Running Bear's July 2020 Coffee Shop


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Curt, I had to double check I had the name of the gravel correct, thinking maybe it was a Central Wisconsin thing. A DuckDuckgo
search shows it maybe just a Central Wi. thing for the name.

Willie, I liked the fire damaged but still standing building. Whenever I have seen a fire damaged building at train shows on layouts they are completely burnt out and basically foundations. Well done!

by the way the abandoned quarry
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gravel in this picture is from my old driveway.
TomO
 
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Joe- Nice CNJ Centipede. Penn Central? :( Just giving you a hard time, I know you model them. Good to hear about your knee progress.

Curt: Think I mentioned before that my grandfather worked for Baldwin Locomotive. So did many others from the "old neighborhood". One woman who ran a Bogeda in the front of her house used to have a framed print of the Builder's photo for the Seaboard's "Centipede". I loved that photo.

Couplet #541-3540 used to get an unusual assortment of power out of Washington. Although our entire route was electrified, we never drew a GG1. it was always an E8. One in particular, was still painted in Tuscan Red with Yellow numbers. The Keystone decals, were painted over with what amounted to Amtrak Logos on bumper stickers. One of the side pannels had rotted away and was replaced with an unpainted plywood panel. The engine looked like a refugee from the scrap yard, but the damned thing would pull itself and the six cars up the NEC at 100 MPH. Appearances were deceiving. ;)

Boris: I subscribed to TrainMastersTV for six months to watch the videos and "How To" sessions. Under $10 and its a good deal. I'm thinking about cancelling my MRVido Plus since its getting stale during the COVID - 19 period.

I like the free MRH online magazine that's related to TrainMastersTV series.

Greg: That's not a bad idea. I've been reading the e-mag for years, but never got into Joe's premium stuff. I'll check it out. Thanks!
 
Good Morning Everyone....another hot and tropical day here in Wisconsin.

Deciding when I should go out and water some new grass seed where we had the ash tree removed. The seed is growing nice and I don't want to lose it. The neighbor also had a tree removed and we water his seed and ours when we are home and he does the watering when we are gone. The Mrs finally purchased a nice flexible hose and it replaces a hose that is as flexible as a steel pipe.

Going down to the train room after lunch with no real plans other than some cleanup and run the six axle units. No problems with derailing with the earlier Life-Like, Proto, Broadway or KATO locomotives, but problems mainly with newer Athearn units. I made some adjustments to the wheel-sets on the troublesome locos and that seemed to reduce derailments.

Finally, made up my mind how to scenic the small area between the interlocking tower and the tracks. It will be a sandy area for storage of drums, ties and rails. I add laid down a base of white glue followed by some "Real Gravel" and some weeds and then top coating of Woodland's Scenic Cement.

I like Woodland's Scenic cement for scenery for its wetting and holding abilities. I prefer white glue for track ballasting since it can be dissolved in water easier and faster than Woodland's. I also pre-wet the areas with a few drops of alcohol.

Chet: Great photos of your locomotives on the Livingston Club layout.

Willie: I still didn't get any of your tomatoes! Nice grade crossing. When riding our GoldWing(s) I always kept an eye out out for the armadillos crossing the highways. I would hate to hit one with the front wheel of the motorcycle!!!

Thanks everyone for your comments on my recent photo of the grade crossing and junk yard.

Happy Canada Day to all our friends across the border. I always enjoy visiting Canada and the hospitality shown to us.

That's all for now....

Greg

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[B,]Greg:,[/B] Great weathering job on switcher. It's sure seen some service alright !
 
Good morning....Getting an early start to put coat #2 on the pool deck. Temps will be in the 90's again so it should be baked on by this afternoon.
 
Good Morning Everyone. Clear and a bit cooler at 74° here in North Central Texas this morning. Only made it up to 95° yesterday and almost rained in the late afternoon. The weather radar actually showed it to be raining here, but my weather rock was dry. One of those "evaporated before it hit the ground" events that we occasionally have.
I did the weekly grocery/beer trek yesterday without incident. Folks in this area are taking this pandemic resurgence seriously. Looked like over 95% of the customers are wearing masks now. Kroger is in Denton County where there have been nearly 3000 confirmed cases and 37 deaths. Most of them have been in the southern part of the county where it borders Dallas County. Dallas has 22000 cases and 380 deaths. Our county still has no deaths and just 43 confirmed cases.
During my trip yesterday, I noticed something new. Since outdoor dining is not restricted, many restaurants are cordoning off part of their parking lots and setting up tables (with shading canopies) out there. They don't need as much parking area as before since indoor seating is still limited to 50%
Didn't get a chance to mow yesterday, so now I am behind a bit. I did get back to check on my hayfield which is doing well after the rain ten days ago.
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Looks delicious...after it becomes part of a cow!

Heard from my wife on South Padre Island yesterday. All is well down there but the authorities are beginning to clamp down on social distancing a bit, and they closed all of the indoor bars. Most bars along the Gulf Coast have generous outdoor capacity, just no A/C. She was checking on my status because she hadn't gotten any response to the "irrelevant" text messages that she had been sending. She did admit that she wasn't really expecting one to begin with!
The quietness of the neighborhood was later interrupted when the local VFD showed up with two fire trucks and a 4000 gallon tanker truck from the county. One of my neighbors was burning trash and plastic cladding on scrap copper wire; which produced a lot of black smoke that was apparently visible from the fire station about seven miles away. Neighbor had notified the county sheriff's dispatcher of his plans, but they hadn't taken the time to notify the VFD. He is an electrician who does a lot of rewire jobs and he gets a better price for the salvaged copper if the cladding isn't there. It's probably not legal to burn that stuff, but he has been doing it for 40 years and no one has complained.

Let me start the three day weekend with one of those delicious BLT's this morning Flo.

So, thanks for the all of the likes and comments yesterday regarding my layout scenery progress; Tom O, Patrick, Guy, Chad, Sherrel, Greg, Chet, Phil, Joe, Jerome, Curt, Louis, Tom, Garry, Ken.

Didn't get a lot done in the train shed yesterday, household chores kept getting in the way. I did manage to paint the trim on the top of the Salon, but that's all.
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I didn't feel like getting out the fine tip brush and doing the window sills at the time.

Greg - The thing that makes Houston's humidity and heat worse is the smog produced by all of the petrochemical plants down there along the ship channel. Same issue in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi as well, just not as bad.
Wives just don't seem to understand the intricate complexities of meat grilling. And trying to find a polite way of explaining it to them is risky at best. I prefer to "let sleeping dogs lie"!
Sherrel - Speaking of gas, three months ago it was under a dollar a gallon here, now it has risen to $1.79.

Time to move on. Everybody have a great Independence Day weekend.
 
Good morning from the deck in So. Central Wisconsin where the humidity is higher then the temperatures. It should be well into the 90’s here today but that comes from the local morning TV guy. Weather forecasting is definitely a guessing game.

Willie, where are you located in Texas? We normally spend February and parts of October and November at the son’s place in Austin.
Gas here did hit $.79 gallon for a couple days in April, which I think was a publicity stunt. Our station did get to $1.09 but is up to $2.29 yesterday. Why do we worry about World oil prices when with fracking we have more then enough to support ourselves and Canada? I would be fine if they banned world oil from the US and charged the $2.00 per gallon USA oil needs to be sustainable. They don’t need the crazy profits they were making, honest profiting is fine with me.

my daily pictures.
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A view of the chip and pulp yards.
Have a great day. TomO
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Good Morning -- supposed to reach 85 today under bright sunny clear skies.
The high yesterday was 85 and the guessers are predicting 90 and 95 for the next two days.
I'm going to watch the powers in charge trying to keep people off the beaches with those temps? Should be interesting - but the sheeple here will tuck their tails between their legs and hang their heads rather than stand up for their rights!

I've got to get moving early today... The daughter brought back the RV last evening and parked it directly in front of the neighbor's house across the street.
I better go put my pants on and move it - don't want to upset the apple cart; I don't think Elizabeth (a widow) would mind -but she will have family showing up this weekend - maybe today.

JOE - I searched this computer for the photo, so it must be on the one upstairs ...maybe later today?
 
Good morning. Things are warming up again. A beautiful day yesterday with temps in the mid 70's. I was able to gat access to a plane so I went up and enjoyed some flying for a few hours. Needed to get some hours in. A good way to social distance ? Really getting tired of all this. Some people say to wear a mask and others say that they're useless. I don't wear one and refuse to.

TomO - Excellent photos again. What are you using for saw dust? Would like to find something fine like that to color and use for a sanding tower.

Sherrel - You had better move the RV before the HOA has a hippo. Those were some pricey steaks. Holy crap. We usually get a side of beef and have it custom cut and keep it in the freezer. Can't believe what happened to the price of beef because the is NO SHORTAGE. I have a coupple of friends who are ranchers and they are telling me that buyers aren't paying much for beef on the hoof.

Terry
- Enjoy the guests. We have people coming over both on Saturday and Sunday.

Willie - Like the weathering on the burned out building. I am certainly glad that I've run out of room for structures on the layout. Painting allof the windows and window sills drove me crazy. The problem for grade crossings is that they are at what I would call an unknown radius. Most of my curves are freehand having used either flextrack or hand laying track at whatever radius the Homabed worked out to be. Most are over 40 inches.

Greg - That 70 ton switcher looks a bit familiar. Nice work.

Joe - Hope you're making progress with your recovery. Like that Amcrap photo. A perfect pike size train.

Curt - The bench work looks lonely. Needs some roadbed and track on it. It also looks good. Have you come up with a final track plan yet?

Guess it's time for the photo archives. These buildings will show why I am totally over painting windows.


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Later
 
Ok gang, I'm in need of some expert HVAC advice! IIRC, some of you used to be professionally involved with that before you retired.

I had an unnerving experience last night. I went out to the trainroom/workshop to check on a decaling job I'd started ~5 hours earlier, and the air felt warm and humid; checked the [indoor] thermometer and it showed 78*F. Usually it is 72-73, so I immediately checked the window unit by turning the temperature dial to a colder setting...no response. Then I clicked the fan speed selector to "fan only" and the fan came on - NOT what I wanted to see, since this indicated a dead compressor.

I've had this Friederich 12500-btu heat pump for 15 years which, according to internet HVAC experts, is 5 years beyond the expected [10-yr] service life of a window unit. So I went online to shop for a possible replacement. The prices were lower than I expected to see, which was good news, but the availability was a different story - I would have to wait ~2 weeks before it could be delivered to my local Home Depot. [They apparently have to special-order 220-volts units like mine.]

In the meantime I went back out to the trainroom to set up a fan to pull in cold air from the adjoining laundry room as a temporary workaround. While I was doing this, I heard a familiar hum - and when I stepped back into the trainroom to investigate, I found the AC working again...go figure[?]
Here is where I need the advice: I'm not sure if this unit is on the last leg of its service life, or if it was just a fluke occurrence. If it is close to permanent failure, I should probably go and start the process of ordering a replacement unit while this one is still actively cooling my space. OTOH, if that 3-hour "coma" has a plausible explanation, I do NOT want to replace a machine that has given me faithful service for 15 years, with something manufactured more recently that is likely of inferior quality - especially not by LG, after reading what Chet wrote about his terrible experiences with that brand!

A few more data-points: The filter is new [clean], and there was no ice on the coils. I don't know what more I can possibly do to fix it myself.

I eagerly await your words of wisdom...:D
 
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Good morning. Things are warming up again. A beautiful day yesterday with temps in the mid 70's. I was able to gat access to a plane so I went up and enjoyed some flying for a few hours. Needed to get some hours in. A good way to social distance ? Really getting tired of all this. Some people say to wear a mask and others say that they're useless. I don't wear one and refuse to.

TomO - Excellent photos again. What are you using for saw dust? Would like to find something fine like that to color and use for a sanding tower.

Sherrel - You had better move the RV before the HOA has a hippo. Those were some pricey steaks. Holy crap. We usually get a side of beef and have it custom cut and keep it in the freezer. Can't believe what happened to the price of beef because the is NO SHORTAGE. I have a coupple of friends who are ranchers and they are telling me that buyers aren't paying much for beef on the hoof.

Terry - Enjoy the guests. We have people coming over both on Saturday and Sunday.

Willie - Like the weathering on the burned out building. I am certainly glad that I've run out of room for structures on the layout. Painting allof the windows and window sills drove me crazy. The problem for grade crossings is that they are at what I would call an unknown radius. Most of my curves are freehand having used either flextrack or hand laying track at whatever radius the Homabed worked out to be. Most are over 40 inches.

Greg - That 70 ton switcher looks a bit familiar. Nice work.

Joe - Hope you're making progress with your recovery. Like that Amcrap photo. A perfect pike size train.

Curt - The bench work looks lonely. Needs some roadbed and track on it. It also looks good. Have you come up with a final track plan yet?

Guess it's time for the photo archives. These buildings will show why I am totally over painting windows.


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Later

love the city street scenes. Beautiful and well done.

Sawdust. The Woodchip pile is wood chips, mostly pine from what was saved when building the framework. But the 2 coffee cans weren’t enough. A neighbor of the daughter has a woodshop and I got much from him. All too big and after trial and errors and posting on FB, Otto Vandrk from RMC said if the chips are bigger then the feet of the LP they are too big. Coffee grinder, old, took the chips and they got smaller. There is some W/S summer grass sprinkled in, just a few pinches. No coloring added. Thank you for the compliment. TomO
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Chet, Tom, and Willie. Nice photos, nice work. Sherrel, Interesting photos.;)

Chet: Recovery is progressing.

Time for an "interesting" photo:
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Shore Express at Allenhurst, NJ, around 1956. Note the car parked on the platform opposite the K4.
And...another:
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View of life at #91 Bay Avenue, on July 9, 1977. (Former LV Enginehouse at Oak Island, Newark, NJ).
 
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