Running Bear's December 2020 Coffee Shop


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Still November for me.

My wife's mother passed on this evening, around 5:48pm Mountain Time. But in Japan it was already Dec 1, around 9:48am. She was diagnosed with cancer a little over 2 years ago and recently had become a lot weaker, so this was expected. We were live with her sisters, brother in law, and her mom via Facetime from Japan. We prayed together, talked with her and gave her our love. She opened her eyes, and a few minutes later gasped her last breath. It was not a bad way to go, and is a relief for her, as she had been suffering pain and discomfort these last few weeks, and for her daughters who had been taking care of her. She passed on at home. We've had two years to adjust to the idea, and the last month we knew it wouldn't be that long, but we didn't know if it were days, weeks, or a month or more, but it became clearer in the last week or so that it would be days. A few weeks ago, she had gone down hill and looked close, but then she got back a lot of strength, started eating again, talking etc. That lasted a week or two until about a week ago when things started rapidly deteriorating. She had a massive swelling on the right side of her face, and got to the point where she couldn't eat. We thought maybe it was the cancer growing quickly there but it turned out to be some sort of infection, as they were able to drain the infection (pus) and her face got mostly back to normal. But her body was already slowly shutting down. She had a great life and was able to go at home, with family around. Her son-in-law is an MD so was able to run a few checks on her after she appeared to take her last breaths and be the official witness and make the declaration of when she died.

My wife is taking it reasonably well. My mother-in-law was about 5 days short of her 80th birthday.

We were last there in July/August of 2019. We had been planning on going this December but Covid got in the way (and we would have been too late to see her again). My wife wanted to go see her a month or two ago but with all the travel restrictions and prohibitions we were not able to do so.
 
Greetings all.

So sorry for your loss Chad. Best wishes to all the family in this tough time.

Flo, time for another cuppa coffee. Is Mel ever going to put in that espresso bar and get a real barista in here? I could use a caramel macchiato.

Managed to get 694 words added to the book this morning (I know! excellent). I need five days in a row with 3,000 each and I'll get it done before the editor deadline. I always seem to slow down in the middle of the book. they call it the "saggy middle" for good reason. Too many balls in the air to make the plot work, and we get bogged down trying to set everything up. I'll tighten it up in the first revision prior to editor.

The big question is whether the wedding cake survives after the purse dogs start chasing each other and throw the photographer off balance... ;)

Started adding more plaster cloth to the layout. This time it's only going on the risers where I need to lay cork and track. Goal is to get the mainline down and the first turnouts installed. Electrify and paint the rails, then tape them off, and back to scenery.
 
Good morning gang
Chad, so sorry for your loss. Please give our condolences to the Mrs.
Woke up to snow flurries this morning. Nice to see December starting our correctly for once. I'd love to see a white Christmas again, instead of the 60-70 degree ones we've had recently. Mother nature needs to get her 💩 together!
 
Good Morning to December from The Oregon high desert.
Weather is clear, calm, cold. Looks like it will hold true to the weekend, I'll put up the Christmas lites then. I'm going to do something different this year, instead of stringing lites down the fence, I have a tree with multiple trunks/limbs. I'll wrap each trunk with lites.
Try to not damage the decorations
So that would imply that something has happened before? 😁
Some more work on the Ulrich project.... I had mentioned cleaning the flash up, and then I took a small parts cleaning brush with brass bristles and brushed the daylights out of the sides of the gon. That black coating is old enough I wanted what ever was to come off, to come off! Then it was a wash with some hot water as I could stand, dish soap & a stiff bristle tooth brush.
I don't want to rely on glue alone for holding the coupler pockets in place, so along with them, I drilled oversized holes in the truck mounting holes and filled them with epoxy. (the dots in the floor assembly) I'll use a bottom tap to form new threads for the mounting screws.
The triangular piece of wood in the lower left corner is an experiment to see how well styrene holds to wood. A couple of light sanding strokes on the edge of the styrene and the smallest amount of plain o white Elmers' (so it doesn't squeeze out the joint). Appears to be a good rigid joint after drying. I plan on replacing the center sill and cross bearers with styrene for ease of painting and adding rivet decals.
IMG_20201201_013442540.jpg


HAVE FUN--BE SAFE!
 
Morning all,

Chad: Sorry to hear of the loss of your mother-in-law.

Well, it is December, and with that we're under a winter storm watch at noon tomorrow through Thursday. Depending on which way the storm moves, or slows down or speeds up, we'll get either a bunch of rain or upwards of 6+ inches of snow. Already had officially a little over an inch this fall. Maybe finally get to use the snow blower. It wasn't used at all last year. I have noticed we appear to have much smaller and less frequent snow events since I bought the darn thing. Or because of the anticipation of actually using it, keeps the snow at bay.

Taking Thursday and Friday off, since the last time the wife was home, I was in trouble for not taking some time. The problem was I was on a reduced work schedule, getting additional money, and still had 40 hours worth of work to get done. Now my big project is on hold due to the servers being mis-configured by the manufacturer. I need hardware added to these machines that they may not be able to use. Parts are only a couple hundred a piece, which isn't bad, but some of the other internals may need to be changed as well. We're waiting to here what support tells us.

Site seems to be running slow today, but it may be my ISP.

EDIT: Happy Belated birthday Ray!

IBKEN: I did see your post in the November C.S. and your friends are correct. I think it actually has to do the fact we're not really responsible for their daily needs. Ours are spoiled rotten and it's all grandma's fault! 🤣
 
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Good Morning All. Clear and 26° on the homefront. Looks like this colder weather is here for another week or so before the daytime highs are back into the 60's. New place looks good, I like the decorations.

Chilly morning Flo, let me have a large Mexican omelet with extra bacon on the side. And of course some of that wonderful spicy salsa to warm the insides.

Thanks for the likes and comments regarding the archive photos yesterday; Patrick, Karl, Rick, James, Dave, Troy, Tom O, Sherrel, Phil, Curt, Tom, Hughie, Chad, Ken, Garry, Jerry.

I was able to resume some modeling in the train shed yesterday. When I last did any, I was trying to determine which way to access the maintenance yard. I decided to have the entry come in from under the overpass that divides the scenicked portion of the layout from the staging yard.
IMG_5184.JPG

Let's just call it the "Road to Nowhere"; apologies to The Talking Heads.
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Another trashy scene on the layout is behind this fence.

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I didn't see that giant cobweb until I posted this picture this morning.

Chad - Many condolences on the loss of your mother in law.
Ray - Happy belated Birthday.
Joe - That DPM structure is Stone Bakery. I did not rename it. I really like those Queen Anne bay windows.
Tom - I meant to comment yesterday on how realistic those gondola loads are. Well done. Are you going to let us in on how you made the realistic water/sewer piping?
Curt - I just knew that you would like the skunk scene.
Sherrel/Mikey/Ken- I do like to tuck those little mini-scenes into the layout. I have a few more that I will post over the next couple of days.
Sherrel - Give my congratulations to Kate on the weight loss. Does she know that you are posting that information here? ;) Arlene would slap me up the side of my head if she knew that I revealed that type of info anywhere!
Ken - I often wonder if anyone from Walther's ever assembles any of their kits. While I don't remember the specific instructions for the DQ, most of their instruction sheets and some of their engineering leaves a lot to be desired. However, they do make RR sized industries and lots of other stuff that fits in well.

I too have noticed that this site is running really slow this morning. At first I thought it was just my ISP, but other sites are running normally. I would have posted more pictures, but it is taking way too long.

Everybody have a great day.
 
Good morning all, frosty and clear this morning.

Chad - My condolences on your loss

Willie - I like the street scene photo with the pedestrians - middle photo - best

Patrick - Bummer about the winter storm. I am already sick of shoveling

Jerry - I like the Ulrich model progress

Karl - snow flurries? We had 2 6+ inch snowfalls already this winter but now it is "green" (brown) out again.


Here is a shot of the "armstrong" turntable. I wonder if they got some guys from the cafe to help turn it or if there was a regularly scheduled group that would come and help?

328-TF turntable.PNG


There were two of these in the area of my new layout prototype and I will be incorporating one on my layout


Check out my new layout thread (Dave's Layout v. 4.0) I will be starting today, I will try to trickle a little in each day of the pre-assembly and research work that I have completed.

Thanks, Dave
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 26° on the homefront. Looks like this colder weather is here for another week or so before the daytime highs are back into the 60's. New place looks good, I like the decorations.

Chilly morning Flo, let me have a large Mexican omelet with extra bacon on the side. And of course some of that wonderful spicy salsa to warm the insides.

Thanks for the likes and comments regarding the archive photos yesterday; Patrick, Karl, Rick, James, Dave, Troy, Tom O, Sherrel, Phil, Curt, Tom, Hughie, Chad, Ken, Garry, Jerry.

I was able to resume some modeling in the train shed yesterday. When I last did any, I was trying to determine which way to access the maintenance yard. I decided to have the entry come in from under the overpass that divides the scenicked portion of the layout from the staging yard.
View attachment 121358
Let's just call it the "Road to Nowhere"; apologies to The Talking Heads.
View attachment 121359
Another trashy scene on the layout is behind this fence.

View attachment 121360
View attachment 121361
I didn't see that giant cobweb until I posted this picture this morning.

Chad - Many condolences on the loss of your mother in law.
Ray - Happy belated Birthday.
Joe - That DPM structure is Stone Bakery. I did not rename it. I really like those Queen Anne bay windows.
Tom - I meant to comment yesterday on how realistic those gondola loads are. Well done. Are you going to let us in on how you made the realistic water/sewer piping?
Curt - I just knew that you would like the skunk scene.
Sherrel/Mikey/Ken- I do like to tuck those little mini-scenes into the layout. I have a few more that I will post over the next couple of days.
Sherrel - Give my congratulations to Kate on the weight loss. Does she know that you are posting that information here? ;) Arlene would slap me up the side of my head if she knew that I revealed that type of info anywhere!
Ken - I often wonder if anyone from Walther's ever assembles any of their kits. While I don't remember the specific instructions for the DQ, most of their instruction sheets and some of their engineering leaves a lot to be desired. However, they do make RR sized industries and lots of other stuff that fits in well.

I too have noticed that this site is running really slow this morning. At first I thought it was just my ISP, but other sites are running normally. I would have posted more pictures, but it is taking way too long.

Everybody have a great day.


I like that Greyhound bus on the over pass. Funny thing I have been on a Greyhound maybe 2xs. I can't imagine being on one like that double decker. Cool how that design has the 2nd windshield.
 
I like that Greyhound bus on the over pass. Funny thing I have been on a Greyhound maybe 2xs. I can't imagine being on one like that double decker. Cool how that design has the 2nd windshield.
James - Those were called Scenicruisers. Originally built in 1954, they were used mainly for cross-country routes. Very popular at the time but were a maintenance disaster and all were retired by 1974. Interesting trivia. The concept models but not the actual final design, were designed by Raymond Loewy, better known to us as a designer of engines and passenger equipment for railroads in the 40's and 50's.
 
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