Running Bear's December 2024 Coffee Shop


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Good afternoon. I popped up out of the train room for a few things but mainly 3. At noon and 4pm cleaning companies came to look at the house and options for us. Prices tomorrow by noon from both. The 3rd I had to eat lunch.

CHRISTMAS has always been a big deal even though both grandkids know Santa is not real even though the granddaughter with Down Syndrome doesn’t totally get it. We celebrate with family and friends but gifting has gotten less.

Decorating I have a service doing the outside lights the last 6 years and 3 different places. That was a 2 year gift originally from the daughter and now my brother gifts that to us. Good thing too because if it’s higher than a step ladder I am now forbidden from using it. Inside when I retired in 2014 Christmas was 33 bins not including the lights I put up outside. Tomorrow I can bring out the main tree and 4 bins. The other 9 bins are mainly dishes and tablecloths. Terry has reduced greatly over the years. The outdoor lights were turned on the day after Thanksgiving

TRAINS, I don’t ever remember a train around any trees in our family. My first train for Christmas at 7 years old was a 4x8 dad built, Lionel

enjoy the day
 
This is the latest Polish design: E4MSU "Griffin" named of course after a certain creature in European folklore: View attachment 206003
Multisystem electric, which recently did 240km/h under standard Polish catenary of 3000V DC. Earlier versions had a little more rounded corners with round headlights.

That looks nice. The general form looks like a variant of the TRAXX but reading about it it seems to be wholly home grown by newag (?)

(It does have a slight resemblance to the City Sprinter :) )
 
I did finally tick off Terry about model trains. Seems I didn’t add a couple operating sessions to the family calendar. Me bad! So today she ordered this as a Christmas present from her to me.
View attachment 206004


that actually looks pretty cool. Not $500 cool but pretty cool anyway. I may try and find a way to duplicate with an iPad on the wall. But this is actually something I think would be useful in many families with teenagers and adult teenagers like ourselves.
 
Good morning all. A wet and miserable looking day. A number of small, but important jobs to attend to. One job is to take a dolls house and furniture to the Charity Shop. Both our granddaughters' have had great fun with it. Now another child can have joy with it.
Both of my 53 yo daughters still have and occasionally set up their doll houses their grandfather made for them.
My grandsons are not married yet, but the doll houses are being saved for my future great granddaughters.
 
MaxBambu.jpg

Welp... Almost maxed out the build volume of the P1P. Looks like an inch to spare.

Detail is pretty good. I can read the TITANIC on the front of the bow.
 
I did finally tick off Terry about model trains. Seems I didn’t add a couple operating sessions to the family calendar. Me bad! So today she ordered this as a Christmas present from her to me.
Did that solve the issue? By that I mean is she no longer ticked off? If that's the case, that is an inexpensive choice, and I'm glad for you. 😁

Happy wife, happy life: priceless.
 
Bill - Wow! 14°, after 18° yesterday. It gets colder in Indiana earlier than I thought. Out of curiosity, I looked Tipton up on Wikipedia. What an interesting history.
Yes, it does. Still a small town but a good place to live with a long railroad history.
As Herb Shriner said, "I was born in Ohio but I moved to Indiana as soon as I heard about it."
TIPTON DEPOT1.jpg

Tipton Depot - 1910
 
Well howdy there internet peeps, and those rereading Orwell

It's Troy again.

The Titanic build is progressing. This hull section ran overnight on my Bambu P1P:
Titanic 2.jpg

It still has an hour and 50-ish minutes left in the print job. I've got two more this size to print, and then the stern section.

It's 21 F-degrees in the Fort. About an hour away from Bill. Highs will be at Zero/Naught C-degrees. Feels like a heat wave!
 
Still needing a constant supply of freshly brewed tea please! (UK railway crew such as myself practically run on the stuff...)

A couple of pictures from last night's shift, drove both of them:
20241202_172213.jpg

Class 377/4 377423 waiting at Bognor Regis before heading up to London Victoria.

20241202_183948.jpg

Class 387/2 387222 at Brighton with a working to Southampton Central (not going anywhere near Gatwick Airport despite the route branding!!!)

Meanwhile, whilst I am waiting for my tea, can someone tell the mouse that powers the rrpicturesarchive.net server to pedal faster, it has stopped working again!!!
 
Good afternoon all. Good grief it is sunny and 12c. it was colder in Summer.
A good friend of ours is visiting. We have known her and family nigh on 40 years. It is women nattering now. They are not talking trains, so I have left them to it.

Oldest grandson is visiting after school.

Tried running trains yesterday, but the track is really dirty. Not surprised really, it hasn't been cleaned for months. I guess I shall start cleaning.
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 31° this morning, only heading up to 59° later today. Not back into the 60's until the weekend. Weather geeks are still saying rain tomorrow. That would be welcome, despite the hassle of dealing with wet firewood.

I had a busy household task morning yesterday, dishwasher, laundry, all kinds of trash dumpster trips, etc. Cut some trees in the afternoon, not a full weeks worth of firewood this time, but 4-5 days worth. Went to use the battery powered push mower, but I had previously forgotten to monitor battery usage and stopped within a few seconds!:mad: So that's on the agenda today. At sometime I also completely emptied the ashes from the wood-burning heater, as planned; I didn't re-stoke the fire in the morning since it was going to be a warm day. But there was still a lot of embers.

Christmas - We've been cutting back on the Christmas/holiday decorating for a few years now. When I retired, I had the time and desire to do more. Wife on the other hand retired 7 years later and wants to do less. I went along with her wishes in the spirit of harmony.
On the subject of Christmas and trains, Dad had an 8' x 12' Lionel layout in the basement in Brooklyn. At Christmas, he'd bring a loop of spare track, and an engine and a few cars upstairs to put around the tree. After we finally moved to Dallas, he would set up a very large temporary layout (about 400 sq ft) on the living room and dining room floor after we moved all of the furniture out. The Christmas tree was mounted in the midst of all of the track. He would show off by running 7 trains at once using 2 Lionel ZW transformers. He had to run an extension cord to one of them, because our breakers would flip off when they were both on the same circuit.

An unintended short day out in the train shed yesterday, nothing wrong, I just didn't get out there when I intended. Mostly I walked around the layout with a box full of trees, and put one here, one there, in areas that I had deemed needy. Nothing photo-worthy.
I'll skip old layout photos for now. They'll return.

Troy - Interesting article.
Louis -
It's dark, I love the empty roads. I drive extra slowly to have time to avoid the deer and other wildlife.
Good driving habit. Here we have to put up with not only the common deer, cows, armadillo's, skunks and possum's; but we have feral hogs which can do some damage if they walk in front of you suddenly. They are either fearless or just stupid.
Tom O - That scheduling device looks interesting. I might consider getting one. Right now I use a chalkboard!
John U - nice looking rides. Must be an interesting job.

And Louis probably already knows this, but today is Ozzy Osbourne's 76th birthday.
Everyone have a great Tuesday.
 
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Howdy all from NW Indiana. It was 18 outside and the wind chill brought it down to 10. There's a large pond in the back and I think we are trying to get pond effect snow. We had a free premium channel lineup on TV over Black Friday, and I taped a pretty fun movie called Last Christmas. Lot of laughs and a not so funny ending. We watched that Sunday night, and last night we watched The Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. Joan liked that one a lot, more like a documentary than a concert. Don't know what Jagger was thinking allowing the Hell's Angels to work as crowd control. I knew a black guy was killed there; but didn't know why. They slowed the crowd video down and we saw the black guy shoot someone with a gun and then a Hell's Angel member drew out a long knife and was in the process of stabbing him in the back...fade to black. 4 deaths at the concert and 4 births...and a LOT of stoned people.

Going to try to saw the width of a 20 long DTD hydrocal building the fit in a less wide space than it was. It is a early background kit of mine and if it cuts OK then good, if not nothing really lost.
 
This is the latest Polish design: E4MSU "Griffin" named of course after a certain creature in European folklore: View attachment 206003
Multisystem electric, which recently did 240km/h under standard Polish catenary of 3000V DC. Earlier versions had a little more rounded corners with round headlights.
This reminds me of the TRAXX in general, which is a design I really like

From wikipedia:



 
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