Running Bear's February 2021 Coffee Shop.


Status
Not open for further replies.
I made it out to turn our water back on. I immediately heard running water in at least two places coming from under the house. Bummer! One spot appears to be at a coupling that I installed at least 25 years ago in a hot water feeder to the bathrooms. The other I don't know.
Called my plumber...he'll be out this afternoon to look things over and possibly have us back and running this evening. I like this guy. Probably have to raid the savings account to give him a big tip.
 
Good afternoon from Wisconsin where the snow event is already at least an hour late. I was at noon going to the LHS but his email to his followers said he is closed today due to the snow event. Tomorrow I will be there.

Willie, glad you have the water and sewer, too bad about the breaks.

Chet, no rush on your recovery, please take it slow

I spoke to our son in Austin, Texas and his girlfriends house is fine, ok to use the sewers was e-mailed this morning. His house on the other side of Austin, is back 100% but he has to boil his water. He is ok with that and was happy to sleep in his own bed last night. Yesterday he went in to check a couple job sites they are starting Monday. He said as he was driving through the campus he saw collapsed roofs and water mains acting like fountains. His crews can work tomorrow though. He also went into the office and his company was approved for the last round of PPP per emails that were delivered Saturday morning. He said he will be handing out some report to work bonus from regular funds for the employees. He said the PPP turned into excellent timing as he knows a few jobs will be cancelled or greatly delayed.

Take care
TomO
 
I added another 5 cars to my long German "intermodal". I found a boxed set of 5 "mixed freight" cars that I had not put on previously. This includes 3 pocket wagons (like a well car, sunk down, but for piggyback trailers and not containers), and two flat cars for containers. Added to the end. So the train now is longer than over 1/2 my loop (the inner loop of the double track in the pic -- the outside has my KATO SD70ACe and ES44AC UP engines and some Gunderson Maxi IV well cars and another single well car)...

The Trix DB BR 189 can still pull it but I need to work on some cars that have a lot of frictions and issues... It will be a lot better once I can remediate the HobbyTrain and any other wagons putting up a lot of resistance to rolling and going around curves.

IMG_4305.jpeg
 
I have a busted pipe upstairs about 10 gallons , but fortunately its over a spare bedroom with concrete floor and wood ceiling , a few wet cardboard boxes and some spare train cars but their plastic , so just shop vac and a mop job . No water yet inside (need a cpvc cap and cpvc glue) , got my well pressured back up and running , fortunately I have a water valve and cuttoff at the well and 200 + Ft of black Goodyear garden hose , I'll get running water inside the house one way or tuther.

Its done got warm ... 73, I wanna take cold shower now.
 
Good evening Shop Dwellers, it's 31*F and clear with a slight SSE breeze in my central MD abode.

Again, thanks everybody who either "liked" or commented on my Thursday post - Garry, Tom-C, Willie, Guy, Jerry, Patrick, Karl, James, Mikey, Tom-O, Sherrell, Gary in AL, Justin

Willie and GT - sorry to hear about your busted water pipe issues!
bnsf971 said:
I just found a picture of Ken working with his snowblower:

View attachment 125058
Click to expand...

Ummm, Terry....appears like you had too much time on your hands yesterday, eh? 😏

Karl - sorry to hear you couldn't get the stitches out, guess the doc just wants to err on the side of caution...

* * *
Lots of great photos being shared, wish I had some of my own to share. Unfortunately, the mrr "quality time" I had been hoping to spend experimenting on junk shells with different weathering paint mixtures never materialized.

On Saturday I found myself researching what type of emergency generator I should get to replace the 18yr-old 7000w one that we currently have. I found one that offers the level of power (12000w surge/9500w running) to support everything SWMBO and I consider critical, for ~$1300, that had excellent reviews - several of the reviewers said they were even able to run their central A/C systems off of it! This seemed too good to be true, and this is what led me down a rabbit hole - trying to verify whether this machine could actually run our central A/C based on technical geekspeak from the condenser's serial# plate. I searched the manufacturer's website to no avail, but finally a friend of my son's was able to decipher it for me. From this I ultimately learned that I would need 17000w surge capacity to run the AC. Unfortunately, every 3000w increase in a generator's power adds another $1000 to the price tag - so I would need something 3x the price of the one we were looking at. We decided that A/C would be luxury, not something critically needed. We'll go with the 12000/9500 model and just get a window AC unit for the basement family room if the need arises.

Today was spent over at my 31yr-old daughter's house visiting with my grandson, who is finally becoming more interactive and showing signs that he recognizes me!👍 Watched an absolutely horrible psycho-thriller movie on Netflix with the fam, when that was over it was already getting dark. Oh well, there's always next weekend...
 
Morning all! Need some bacon please, Francine, before Sherrell shows up. ;)

Wife has an appt to get her hairs cut, which puts me half a mile from the hobby shop if I drive her over. So, I'll go check and see which MRR magazines are new in the rack, and if they have any cool rolling stock I haven't seen yet.

Wife's sis is a nurse with the local hospital, and they've opened the vaccine wait list to employee extended family of certain ages. It's day by day, but she's watching every morning to try to get us on the list. If we get the call, we have 20 minutes to get to the hospital and queue up to see if they have enough doses left that day. Kudos for not letting any doses go to waste. Maybe soon.
 
Good morning y'all. The weather guessers got another one right, unfortunately. The rain has once again returned. Currently 37 with a feel of 35 and wet. I think I saw something resembling webbing between my right toes when I stepped out of bed this morning.

Flo- Coffee and bacon please. Double up on both since I missed out yesterday.

Willie- I want to see the Crossroads back in operation pretty bad, but right now I'm more concerned with the financial side. Unfortunately, fictitious cargo movement isn't going to make the truck payment or keep the utilities on. And income since Christmas has been sparse. However, by grace I have always had it when it was needed most, and for that I am thankful.

James- Did you visitor drop off your letter from Hogwarts? Wizardry could be quite handy in model railroading.

I'll try to catch up on the rest later, gotta get ready to drive to Durham NC to pick up some insulation for my MIL shed. She wants to build shelves in it for storage, I'm eyeing it for later use as a layout room. Going to be on the go for most of the day today, so probably no train activities today. Unless I can squeeze in a little trainspotting along the way today.

Y'all have a blessed one.
 
Before I head out, I thought I'd share my idea for the future expansion of the layout. At the moment I am keeping them as 2'x4' modules that can be separated and stored as needed.
FAAAD15A-4550-4CCB-8067-027D59671382.jpeg


The center is the existing layout. The northern module will either be industry or railroad property. Undecided at this time, since I am not sure I can fit the needed buildings into a 2x4 space for the rail yard. The southern module will be the town proper and a mainline branch which will feature a wye and possibly a double main. I let a little of my humor seep in to the town design as well, since it was the intersection between my wife and I that gave us Nathan in the first place. 🤣

I'm hoping that my delay in finishing the roadbed and track reinstallation (is that a word?) will allow me to acquire the needed turnouts for the extra sidings off the main oval.
 
Last edited:
Morning all,

Been playing catchup, so in a tiny bit late.

Currently 29° in Doo-Dah with a high of 62° expected. I tempted fate and washed both the wife's car and my truck yesterday afternoon. I run it through the automatic (2-pass, no wax) as it sprays the underside as well. Not perfect, but both look better. I know my truck is dirty when she says to get it washed. There's a big difference between appliance white and Dark Navy paint when it comes to road schmutz on the vehicle.

I'm in for a Covid test later today as the wife is nagging me about 3 days in a row of migraines (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) and general feeling tired and not really wanting to eat. Sense of taste and smell are fine. I just suspect the weather change has my sinuses all messed up. Felt well enough to get caught up at the boys house as the floor refinishers are coming in today. Should take about 4 days. They have some spots that need wood replaced, but 99% of the floor is original and in never redone shape. It is an oddly done floor in that there are no lengths longer that 16". Looks almost to be completed with scrap pieces and about 3 types of woods.
 
Morning fellers. I hope everyone is doing well. Home and work life should get back to normal this week. Past two weeks have been absolutely dreadful. So hopefully I can close the book on those this week. I'm back to working on the layout again. Started working on rock faces now. Using sculptamold for all of that. Seems to work really well. In areas I do not have any castings for I have to hand carve my rock faces. In the meantime while it was setting up I just ran my trains. Worked the loadout and yard to pass the time. That's all I have for now. Rainy start to the week but it's better than last monday so I'll take what I can get. I'll stop by later when I get a chance.
20210222_110939.jpg

20210222_110913.jpg
 
Status
Not open for further replies.



Back
Top