Running Bear's January 2022 Coffee Shop


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Oooh a green felt cover and lay on top,we could all throw ideas how you can do a magician whip the table cloth off back to table and how to get sone bang for your buck on a layout, I. Like this because so many people have this exact issue.

What options do you have

track wise
building wise - if any
and green fluff for scattered bushes so you can scoop them up quick, and do you have access to horse hair
a green felt cover could cost money, an old green table cloth, or an old grubby one with sone green dye, do not do it in the bath tub but in a bucket.
a piece of cardboard that you can fold then add paper which you paint a pale blue
some soil, real soil very dry for a light scatter by the tracks
a few twigs, not for trees you cannot ground them but just a small wood pile
do you have any figures, or almost appropriate cars 🚘 a four wheeler or two likely the best choice
ok a start,and if you have stuff we can up the game, but we are looking for something that goes in a cardboard box, so you can get to it all fast and tidy it fast, and you can let any kids help pop it out on the table.
We can even look at a broken down little shack.
Last but not least do you have any solid piece of old packing foam we can cut a couple of gentle slopes, hills out of for the edges.

I think this a great project making a basic layout set, this could go on a dining table for a short while, you just need to ensure no mess once you withdraw, thus the other half has no reason to be anti about the odd play time.

weetabix roof, on a card base, thin plastic building, painted windows,basic scratchbuild, we just need to know how high or low to aim for.
Carefull
Oooh a green felt cover and lay on top,we could all throw ideas how you can do a magician whip the table cloth off back to table and how to get sone bang for your buck on a layout, I. Like this because so many people have this exact issue.

What options do you have

track wise
building wise - if any
and green fluff for scattered bushes so you can scoop them up quick, and do you have access to horse hair
a green felt cover could cost money, an old green table cloth, or an old grubby one with sone green dye, do not do it in the bath tub but in a bucket.
a piece of cardboard that you can fold then add paper which you paint a pale blue
some soil, real soil very dry for a light scatter by the tracks
a few twigs, not for trees you cannot ground them but just a small wood pile
do you have any figures, or almost appropriate cars 🚘 a four wheeler or two likely the best choice
ok a start,and if you have stuff we can up the game, but we are looking for something that goes in a cardboard box, so you can get to it all fast and tidy it fast, and you can let any kids help pop it out on the table.
We can even look at a broken down little shack.
Last but not least do you have any solid piece of old packing foam we can cut a couple of gentle slopes, hills out of for the edges.

I think this a great project making a basic layout set, this could go on a dining table for a short while, you just need to ensure no mess once you withdraw, thus the other half has no reason to be anti about the odd play time.

weetabix roof, on a card base, thin plastic building, painted windows,basic scratchbuild, we just need to know how high or low to aim for.
Bloody hell jaz, you might as well pop over and build the thing for him 😂 😂
Do they even have weetabix in the USofA?
 
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I have the blues from what I am reading on FB. Blue will soon be gone from Montana. Montana Rail link (MRL) has decided not to continue with it's lease of the mainline (ex NP) owned by BNSF in the merger between Burlington Northern and Santa Fe RR'd's. All jobs are said to be being retained. The original lease was indicated to be from 1987 - 2047. Will be strange to consider it a fallen flag.
Sorry to hear you are blue. Many of us have affection for the fallen flags. The good news is in our worlds we can have any road name. In my mind CSX, Chessie and the B&O are all operating. Same goes for Conrail, Penn Central and the PRR, even the New York Central!

I forgot to thank you for the information about Mag wheels, I never put that together, now I know. 😁 Magnesium - Mag Doh! My favorite was the Keystone Classic.
 
Good Morning all!

28F and somewhat clear. Still have about 18" white on the ground. Weather guesser says light snow today, then none in site for for a week or so with temps above freezing for the next week .. we will see.

Computers - are they not the spice in life? Ya either love or hate them; although you use them in some form or another each and every day. When I was at FMFPAC just before we merged with CINCPAC we had an Sperry ( Univac ) 9000 for communication. No disk drives, had card, paper tape reader, mag tape and a modem. Modem spec'd at 300 baud and was half the size of todays normal refer. Want to transmit stuff? Had to set rocker switches ( Binary ) for that, Read mag tape, nother code entered. When we merged with CINCPAC, they had a Sperry 1004 - that one you had to power it down, then swap out a 3ft x 3ft wirewrap board to transmit, then put the other back in to receive. They were constructing a new comm center with an RCA Spectra 70 - the thing would probably almost fit in your house. Had multiple disks, tapes, mass storage unit and printers AND a real console you could sit at and start ( and end ) programs. The mass storage unit was the fun one, had mag cards about 4" by 14" kept in slots. Was something like 100 slots, with 10 or so cards each. Cards held about 2K each, you do the math. Kept 12 - 15 guys/gals busy during a shift processing 5 to 10K messages a day. CINCPAC had all service branches and of course being USMC I got to start at the bottom again. They upgraded to LDMX when Sperry bought out RCA and the thing was called an LDMX 7045. Machine like it was featured on the original Andromeda Strain. Got to CINCPACFLT a couple of times to help with crypto and some coding. The first time there I got to see a really early Univac. Don't remember the model number just now. It was a wall of metal with the console in the middle and 2 doors, one the right and one to the left. You actually went inside to do repairs/upgrades. Had about 15K tubes and was really quite warm. The used it to cool some of the base using heat exchangers. I guess doing all that started me in the computer business - coding at first, then hardware followed. Code was Assembly and Cobal D. Didn't do RPG as it made no sense ( still doesn't ) to me. Besides solder, Assembly is still my favorite programming language. Had a Hawaiian GS12 ( i think ) that taught me Cobal and I still use one of the error strings he used - 'search no find'. I am surprised that I don't remember his name, but I can still see him wading through pages and pages of source code.

Enjoy your day!
 
Morning RR internet folks -- 52F to start the day (my kind of winter) and looking for 76F and sunny/breezy!

I'm so for behind on my reading. The Spousal Unit returned from her Moms home. This was the first time that I did not go out for a visit as I was asked, sort of, not to come out - wife is worried about her mom catching anything.

Didn't hear much from the daughter or SIL yesterday - just the fact that he feels really bad. I did take up some vitamins and cold/flu OTC stuff for him to take? SIL had the two shots from Moderna but not the booster

We were supposed to host the monthly Bunco group next weekend, but wife is cancelling that with everything going on - I think that there is only about a 60% vaccination rate - and these are all 65+ YO people.

That's all I have, and that is not worth much - sorry! This morning I am off to have the starter replaced on my 17 YO P/U.
BBL
 
Good morning fellow railroad aficionados. Sunny and 14 heading for sunny and 37 on the day. Lots of black coffee for me, Flo.

Had a great time visiting with our oldest granddaughter yesterday. Took her to buy her books for this semester and also to lunch. Food was good and it was so nice spending time with her.

Ordered a new laptop last night. This Asus laptop I'm currently on has served me well for close to 10 years, but it's getting to where the display has lines shooting through it constantly and sometimes the screen suddenly just zaps out although the machine is still powered on. I've tried various things to fix it without success and replacement parts are stupid expensive, so I decided it was time for a new one. Since I've had such great luck for so many years with this one, I ordered a new Asus laptop from the 'zon last night. I may repurpose this one as a Nextcloud server. It's got 16gb RAM and an I7 CPU, so it could definitely handle that easy duty. May use it to run some virtual machines as well. The main question is whether to leave Windows on the new laptop or wipe it and install Linux since that's been my daily driver for years. Decisions decisions.

Nothing else to report. Hope you all have a great day!
 
I worked in support of base com centers in the USMC to provide the MCERN. I was somewhat familiar with the ever-evolving machines to provide the communications for the bases. Once digital communications set in, nobody ever had the latest upgrades.
Ken - I suspect that all of those systems still need upgrades - never ending battle.
What bases were you at? I did MCRD Diego, Pendleton, El Toro then Camp Smith; with minor excursions to the stumps and Yuma. They poured me on the plane on my 21st birthday for Pendleton from Hickam to rotate out in 73.
 
Not to throw a damper on anyone - I know just enough about computers to be able to turn them on, but not always.
Back to your regularly scheduled program - lol!
I worked in an IT deparment, In the city of London,as a secretary to the head of department, anyone caught telling someone to turn computer off and on to sort a problem did not last long,and one where the woman could not find the off button because the electricity was off is now an urban legend, I saved my bosses bacon not long after I started as the directors wanted to use the old video conferencing and everyone was clueless, but I. Knew how to use it so I monitored the international call, and too one tech support with me to teach them how,staff turn over was so high I ended up training four, so I wrote out a how to do it, not long after they found the manual,which proved I knew the system pretty well. I did back up log calls on help desk, and helped with various small software jobs,but had no qualifications or overall knowledge just small bits here and there as required to help. I was dandy on how to use the printers and photocopiers etc that were controlled by the pcs, and my boss often sent me out to show a secretary how to use the kit,or occasionally cover for the top bosses,always being told anything strategic I saw about the group or companies was to be swiftly forgotten when I went back to my job.
We did have one outage issue which drove our team bonkers, I mentioned to my other half and he came for a drink at the pub a day or so later and pointed out to them that either or both were possible a) the heat on either side of the building or b)the lift, it did turn out the lift was the issue,but they had to move the servers and make a single room with basically a faraday cage,and when it came to bonus that year I got a good one and my boss said that although I had earned my bonus it was bumped to reflect the invaluable help my other half offered, a year or so later they had a problem with the NT servers and one of lads came and asked if he would solve that, and he did. They did ask if he wanted a job,but he was a,easy well paid and looking to get out of hid area as he said every man and his dog was moving in as training became cheaper, he side stepped into a better area and sort of done that since,it gets to be a smaller and smaller part though. he once worked for a well known computer company and when he left and took his qualifications with him they lost their Microsoft platinum and had to quickly train several people to get the 19 qualifications replaced, I think it took them over a month lol, this being in the days when those skills were not 99 a penny.They did not advertise the fact.…..quick wave to Troy :D
At home if I touch or change a setting I would never hear the end of it, hell I’m lucky to get near the tv remote…sniggers.
 
Weetabix isn't too far off from what we in the US call shredded wheat. My issue using it for models is keeping mice and bugs off the layout.
Very true,the idea was offered to me,and despite weetabix being cheap I decided to not give the mice any reason to munch,but he did make it look good,and I popped the model without thinking up in the loft and so far it is intact,and we have caught the odd mouse in traps
 
Carefull

Bloody hell jaz, you might as well pop over and build the thing for him 😂 😂
Do they even have weetabix in the USofA?
i know I know but a half decent railway layout can set you back a fair bit,the other half states if he is ever pensioned off ours could be sold off in small lots and feed us for quite some time,and I am a cheap skate by nature,and hate waste,so if you can squeeze a pigs ear into something of value all the better.
My brother once made me a Tardis from a large cardboard boxm he used emoty matches to make a door latch, and more for secret storage and a cut plastic bottle for the blue light, I played with it for months. I was only about 5.
 
Indian Premier League. On June/July time. It's a Franchise thing, have the biggest names in cricket, like Chris Gayle, Ian Broad, Sachin Tandulker, Virat Kohli and the like, to a maximum of 8 overseas players per team, I promise you you'll be glued to it. At the start it's two matches a day, on a round-robin format.
Check it out.

Correction, starts May, covid permitting, one match a day, if you get a chance, catch a game, you might be surprised.
 
Good morning from the far West periphery of the Great Basin! New coffee shop looks good, the coffee is on me today, for I am job FREE! Retirement is the order of things now, although it seems like I'm busier in retirement than with a job! o_O
In looking forward to train room business, I moved the quad & riding mower over to the garage to give room to work in the shop. I have a separate "shop" building that I divided, layout in back, work area up front. All walls & ceilings are insulated, layout room is heated, shop portion is not. Here is a pic of the start of the rebuild, the old layout gone, the end wall cleared of clutter, I'm going to start here.
View attachment 138618
TAKE CARE, BE SAFE, FIND A REASON TO LAUGH TODAY!
Jerry, what are the dimensions of the new room?
 
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