Coffee Shop XXXIX-9/21/2013

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Did some work on one of the F3's. Stripped the windows and portholes out of it then wiped it down with lacquer thinner to help remove the skin oils an ddirt that had built up on the shell. Then it was sprayed flat black with the exception of the roof insert which is still unpainted Zamac. That was it with that project so far. Tomorrow morning I have a doc appointment in town. General physical and lab work.

Time to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[kbkchooch]

Busy day

My experimentation yesterday with number boards didn't turn out like I planned, but a thought struck me (no, it didn't hurt) and I modified my process and the results are very much encouraging.

Then Mr Murphy arrived. While I was handling the cab for my Canton RR engine, I must have has some thinner on my finger, and made a large hole in the paint and cab lettering. Right before I started swearing like a sailor, a thought occurred to me. Off to my scanner I went, cab in hand, and I scanned the other side of the cab, the trimmed the image and tile printed it out on white decal paper. The fix was under way!


Take that Murphy!!

Also painted an F unit and a GP9! Like I said, busy day!

 

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

It's Friday, September 27, 2013

Temperature in TIPTON IN

High in the mid 70s and again, no rain.

 

[blownoutcylinder]

Good Morning

Having sunshine and a high near 72 today..right now sitting at 41

Going out later on to see the gang at the diner then off to get some food supplies in for the weekend

Have a good one!!

 

[Boris]

Good Morning, Happy Friday:

Been away for a few days, so I missed Barry's Birthday, Carey's illness and a few other items. So, Happy Birthday Barry, and Carey, Hope you and your wife are feeling better.

Jeffrey, the F3s are coming along nicely. Hope your check=up and tests come back OK.

I have been in this house since 1986, living in a suburban township that was at one time, a rural section of South-Central Monmouth Co. The area has a reputation as a haven for white tail deer, and especially in the fall, I have observed them in various locations throughout Howell. However, never as close as yesterday. Two relatively young Does wandered into my yard, and made themselves at home. They were quite tame, and my attempt at recording the event on camera did not phase them at all. Seems we have all the requisite plantings deer like to eat. By late afternoon, they wandered on. No doubt they have been around here all along, but they were more skittish in the past, and did not show themselves in the neighborhoods.

I did manage to repair a few freight cars yesterday, mostly coupler issues resolved by replacing Accumates with Kadees, and Athearn BB coupler clips with 2-56 screws to hold the clip in place.

Have an enjoyable weekend!

Joe

 

[Boris]

Great recovery Karl, I do like the Canton RR lettering on your switcher. It's quite different from what I remember.

Joe

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Good afternoon. It's 87° with 45% humidity. The high high will be 92° and will feel like 97°.

Got the doc visit taken care of. It was OK with the exception of my blood sugar level which was very low, 55. Blood samples were taken for the lab work then they gave me a chocolate covered donut to munch on. A little while later they check the blood sugar again and it's down to 46. What, did they expect that chocolate covered donut to bring it up? Guess I should have told them I could eat chocolate all day long and it wouldn't effect me much except to make me sick. It's strange, I can eat a bunch of chocolate and my blood sugar rises just a little if at all. But if I even look at a peanut butter cookie it goes through the roof! After the 46 reading they gave a me Charm's Super Blow-pop. Right! At that rate we'd be there all day. My father said he knew of a way to get the level up and fast so we went to Fox's Pizza Den next door (how many doctor's offices are so conveniently located right next to a pizza joint? We're talking adjoining wall here. There's a prototype for it in Leesville guys so you can put it on your layout!) My father had a lasagna bowl with a side salad and I had a small taco pizza and half of his side salad. Mustn't forget to mention the ever present Dr Pepper. We went back to the docs office where they checked me again. 115. Good to go!

Now back at the house I see that my step mother has worn herself out rearranging the back porch. I'll have to check it out to see if she's compromised my new work/paint area.

 

[blownoutcylinder]

Good Evening

Audrey went to sleep early tonight..busy day for her today. Me? All energetic, too much caffeine....and thai chili tuna in a mac and cheese mix...heeheeheeMischief

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[bnsf971]

...and thai chili tuna in a mac and cheese mix...heeheeheeMischief

Man, that doesn't even sound good...

 

[tootnkumin]

Good Evening

Audrey went to sleep early tonight..busy day for her today. Me? All energetic, too much caffeine....and thai chili tuna in a mac and cheese mix...heeheeheeMischief

Now we know where the username comes from!! Just hope you didn't pull the sheets up over your poor wife's head.

 

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

It's Saturday, September 28, 2013

Temperature in TIPTON IN

High in the high 70s to low 80s.

 

[IronBeltKen]

Good morning Bill & gang.

Feels like typical fall weather here in Central MD, overcast and upper 50's.

I finally finished replacing my defective turnout in the steel mill yard early this morning - great to see that section fully functional again! The project was a PITA since all I had access to was a Shinohara electrofrog #6; for that reason I had to cut four gaps in the rails to isolate the frog. There are still two other t/o's I would like to replace, they work OK mechanically but they are ancient Altas's with aluminum point rails

- not the greatest for electrical pickup. I heard a rumor that my favorite LHS may actually have Walthers/Shino DCC-friendly turnouts in stock, but I can't confirm that for another hour since he doesn't open until 10am.

I'll be going to Karl's early this afternoon to continue trying to identify the source of my laptop's inability to recognize a signal from my command station, i.e., whether it's my laptop or the command station causing the problem. Hopefully it's the PHPro, at least then I can look to NCE for an answer.

Before I do anything else though, I need to pickup daughter #3 from the home of a friend who hosted a slumber party last night.

Have a great Saturday everybody!

 

[Espeefan]

Thanks Karl, but...Been there/done that. I posted a question about the "Not enough quota" error on Sept 19 and didn't get a single reply to it.

If this is a common problem you might try searching their archives for that topic. Often listers won't answer the same question over and over, especially if they are technically oriented, or you might get an answer telling you to do just that. Some of the Yahoo group lists can be downright snarky. They are still loaded with good information though

 

[blownoutcylinder]

Good Morning

Had a wonderful evening of pile ups here......had the op gang here to run some trains...we had 6 going all at once. No head ons or such...just...grrrr...things going to ground....

Going to be sunny today...high near 70 feeling like 77.

Thanks for the well wishes guys...Audrey is pleased I made it through this year without more issues

BTW...I have a nice regular system...used to HHHOOOOOOTT things...heeheehee

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Good morning. It's 76°F with 45% humidity. The high will be 90°F and will feel like 95°F.

Wind SE 5mph.

I'm not feeling up to my best this morning so I have no real plans for the day. Just take whatever comes along I guess.

Not same photo as last night. Slightly different angle.

Another entry from the weird loco gallery.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[IronBeltKen]

OMG this place is deserted!

Well, I did a lot of mrr tasks today, the results were a mixed bag.

The Good

:
My steel mill yard is functioning better than it has in a long time. After I replaced that one broken turnout, I decided to take a shot at fixing a dead spot in an old Atlas turnout with point rails made of some type of white metal (aluminum? zinc? ...). So I soldered a tiny jumper wire to the problem point rail, finally got the solder to stick - and it works quite well! I test-ran a switcher over it several times, all directions, and no stalling or hesitation whatsoever. This saved me from having to buy and install a new turnout.

The Bad

:
I did some testing of my command station, USB-serial adapter and laptop at Karl's house today, and the results were...inconclusive. The PHPro worked flawlessly when it was connected to Karl's computer, so obviously that isn't the source of the trouble. However, Karl's PHPro would NOT talk to my laptop - and it didn't work with his PC either when we used my adapter. I wanted to try using his Keyspan adapter on my machine, but since his CD with the device drivers is a few years old, it didn't have any Windows 8-compatible drivers. So I learned that my serial adapter doesn't seem to carry a signal from any NCE command stations. At this point my only remaining option - short of buying a dedicated computer - is to order a Keyspan of my own from some faceless online vendor and hope that it will work properly when I get it.

The Ugly

:
When I got home, I attempted to re-wire the motor on that Proto2000 SW9 that was giving me fits last week. First, I broke one of the universal couplings when I pried the motor out. I also wanted to see if I could get both headlights to come on regardless of direction, but my modification to the LED wiring ended up frying the decoder. Oh well. I went ahead and soldered new wires onto the motor, tested the motor on an old MRC power pack, and it worked. I finally got the motor re-mounted in the chassis after 30 minutes' worth of fiddling. Then I went to test it again on the MRC power pack - nothing, dead as a doornail. OK, I surrender! I admit it - I suck at repairing locos! I placed an online order for a brand-new one of these guys, decoder-and-sound equipped. I've exceeded my frustration limit with this unit, I don't want to do any more under-body tinkering for awhile.

 

[Trussrod]

Say Ken,
What exactly is this 'Keyspan' your talking about? Is it something connected with NCE?

Maybe I might have access to it?

Your G,B,U, experience's sound rather typical to me, just the normal course of things in model railroading! LoL
For the new drivers need you might try ZDnet as a source of downloads.

 

[kbkchooch]

OMG this place is deserted!

The Bad

:
I did some testing of my command station, USB-serial adapter and laptop at Karl's house today, and the results were...inconclusive. The PHPro worked flawlessly when it was connected to Karl's computer, so obviously that isn't the source of the trouble. However, Karl's PHPro would NOT talk to my laptop - and it didn't work with his PC either when we used my adapter. I wanted to try using his Keyspan adapter on my machine, but since his CD with the device drivers is a few years old, it didn't have any Windows 8-compatible drivers. So I learned that my serial adapter doesn't seem to carry a signal from any NCE command stations. At this point my only remaining option - short of buying a dedicated computer - is to order a Keyspan of my own from some faceless online vendor and hope that it will work properly when I get it.

Ken, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that your adapter is the culprit. I remember now, I got mine from New Egg (recommended by my computer geek stepson) Try here
Free shipping too!

The Ugly

:
When I got home, I attempted to re-wire the motor on that Proto2000 SW9 that was giving me fits last week. First, I broke one of the universal couplings when I pried the motor out. I also wanted to see if I could get both headlights to come on regardless of direction, but my modification to the LED wiring ended up frying the decoder. Oh well. I went ahead and soldered new wires onto the motor, tested the motor on an old MRC power pack, and it worked. I finally got the motor re-mounted in the chassis after 30 minutes' worth of fiddling. Then I went to test it again on the MRC power pack - nothing, dead as a doornail. OK, I surrender! I admit it - I suck at repairing locos! I placed an online order for a brand-new one of these guys, decoder-and-sound equipped. I've exceeded my frustration limit with this unit, I don't want to do any more under-body tinkering for awhile.

Ship it up here! I'll fix it!