Good morning friends and welcome to 2022. Flo is serving up coffee and breakfast with a smile this morning, so leave a really nice tip.
It's a very rainy 48 degrees here. Expecting rain all day. Tried to stay up to seen in the new year last night, but only made it to about 11:30. I'm so used to getting up early these days that the late nights don't come easily like they used to.
Having a late Christmas today with my parents and sister and her family. Should be fun. After that, no real plans.
Got some of my Bachmann EZ track out of a storage container last night while I was trying to figure out how to fix my Bachmann Spectrum 4-4-0. I've been wanting to try using something on track to improve electrical conductivity, especially with the EZ track since it doesn't seem to work very well. At least the old track I have is pretty bad performance wise. I had seen the No-Ox technique several places including the thread here from a couple years or so ago, so I bought some of the kind we sell at work called Ox-Gard. Same idea, different brand. It made a noticeable improvement, but it's not perfect. It's definitely a trick to hit the right balance of not enough vs too much of that stuff. I put a very thing coat on the rails and hit the rail joiners with a little more to help improve the flow from one section to the next. I ran my little 4-4-0 on it, or tried to but it derails easily and just doesn't run well to begin with. I ran a Penn Central GP40 I have on it and it did much better. May experiment some more today.
As I detailed in my other thread, that little 4-4-0 is a pain in the rear. Seems like it just wasn't engineered very well because the wires between the locomotive and the tender seem to be very stiff. When the two units are connected, the wires literally hold the front trucks of the tender up in the air. If I use the connector hole on the engine that is closer to the cab, it tends to derail very easily. Either way, not impressed with it at all. I'd like to find a better 4-4-0 for the Oil Belt Traction Company sometime, although other things are a higher priority now.
OB Ken - I am with you on the rather do electrical than plumbing any
more. It's not the leaks or water, but it's the squirming about under sinks that is hard on my body.
Oh, definitely same problem here. I'm still hurting after crawling into vanities the last couple days. Found a small leak I'm gonna have to fix, but have to get a short section of Pex pipe and connectors to do it.
Nothing else to report here from rainy Illinois. Have a great day!
