Coffee Shop XXXVIII-7/20/2013


The two granddaughters are with us for a week. Looking forward to a fun (and tiring) time with them. Weather is more of the same - hot, humid, and a 200% chance of thunderstorms somewhere in Autauga County before the day is over.
 
I made it up to Marion and saw four freight trains. Took videos of the two best longest ones. Need to find an easy to use edit program....any ideas?......because then I could show some snipets without entire long boring train videos. There were less trains today than usual. A CSX guy came walking down the track and he said a high and wide train coming through had traffic slowed down this morning. I showed him where a bunch of track spikes in a row were pulled out. Didn't seem to matter hugely.........maybe to him it looked better than usual. He said he would tell the track inspector anyway. It was an 80 plus mile roundtrip. The old toyota 24 valve V6 runs like new again after recent tuneup.
 
WJLI26 said:
.

Have fun Mike, and be safe around the tracks.
Click to expand...
Glad you mentioned that Joe! I always hate it when I'm out there waiting for a train......looking around the tracks for old junk on the ground......and they happen to throw a switch right when I step between the rail and the switchpoint.....and I'm trapped right there like my ankle is in a vice......with three AC4400 locomotives barreling down at me. :D
 
Went to the Atl show this past weekend. Any body who wasn't there you missed a goodin'! I was there for almost 5 hours, and spent too much time on my feet, and too much money as well!:p Got to see our ole friend Alan (Espeefan) and his wife, and renew friendships with several of the manufacturers I've known for years. While there, I bought 2 more F&C resin kits, as if I needed any more cars to begin with.

I've started back on the construction of the third level of my layout, and only have about 20' of bench work to go. Then I can lay the track and finish all of that. Next comes the scenery and structures. That should take another 4-5 years and the layout will be finished except for the minute details that adds so much to the "life" of a layout.

Well got to get back to work. My daughter is going to be moving back in with us. She has lost the rent-to-own house she was paying for. The owner decided to just go ahead and put the house on the market, and since it was time to renew the lease on it, the owner decided not to do it. She'll be getting approximately 1/2 of the money she paid toward it back, so she'll have some money to help with a down payment when she finds another place.

Right now there really isn't much I can do about getting her stuff moved as it's been storming most of the day. Looks like there is a break coming, (according to radar), so maybe we can get more stuff done to get her back here.
 
railfan said:
Glad you mentioned that Joe! I always hate it when I'm out there waiting for a train......looking around the tracks for old junk on the ground......and they happen to throw a switch right when I step between the rail and the switchpoint.....and I'm trapped right there like my ankle is in a vice......with three AC4400 locomotives barreling down at me. :D
Click to expand...
Don't worry about that. Either the switch won't throw all the way because your ankle is in the way, and they'll either stop the train or re-line the switch again (giving you a chance to roll free) or the force will sever your leg at the ankle, and you can roll free. Either way, no problem.
 
Well I had planned to cut my nieces yard today but my body had different ideas. I felt so tired there was nothing for it but to go back to bed. I was up several times during the day then went to my fathers place for dinner. Pot roast with green beans and cornbread. Went next door and talked to my niece about the yard and brought her up to date on what's going on with my foot. I can mow the yard any day but she'll pay more if I wait until Friday, so mowing day is Friday weather permitting. I had the results of my last cardiac stress test, done in December, faxed to the doctors office in Oakdale. They'll call us back when they've checked it out. Well I'm still very tired so I'm calling it a night early. See y'all tomorrow.

DSCN4364.jpg


P1010795.jpg
 
bnsf971 said:
Don't worry about that. Either the switch won't throw all the way because your ankle is in the way, and they'll either stop the train or re-line the switch again (giving you a chance to roll free)
Click to expand...
Ahhh........good to know........that's a relief! :rolleyes::cool:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
kbkchooch said:
... Let me know how that JMRI OPS is coming along. Also check with Keith. He's a JMRI guru but uses these nice, little car cards. Not sure how he makes them but they appear to be computer generated.:)
Click to expand...

Karl, I think I've succeeded in making up a set of switchlists and manifests for a full op session!:cool: I put my sick-time to good use today, tracing the movement of each active unit of rolling stock from staging, thru the yard(s), and on to their final destinations. I probably spent >7 hours doing this, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes to physically execute each movement on the layout.

Mike - sorry to hear that "Murphy" intruded on your railfanning today. Reminds me of the time I was on a RRISIG tour of a steel mill, and it just so happened that they had the converter furnaces shut down for maintenance - so we missed being able to see the most spectacular "fireworks display" of the steelmaking process. C'est la vie!

G'nite all, hopefully I'll be closer to recovering from this cold tomorrow...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You wanna see steam, you wanna see smoke, we Kiwis know how to pour it on.

[YOUTUBE]hGqOPtfV3XM[/YOUTUBE]
 
I see y'all have the same parade of vehicles on the road next to the track pacing the train as we do.
 
Good Morning:

It appears to be a nice sunny morning without the recent humidity. Local temps range in the low to mid 70s. In a bit I have to return to the local HD for a quart of white enamel. The remanent of the gallon I was hoping to use, turned into a solid chunk of pigment.:(

Have a great day

Joe
 
WJLI26 said:
In a bit I have to return to the local HD for a quart of white enamel. The remanent of the gallon I was hoping to use, turned into a solid chunk of pigment.:(
Click to expand...

I hate it when that happens. Many of the colors I have are mis-tints and getting a match can be hard.

*

Good morning. It's 75° with 99% humidity. The high will be 95° and will feel like 102°.
pcloudy-1.jpg


Looks like I'll have today to myself pretty much. One of the Apple II disk drives needs some cosmetic restoration on the front panel so that should keep me busy for a little while. It looks like it will lose it's Disk II label as that has plenty of scratches and dents. I hope it doesn't put up too much of a fight while I'm removing it. The rest of the front panel has some scrapes and scuffs. It shouldn't be hard to get those to vanish. Aside from that I'll probably watch a couple of movies and a Trains and Locomotives show I recorded from RFDTV.

P1010796.jpg


DSCN4426.jpg
 
Well I got the cosmetic restoration work on the disk drive done. It had some scrapes and scuffs on it that looked particularly nasty when photographed. Somehow the camera makes most anything look worse than it really is. But with the application of a little contour putty and some black paint it looks OK now. The Apple Disk II plate had to go as there was no way of saving it. However I may be able to cut the Disk II logo off of it and apply that separately. The black paint I used is a little flatter than I wanted but it's all I had. The drive in question is drive 2 though I did a little work on drive 1 as well.

DSCN4433.jpg


On a related issue, I've been getting email asking if I can do restoration work on other peoples old computer equipment. The answer to that is no. The equipment I'm working on is mine and I have only myself to answer to if I screw it up. I can get replacement parts for it or something that's close enough to do the job. If I screw up something belonging to someone else I'll have to replace it with an identical item that's been fully checked out and tested and that can get expensive fast. Many times I have to purchase an entire item, say a disk drive, just to get a particular part that I need. Plus there are some things that just aren't available anymore.
 
Just for fun I pulled the other two Apples out of the closet and gave them the Krud Kutter and Goo-Gone scrub down to clean them up. After working out the best way to do it on Apple #1 I was able to clean up Apples #2 and #3 in less than an hour and that included scrubbing off the cigarette smoke stains and in the case of Apple #3 some red permanent marker ink that was on one side. I'm a believer in Krud Kutter and Goo-Gone. Anything that can take that off is good stuff. I also took the computers apart and cleaned inside the shells, something I didn't do on mine. I noticed something too. The keyboards in Apple #1 and Apple #3 are attached to the shell. The keyboard in Apple #2 is attached to the base. #1 is an 82 model (made in US) and #3 is an 84 model (made in Singapore). #2 is also an 82 model (Made in US). All three are model# A2S2064. Both #1 and #2 originally had white lettered keys. The keyboard on #1 was changed out by Delta Computers in 1986 with a black lettered one. Both have 6502 processors. #3 has the more advanced G65SC02 processor. I wonder what other design differences there were.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top