Good Morning All. Mostly clear and 75° on this beautiful Saturday morning. The ever changing weather forecast now has thunderstorms in for Tuesday through Friday. Maybe related to that tropical storm in South Texas, I don't know. Made it up to 95° yesterday, more mild temperatures for the next week though.
Received two grandkids yesterday afternoon for a few days. The third, a "mama's boy", did not want to come. First stop was the pool even though my granddaughter has an in-ground pool at home. Ours is more fun she says, and is actually bigger! I think that we are more permissive as well. When she stands on her toes, her mouth barely breaks the surface. She brought her goggles and spends most of her time underwater. I showed her how to shoot grandma with the water cannon, she liked that.
Keep rolling out those breakfast burritos Flo, I'll take a couple over here.
Many thanks for the reactions, likes and comments regarding the motive power yesterday;
Phil, Sherrel, Guy, Tom O, Jerome, Garry, Patrick, Chad, Justin, Louis, Curt, Karl, Dave, James.
Got a special package yesterday from ScaleTrains. Pictures are a repeat of what I posted in the RPO thread yesterday.
It was my three SD45's that I pre-ordered back in November.
They have very detailed interiors which cannot be seen!
After giving all of them about 30 minutes of break-in running, I replaced those god-awful ScaleTrains couplers with Kadee whisker couplers. I am not really too sure why ScaleTrains felt that it was better to "reinvent the wheel"? Had to shim the Kadee's with a modified .010" washer to prevent drooping.
Kadee centering springs will not fit in the coupler boxes, thus the need for the whisker variety and the shim.
Unfortunately when they took pre-orders, only the "Operator" model was available for ATSF, and there was no information regarding when they might do the "Rivet Counter" version. I will be getting three of the detail kits with lift rings, grab irons, MU hoses, uncoupling levers and who knows what else. These have the same fine running mechanism as all of their higher grade models. They are really nice for less than $100 each.
I also spent a little time running my favorite locomotives, a pair of Athearn Genesis F45's.
5944 is actually an FP45 that Amtrak didn't want and was used in freight service for a while.
Garry -
I especially like the Santa Fe red and silver paint scheme.
Problem is that they brought it back in the late 80's after they eliminated most cabooses!
Curt - I can barely remember when my train shed floor was that free of clutter!
Everybody have a great day and an awesome weekend.