Running Bear's March 2020 Coffee Shop


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Good Morning All!
Looks to be a decent day around? Supposed to reach 67 today but only the very low 60's for the next two days. The sky is variable cloudy? whatever that means?
MOH and I both ventured out yesterday morning. Kind of nice without continuous bumper to bumper traffic. She went to one grocery and I went to another - I must confess - I married a wonderful lady, but she really came from the opposite side of the track from me! I like to shop cheap - this means Wallyworld and the farmers market; she, on the other hand likes Albertsons (which is the highest priced of the 1/2 dozen name brand stores). What I am getting at is that I purchase the same cans of stuff for mostly 2/3 of what she will pay. Yesterday, I was a little tardy getting to the store right at 7AM: Now what I experienced was something that I have never seen in CA! I headed to the back of the line of well over 100 people with my cart in hand - A guy (with his wife) said to me. " Go to the front of the line" and I replied, NO, I don't want to jump the line - and he replied that we are waiting until the store opens at 7, but you should go ahead and walk right in. I was floored!
I was also shocked to find most shelves were fairly well stocked even though there was a few totally empty. I did manage to "capture" an 8 pack of TP which was being handed out 1 at a time. I figured that being that we only have a dozen remaining that maybe I better take it for the offering.

Daughter's husband, who is a pharmist pharmacist, reported that in talking to a doctor at the local hospital WE have our first 2 Virus cases - being that more than 1/2 of the residents are commuters to either LA or SD - I expect a lot more.

Going to go up the hill about a mile away to the daughters and work on replacing a hole in the bathroom wall where a towel bar was attached to the wall with butterfly screws - if you can believe that! Then will be checking out the parts needed to replace a pool pump. The pool person cannot replace it because the STATE has mandated a high efficient pump that would cost $1300 to replace when the one they have is about 350, I think? Problem is that the pool guy cannot install the older style pump. Interesting enough, the house is fully self efficent with solar, but that doesn't count!

A few places are now below $3.00 a gallon now that we have lost all out money and cannot go anywhere!
GREAT - just F8 8ing GREAT!
 
GUY - loved your post! Like the garage too!
That train is the "business train" that KCS maintains; it generally is parked somewhere around KC Union Station.
Those are F-7 Units -- I wish they would have restored F-3's instead; I just like to see the screens rather than grills along the top.

I need to work on my garage too! It almost gets to the point where the car is able to squeeze in - and then life gets in the way and MOH fills it up again?
 
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Good morning ....

Boris .... I agree that train would be a fun one to model, but I think I would prefer an NKP PA1 instead of the RS36.

Sherrel .... The KCS train is beautiful.

Guy ... Your garage project is looking great.

Willie .... The Santa Fe covered hopper looks good. I have been pleased with other Accurial kits I put together.

Below is a url scene with the grin elevator I scratch built.

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Our new home? Doing some final testing today, if things go well, the forum will be migrating to a new server in the near future.

If it does happen, there will be some intermittent outages. Don't panic when you see an outage notice.

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As I sit here scrolling thru the forum, I am listening to my pastor streaming live over my wife's computer. For some reason, I cannot connect to the live stream on my laptop, but the social distancing is being maintained. I miss the choir singing, but there is a good message this morning. AMEN.

I missed checking in to see all the pictures yesterday, as I had to do a little furniture delivery. We had a couple new recliners delivered. (my wife got lift chairs so she could get my lazy a$$ up.) I put the old ones in my pickup to take up to the lake before the COVID 19 shutdown. Now I need to take something to my daughter and the truck is full.
The morning was clear and 65 degrees and a beautiful drive to the lake. My wife helped me get the chairs in the trailer and then swap out N scale layouts. I have a 4' x 7' layout in the bedroom I have worked on for two years but the track work is not finished.
I acquired an old 3' x 6' club layout that needs a little track and wiring repair, and a whole lot of scenery repair. I took down the old layout bench work and measured for the "new" layout. I can cut additional lumber at home and assemble the modified bench work on my next lake trip.

Sherrill- That KCS train is too shiny to be real. It must be a non-weathered model right out of the box!
Be safe and healthy.
 
Good morning. 36 degrees to start off the day with a high expected in the 50's.

Sherrel - It does sound like you and the wife are from different sides of the track. I will agree with you when it comes to Albertsons (Kroger). They are the most expensive grogery store around here also. We rarely go in there. There is a locally owned group of three stores that are employee owned and have some of the best meat and also every day prices. The always try to get locally raised beef and pork and locally grown veggies in season. My wife did pick up one package of toilet paper which was a 16 pack. That would normalls last the two of us for months but we will share with my daughter and grand kids and my son and daughter in law. Nice photo of the KCS train. All freshly painted and shiny. Thumb up.gif

Tom - Thanks for the input on the solar panels. I forgot to put that in. Solar is improving slowly but for us it was not very cost effective.

Willie - Nice looking hopper. Cars like that are probably the only problem that I have with modeling the transition era. They weren't around yet. My wife tried goofing off but ended up cleaning everything is sight she was so bored. She even admitted that she was looking forward to getting back to work on Monday.

Joe - Sorry to hear that the seniors are acting like that around your area. A real shame. Think they should just "chill out". Thanks for ine info on the commuter cars. I just can't understand why I am drawn to them. It could be the RDC's possible. I really like passenger car service having ridden on them so many times growing up. I was so bored that I was watching YouTube videos of the South Shore Line that we used to ride from Chicago to visit relatives after out trip to Chicago on the North Coast Limited or the Hiawatha. Like that photo of the NKP Alco too.

Guy - Who puts out that garage kit? I could use a couple of them. Yours is looking fine.

Garry
- Great photo of that grain elevator. Always like that photo.

I did get down to the train room and ran trains for quite a while. Brought the NP F-7 out of hiding is the staging tracks. They will head up to the work bench to have winterization hatches installed that Jerome was kind enough to send. I also has another Nash Rambler come in the mail the other day. This one is red to go along with the white one I have had for quite a while.

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Later
 
Chet - I'm scratching the garage from plans put out by www.ScaleModelPlans.com . He has (or had) a promotion where the garage plans were free, so I scooped a set. I also bought his CN 3rd Class depot set.

Thanks for the info. I have some wood calpboard siding in my wood hoard so I guess I can use that to scratch build one also. Just thought a kit would be easier for my old eyes.
 
Chet- I really do like your busy corner of town with all the different vehicles.
It reminds me of the little town where my grandfather grocery shopped on Saturdays. We would go to the hardware store first, then for groceries so they would not get too warm driving back to the farm. My grandmother baked fresh bread on Saturday and gave me a slice of hot fresh bread with melted butter and brown sugar on it. Wow!, my mouth is watering at the memory of the taste of that fresh bread!
 
I don't know how, but it looks like my mother could pull through. They took the breathing tube out an hour ago (after nine days) and her blood oxygen is still 98%. With my MIL, 2-1/2 months ago, it immediately dropped to 40% and she died in half an hour. They let the four of us visit while the tube was pulled, but we won't be able to come back unless something happens.
 
Good afternoon America! It's 55 degrees with a hint of sunshine and a predicted high of 63 later here in Tennessee. It's snowing back in Illinois, so a nice change weather wise! It was 77 degrees Friday.......and a couple of days later this week of low 80's.

We are slowly getting squared away in our new home. This corona virus crap has sure screwed things up! Don't get me wrong.......my wife and I are taking this very seriously. But we were planning on making a trip back to Illinois this week or next so we could bring my pickup and a bunch of tools, etc., back with us. Then in another week or two, going back and bringing our motorcycle back. Will have to wait and see on a lot of things now.

Got most of my train stuff, with the exception of my home made and handy paint booth. Wanted to make a trip to Lowe's for construction materials to start my layout slowly over the summer..........but that's another thing that I'll have to wait and see about!:mad: We are severely limiting our contact with the outside world for the foreseeable future.

I've been reading and trying to get caught up with all the goings on here since we got our internet hooked up, but I fall asleep waaay to easy in the evenings. Hopefully that will change as we get settled in. Have met some really nice people around here. We sure hope this settles out soon, so we can go exploring around the area.

I can't believe how much things changed in the space of one week! We were lucky enough to have gotten our freezer in placed and were able to go out Saturday last weekend and got enough to stock it and filled the cupboards full. Sunday was a totally different day. It was like things changed overnight! A lot of bare shelves in the stores and our local Walmart has closed the grocery section. We got some groceries at the Walmart in Cookeville about 15 miles away. Did the shopping on the internet and drove there to do the pickup. Not a huge fan of Walmart, but this is one thing we're grateful for. Gas is as low as $1.75 a gallon and will probably go lower. Just wish we had a normal situation to enjoy things! Getting tired of living in a Stephen King novel!

Time to hang some pictures, so I need to go. Everyone be sure to wash your hands and run those trains!
 
Good afternoon. It's 55 and mostly cloudy.
I have a lone GP7 pulling a track cleaning car and caboose around the "old" layout, just to have a train running. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about the new layout, I really can't change the tight curves or tough grade and still maintain the size of the layout. I did get down to track level and noticed a couple of vertical curves that weren't helping, as far as number of cars and unwanted uncoupling. It helped quite a bit, but I really don't want a lone F unit pulling a 40 foot boxcar and caboose for a train. I suppose I could put a small runaround siding at the top, and double (triple??) the hill.
 
Good afternoon. It's 55 and mostly cloudy.
I have a lone GP7 pulling a track cleaning car and caboose around the "old" layout, just to have a train running. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about the new layout, I really can't change the tight curves or tough grade and still maintain the size of the layout. I did get down to track level and noticed a couple of vertical curves that weren't helping, as far as number of cars and unwanted uncoupling. It helped quite a bit, but I really don't want a lone F unit pulling a 40 foot boxcar and caboose for a train. I suppose I could put a small runaround siding at the top, and double (triple??) the hill.
Terry, where did you build the new layout?
 
Morning all. Just stopped in for a quick cup of black coffee. Well I went to pick up our grocery order. Approximately 1/3 of the order was filled, maybe 8 items had substitutes, only 4 were acceptable. So looking on line, there are stores that have bread, oatmeal even water but you cannot order for pick-up. You need to go into the store.
Did get to run trains for an hour. Thanks for the likes.
STAY SAFE and SIX FEET APART
 
. I agree that train would be a fun one to model, but I think I would prefer an NKP PA1 instead of the RS36.

Garry: I have this preference for passenger trains pulled by Road Switchers. Perhaps that's because so many of the Diesel powered passenger trains I encoutered (PRR, PRSL, Reading, CNJ), ran mostly with Road switchers, all kinds. The only E units were assigned to seasonal Race Track trains to Bowie and Laurel Park in Maryland. B&O was the exception that used E units, but they gave up passenger trains East of Baltimore much too soon.

NKP trains led by PA1s were neat.
 
Afternoon All,

Did a couple of chores then worked on the layout plan for several hours. I have a workable bench work plan and cut out everything to scale (buildings and track radius's) and arranged things. Next step to see if I can come up with a track plan that will work. It will be a couple of days for that since LAWN CAMP;) starts in the morning. Starting to get low with TP with no joy in the stores, but we have lots of paper towels so we will survive if needed.

Sherrel- Nice picture. We had the same pool pump issue and we found a pool repair store (about 40 minutes away) that has refurbished pumps that they guarantee so we went that way. Saved about $2.5K that way. We've had it for 2 years without issue.

Tom- We had solar (water) piping on the roof. The company we called wanted $1K to take down and put back. Needless to say SIL, Son, and I took them off. They're still laying in the yard on a tarp and the wife and I are in a "Cold War" over their final disposition. I say nuke them since they started the roof leakage most likely.

Willie- Nice looking hopper. The company has come a long way since they started.

Joe- Boy, that's great news:mad:, just what we need is more sick snowbirds. Nice NKP shot.

Guy- To make it realistic you need piles of junk jammed in it.:D

Garry- Nice CO-OP layout shot.

Chet- Nice layout shots.

Beady- Good news.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
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