Running Bear's May 2020 Coffee Shop


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Now I'm caught back up:

Willie: Thank goodness the storms weren't really bad Thursday into Friday. We were expecting severe storms and flooding Saturday into Sunday but they were mostly either North or South of us. Our tomatoes have really shot up this past week. They managed to survive a late frost and are blooming, but no fruit set yet.

Karl: Hope you're better by now.

Beady: Post #747 made me almost spit hot coffee.....

I did get called in yesterday to get some equipment back online, so it looks like I'll have a another 3 day weekend to get through. The downside of losing 8 hours......That said, the wife's car got paid off on Friday, we've not quite owned it 18 months, so now we can concentrate on the house and setting aside additional money for either repairs or replacement of the truck.
 
Good Morning gang!

I'm almost to the bottom of a 24oz Royal Farms coffee, with plenty of diet Dew in the fridge!
Back to work today, my leg is much better, just a little tender by the one toe. I'm almost ready to dance!;)

BBob, I love your front porch view. That's my kind of countrt The train pics were great too.

Patrick, prayers for healing for your daughter

Bee back later!
 
Good morning.
Here is a photo of the toilet paper aisle in our local Kroger:View attachment 113824
You may have some internet entrepreneurs in your area. Amazon is cracking down on third party sellers, selling paper products at inflated prices, but it's like "whack-a-mole" shut one down two more pop up.

So long as people are willing to overpay for delivery it won't stop.
 
What, still? I heard on Monday, that most stores are ready to drop restrictions here.

Yeah our stores have had TP and paper towels for weeks now. Not always all brands all the time, but I have not seen a problem with getting some TP in a month. (Same for paper towels, which also were scarce).

If we could just get the disinfectant wipes in ready supply again (those are scarcer than hens' teeth). We have a use for them in our home that is not connected to the virus business and our stash is getting low.
 
Good Afternoon Everyone....sunny and very warm here in Wisconsin...just arrived home from the cabin after a long weekend in the woods.
Pressure washed the front and rear decks on Saturday and there just some loose stain on the rear deck before I start to stain it next Saturday. I figure on doing a 10x12 feet area to start slowly. I'm in bad shape and my back hurts after walking or standing a bit. Exercise should help get me back into shape.

We lost a neighbor who at 90 worked his acre garden every year and kept a record of the rainfall and the irrigation he did each season. He grew grapes for wine and worked 10 years on growing a special variety or grapes. He figured he had 100 pounds of grapes for his wine and would harvest the grapes the next morning. That evening raccoons climbed the fence and ate the entire 100 pounds of grapes. After that he installed an electric wire along the bottom and top of the fence. We'll miss him.

The tourists and the Lake People arrived this weekend. Many of the Lake People are mainy from Illinois and the wife and kids stay from Memorial day to Labor Day while Dad commutes from the lake to home and on weekends and goes crazy with his water toys. These folks live in million dollar plus lake homes and a literally drove the price of lake property and land through the roof. A friend of ours on the nearest lake has a $80k pontoon boat that he hardly uses. Enough said.

On to trains.....tomorrow a hospital visit mid-morning and then Cathy wants some mulch for the yard and needs my pickup. Then a brief visit to the layout and inspect the eight coal cars' coupler operation and wheel-sets.

I have a yard that I'm not crazy about and I may redo a third of my layout to re-position the yard closer to the layout's edge. This would be a major undertaking to redo the area. I'll need to give it some serious thought.
Spent a lot of time in the train shed yesterday. I mostly spent time completing and installing the Insta-Fence around the Earl's Oil site.

Willie I have some of the Insta-Fence but no where to install it. Great looking tomatoes plants. I'll plant our one plant tomorrow.

Time to leave .....

Greg
 
Good Afternoon All,

MOH dragged me (kicking & screaming) to BJ's today. Good thing I don't have a mortgage payment to make o_O. The wife insisted that I get a upright vacuum for upstairs (wife speak for train room) and yesterday I ordered adjustable feet for the layout (heavy duty) and a B&D hand vac for the layout top. Today I removed walls, window frames, and window glass from the sprues and sanded all the edges for the mill kit.

Greg- I have found in the past that if I was unhappy with an area on the layout sooner or later (usually sooner) I would change it. I had 3 or 4 major revisions on the last layout.

Willie- The scene is starting to come together.

Chad- Nice looking trains.

Karl- Nice MM shot.

Chet- Neat looking table.

Louis- Nice looking WM locos. I hope you feel better.

Patrick- Prayers for your daughter and the family. Nice looking loco but I have never really been a fan of the Vandy tender. I do have my Dad's WM 2-6-6-2 that has one.

Bob- Cleaning the driveway isn't hard but it is time consuming and very tedious. Interesting train displays.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
Back again.....I came back from the north woods with a present in the form of wood tick on my back. The sucker really did a number and I have a nice large red swollen area. We captured the tick alive in case we have to have it tested which I doubt it will become necessary. This isn't the first tick since I had Lyme's Disease last summer and several wood ticks before the Deer tick.

Anyway, Curt I will give any layout changes lots of thought and next week I'll do some more practice runs in the yard area and see how the location of the uncoupler magnets work during a switching operation.

I'm not sure how far you can push a car after its been uncoupled in this yard then using delayed couplers.

Stay tuned.....

Greg
 
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Howdy ...

Patrick ..... Prayers and best wishes for your daughter.

Louis ... Your middle photo at the B&O Museum shows an interesting locomotive partly hiding behind the others. The orange electric locomotive with maroon stripe appears to be a CSS&SB Little Joe. I recall seeing them in northern Indiana when I was a kid.

Greg ... I certainly hope and pray that tick does not cause any sort of infection or illness .

Willie ... Earl’s is progressing very nicely. ... I think you said you might ship some of your good tomatoes via HO trains. That sounds good to me. Below, you can see a block of Santa Fe reefers headed your way to pick them up. I can hardly wait.
;)
44825FC7-A43B-498A-B043-E36363CF4221.jpeg
 
Good Memorial Day Morning Everyone. It's cloudy and 65°, chance of thundershowers all day long. Yesterday's early morning shower gave way to sunshine until another brief thunderstorm around 3:00 left me an additional 0.4" in the rain gauge. Rather large storm about 50 miles south moving this way right now. While the pool is maintaining a low but usable temperature of 79°, the lack of sunshine does make it less than inviting right now. Where was all of this rain when I was filling it up? Now I am dumping it out!:mad:

I don't remember what I did yesterday that is causing some aches this morning, unless it was all that bending over to clear out the old plants in the garden. I'll skip the Ibuprofen though and just work them out. Maybe I can get my walk in before the rain hits. Today I am going to load up some computer stuff like obsolete monitors, modems, towers and printers from the last century (and this one too) to take to the electronics recycling center tomorrow. They don't pay for it, but at least most parts are recycled instead of all of it going to the landfill.

Lots of bacon with a side of grits and a couple of sunny-side-up eggs today Francine. Where's Flo? Oh! she's just running late while she looks for her mask.

Thanks for the likes and comments yesterday for the progress picture for Earl's Oil; Sherrel, Phil, Guy, Jerome, Bob, Louis, Chad, Karl, Garry, Curt, Chet, Hughie, James.

Spent much of my time in the train shed yesterday making Insta-Fence for Earl's Oil. The Bar Mills footprint for this kit is 12.5" x 7.5"; meaning that one needs 27.5" of fence to surround three sides. They only provide 18" so I had to open a package from the kit shelf for some more.
View attachment 113776
Painted up those detail parts on the right as well. Today I hope to cut and add the fence posts.
I added weathering powders to the roof, drive and some around the base of the door; and also built and added the rooftop sign.
View attachment 113777
Over in the paint booth, I was able to prime the three oil tanks, which I will assemble later today. There's more detail parts that I cleaned up and I will prime them today as well. Looking around the place for some more to add here and to the salvage yard.
Eventually I ran trains as it has been a couple of days since the last run. After all that's what they are there for to begin with.

Sherrel -

Thank you very much. Mother Nature sometimes helps me.
Enjoy your trip in the "sub".
Mikey -

I don't really need another hobby right now!;)
Chet - Yeah! It's tough to do tomatoes if you don't have 65 days.
Karl - Glad to read that the leg is getting better and you are able to get back to trains.
I grow my spearmint in a pot on the back porch. It's actually quite an invasive plant, at least here, and can take over if you're not careful.
Louis - No offense taken with your post. How can graffiti be bad if Lionel does it?🙃
Mike -

My favorite has always been Bristol. Saw races there on both the old and new track. Lots of traffic. Slower speeds and bumping (a lot of it) doesn't cause wipeouts. Usually doesn't even bring out the yellow flag unless something falls off. They just keep going.

Rain is still headed this way, now about 30 miles away, although it looks like it is diminishing somewhat.
Remember our fallen heroes today. The only one in my family is my grandfather's brother, William, my namesake, who died in 1917 in WWI.
Everybody have a great day.

Willie- planning on a facsimile of Martinsville because- 1) it’s a flat short track & 2) because NS line that runs towards Greensboro runs behind the backstretch.
 
Good morning Everybody!

Thanks for the kind words Curt. I had a normal night's sleep, almost 5 hours. My gout is a little more swollen and red, but my energy level is up. Once I get accustomed to the pain it doesn't bother me much.

Garry, good eye, you don't miss a thing.

Now I'm going to find something to do, but I'll be back.

Have a great day Everybody!
 
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Good morning America, how are ya? It's 68° and cloudy with a high of 75° and between 40%-80% chance of rain and thunderstorms most of the day. Going to get our Tennessee driver licenses today. We should be able to get by with just a vision test and giving them some monetary acknowledgement. Preferably via plastic to eliminate the need to handle cash. That's their request. We had to fill out forms on the internet and schedule appointments to minimize time that will be spent inside the building. I like that part of the process the best, plus the fact that we won't have to take any written or skills tests, especially for the motorcycle because it's still in Illinois for a couple more weeks.

I've got a colonoscopy scheduled for Wednesday and I have to be back in Illinois Sunday to take a Coronavirus test as part of the preparation. Then I have to isolate myself til the happy day. I sure do hope it's not one of the tests where they tickle your brain with a 2x4 shoved up your nose!:eek: Then on Wednesday, I'll get a camera shoved up my @#$. Joy, joy! We should get most stuff done, hopefully, and we're hoping to bring our motorcycle back as well. We sure do miss being able to ride it!

Stay safe and six feet apart!
 
Good Morning all,

Time for coffee and a stack of blueberry pancakes with extra bacon, thanks Flo...

Currently cloudy with some off and on drizzle and 60* with an expected high of 74* if the clouds go away later.

Not much going on, I've got to print another coupon and get some small brushes so I can figure out how I want to paint the rails and ties before I start any ballast work. I do have a cheap airbrush starter setup, but I don't think that it's the way to go. I'm going to use some of the brass track I have to test with before I actually start work on the layout. My biggest worry is how much the cork underlay is going to absorb. I'll use watered down acrylic as it is usually odor free.

1bbj377646aa174kjh7512314.jpg
 
Morning all. No pics of the train today, but there is progress. The running tweaks are done. Several coupler issues, and one shorting truck. One piece of really great news: I was looking at it possibly taking a year or more to round up all of the full width diaphragms for the train. They are one of the disadvantages of modeling any lightweight passenger train in the forties. Coach Yard only makes them when they do cars, and then they do some extras. They've been going anywhere from $25-40.00 a pair on e-Bay. Yesterday a fellow on one of the Facebook brass groups posted a bunch for $12.95 a pair. I got enough for the whole train! They'll be here in a couple of days. Happy happy joy joy!
 
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