1 rail can experience. There's a lot of different views on expansion affecting model railroad construction and the reasons it happens..

TomO, I been to Cottonwood on the way to Jerome and stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. I loved Mingus Mountain and the scenery in the area. We spent the day driving the mountains and ran into snow, rain, thunderstorms and sun all in the same trip. My late Brother-in-law being a native of Arizona knew the area and was a great tour director.

Terry: Unbelievable that the company wants to continue to charge you for the wellness plan. I would talk to the owner of the pet clinic and if the owner doesn't cancel the plan for you suggest to them that you will contact the media and ask them to do a story on your dilemma. This may get results.

Looking for some dummy units to work in my consists. I have a reverse loop and I made the reversing portal just long enough to fit my longest single locomotive. The portal was small due to space limitations and that I never planned to run consists. Now that I've seen so many consists, I want to run them myself.

Live and learn.

Sherrel: Thanks for your comment, but pails maybe too small to be effective as debris in my water settings. I like a lot of junk on the right-of-way and in water scenes.

View attachment 138410
This is an abandoned freight station on the former mainline of the CM&N Railroad. I scattered a bunch of debris in the scene and to the left is a pile of boxes and the remains of a stone foundation. I'm a fan of discarded pallets on my railroad.-Greg

View attachment 138411

That's all for now...

Greg

#################

Greg, great looking photo scenes.

The popped rail is on a 36” curve and on close inspection this morning looks like there was no glue in the tie plate of about 8 ties. The barge/MEK glue mix is applied like contact cement. Coat each piece and press together. Only took 7 years to fail. I was talked out of continuing to use MEK on Facebook. I am using gorilla super glue With weight on the rails.

TomO

 

[TLOC]

Tom- Is it an expansion issue.

Good morning.....Up early, dog needed to go out so now I'm up. Coffee Flo, mine as well get the day started.

The room is kept at 48% humidity and 68f degrees. I wonder if running the fireplace as much as I have lately dried something out. Strange though, neither on the rail or ties is any glue residue. But for it to show up 7 years after install boggles my mind.

TomO

 

[PRR Modeler]

Afternoon All,

Spent the morning doing more testing and once satisfied put everything back together and cleaned up. After that I spent several hours bracing wood building walls with scale 8x8's. I still have another couple of hours to do. Tomorrow will probably be all wife stuff. She keeps adding shopping things she wants us to do . I also did a pre-order for the new Lines West Pennsy tower.

Hughie- Very nice layout shot.

Christian- Nice looking cars.

TomO- That is a impressive layout. Strange about your rail lifting.

Smudge- Not pretty but it works. You can always "plant scenery" around it. Congratulations on the the initial run off.

Willie- Nice job on the "little people".

Guy- Nice 1:1 photos.

Terry- That is unbelievable. It shows how much they really care about their patients.

Joe- Look forward to seeing the S2 project. Great B&O photo.

From this morning.



I hope everyone has a good night.

 

[chadbag]

Willie- That is because everyone in China has black hair. lol

I thought the same thing when I read his comment... You beat me to the post!

 

[bnsf971]

If anybody's interested, the pet hospital is named Banfield. We have been customers since 1999, and have paid $35 a month for their wellness plan since that time. We went with them not because we felt they were the best, but because they had locations nationwide, and we needed that because we traveled a lot. I'm sure everybody here can mulitply 35 times 23 years, and figure out how much money we've given them. But they want ALL the money. Especially the last two months' payments for the current contract. Obviously it will be pure profit for them, because we have absolutely no way to incur any further care.

 

[Bruette]

Just received a new Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 keyboard and mouse. I ordered it from Amazon only yesterday. It's was actually sold as used, saving me over 25%. Anytime Amazon offers a used item I choose that. So far of the dozens of used items I have bought all have been new "open box" items rather then used.

Never mattered how much money I made, I always pinch pennies. I try not to buy cheap junk, but I try to buy everything cheap!

Thinking of cheap junk, the $100 Android 11 10inch tablet I bought from China works great, I love it! It has better battery life than my Amazon 10inch HD tablet, I got that cheap as well. Did I mention I'm cheap?

Maximize profits and minimize expenses. The way I see it, if I'm not making money, I'm losing money and I don't like to lose money!

I needed a new keyboard because my grandson's keyboard on his gaming computer failed and he helped himself to mine. Fortunately I have three other PCs and even more laptops. I could have gone to my parts shelf, I'm sure I have something that works, but I'm spoiled by these Microsoft 600 keyboard and mouse combos. I could have just bought the keyboard but I actually saved $1 buying the used combo and now I have another spare mouse.

You may ask why I have 3 PCs, redundancy, if one fails I have another. I built the third pc from spare parts I have accumulated. Its actually lighting fast with the new/used solid state hard drive from Amazon. Why I have so many laptops is another story. I had a run of broken laptops. I even sat on one! I bought replacements and finally repaired the others. Now I'm not sure how many I have, a half dozen, maybe.

My son only runs state of the art PCs. He works at home for Northrop Grumman. His home office looks like something out of Star Trek. He has three curved monitors side by side. The set up would drive me nuts, but he needs it. He gives me his old PCs, 2 years old tops. My son also built my grandson's state of the art gaming PC. Bruette Computers may be dormant, but the legacy lives on.

That reminds me, I promised my friend I would put together a PC for him after the new year. His old PC failed back in October and I gave him a laptop until I had time to put something together for him. I'm not overly generous. Its much more gratitude than generosity. This friend bought the first PC I ever built. He helped kick start Bruette Computers and I will never forget it. He normally would not accept a gift, but he had a run of tough luck since he had a stroke, he is stable now, thank God. We go back to the days when we were headbanger street rats. Him and I could stand back to back against anyhting. He was built like a defensive tackle and I was built like a defensive end. We were like thunder and lightning. Now we are broken down old men, we can't even stand for long. Thank God we are still here.

My wife and daughter both have flu like symptoms from the shot. My 89 year old mom is fine, no symptoms from the booster. She was cooking
and cleaning her apartment when I called to check on her! I feel fine, I just keep falling asleep since I got home.

Got to give me grandson this keyboard to put back on the PC in the family room.

Have a good night Everybody!