Running Bear's November 2020 Coffee Shop


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Ok, I have one for all you Navy movie watchers. When I was just a young boy I watched a movie with my dad (Retired Master Chief) and these Navy guys were watching a movie aboard their vessel. Someone had a wad of tin foil with stick pins in it and shot with a slingshot at someone in higher command in the behind during the movie. Does anyone remember this movie? Pretty sure it was black and white but not 100% sure.
I would like to recommend it to my son who is serving in the Navy.
 
Ok, I have one for all you Navy movie watchers. When I was just a young boy I watched a movie with my dad (Retired Master Chief) and these Navy guys were watching a movie aboard their vessel. Someone had a wad of tin foil with stick pins in it and shot with a slingshot at someone in higher command in the behind during the movie. Does anyone remember this movie? Pretty sure it was black and white but not 100% sure.
I would like to recommend it to my son who is serving in the Navy.
Mr. Roberts?
 
Good evening, everybody .

I hope each of you had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was excellent.

Illinois Terminal 1565

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Good morning. It's sunny and 37.
I have to make a return to my local big box electronics store. I tried yesterday, but our local government has decreed they are only allowed to have 20 customers total inside the (large( building, and the line of people waiting to get in stretched around the store.
The store opens at 10 today, so I plan to be waiting in line at 9:45.
 
Morning! Let me rephrase; Good cool Sunday Morning! Right now, 15°F out there, under a cloudy sky. That's ok; it's going to warm up to a comfortable 30+ come the afternoon.
The part that aggravates me is the ice that forms on the driveway. Thaw-freeze, thaw-freeze, thaw-freeze; it creates a walking nightmare as I am on a mean slope. I can't use salt products because it destroys my nice concrete. Sand just seems to disappear. I would like to see it get cold and stay cold until spring. - Anyway, that's enough ranting.

Not too much going on today! I'm going to load some unused hobby stuff onto the bay and maybe get working on another model structure. That's about it. I'll probably go for a long walk in the forest and see if anybody is out there. The wife is doing a 12 at work today.

Garry - That is a very nice photo you posted this morning. I'm not experienced enough to know what type of engine that is; it looks like some kind of electric commuter. It is very cool.

Whenever I take a photograph that I really like, I get it enlarged to 11x14 to hang on my office wall. I did that with my photo of the freight crossing the McLeod River rail bridge. Now it hangs on my office wall with my other photos that I like. When I build my train room in the basement, it will be moved to that room:
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A poor quality photo, I know. I hand-held the camera at 1/15sec. exposure; so that's why it's fuzzy. They look real nice in person.

Finished my coffee, so I suppose I'll be on my way. Have a good one, and stay safe away from others. It's just about over.
 
Good Morning All. Cloudy and 44° right now. Temperature actually went up by 2° overnight, but that doesn't mean much. It also rained shortly after sunset last night, leaving .65" in the rain gauge. Better than nothing; it's been a while so there are no visible puddles this morning, until maybe when the sun comes out! Getting the doggies ready to take home this morning, oh, and pick up my wife. I actually have no clue as to which daughters house she's at, but I have to go to both anyway.
Nice day here yesterday, although not as warm as I like, just 57° for a high. I spent part of the day cutting up some more firewood for the wood-burning heater from the stash off dried wood. Prior to yesterday, I estimated that I have 75 days worth already cut and stacked; my goal is 92 days. Yesterday I did four more days worth. Looks like I'll have some to spare when I am at the goal. Meanwhile I renewed the small spot of white rattle can paint on the limbs (trees around the estate) that I have determined need to be pruned this winter for next year.

How about a large Mexican omelet this morning Flo. A big bowl of spicy salsa and a tall OJ will make it all go down better.

Thanks to all who commented or liked yesterday's picture post; Sherrel, Guy, Ken, James, Karl, Curt, Chad, Phil, Alan, Rick, Tom, Jerry.

Still no modeling it the train shed yesterday, and most likely none today, I am however enjoying running trains.
Here's some stuff from my archives that I may not have posted before.
First up is the Stone Bakery. It's a DPM kit, now Woodland Scenics.
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And the rear with Mrs. Stone speaking with the trash men.
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Sadly, this is the view from the aisle, the front of the building with the figures that I placed inside, can only be seen from a distant viewpoint, and cannot be noticed unless you know what to look for.:( This is a downside of detailing all four sides of a structure which I do, before knowing exactly where it will go on the layout.
Another shot of a train running. This time it's a trio of CF7's as they're just passing the bears seen a couple of days ago.
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These three Athearn models are pulling a scrap metal train to the off-layout steel mill.
Meanwhile, here's a family having a fun time washing their dogs.
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Dad is on the other side of the yard observing and having a cold one (or two).
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Guy - I am usually always up that early after 43 years of getting up that early for work. But I don't usually post that early. I am normally catching up on the overnight news or writing/editing Wikipedia articles on 50's - 80's rock and roll music.

Time for me to go now. It's always a pleasure visiting here.
Everybody have a good and safe day.
 
Good Morning y'all: 44° and sunny. Looks like tomorrow will be another gully washer.

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the new Christian Liturgical year, (B).

Spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon working on the layout. Cutting out sheets of styrene for the Wanamaker Ave Grade Crossing, and some other detail work...anything to avoid crawling under the layout to connect the wiring...Although today will be chilly, the sun should make spraying rattle can primer on the crossing sections doable. Might even get around to dropping some ballast, and other scenery.

Guy: Re. Picture of the pictures...They turned out well. The framing looks good. BTW, I have one of those "mean slope" driveways. Fortunately, we don't get weather like you do, and mine is blacktop, so when we do get it, I liberally apply calcium chloride.

Terry: Good luck!

Garry: Nice freight motor photo. Our thanksgiving was quiet, but the dinner was fantastic. Gad yours went well.

Phil: "The Enemy Below" was well done, full of suspense and irony. Much better than some of the other Hollywood productions. After a few walk throughs of diesel Fleet Submarines, ya have to give those submariners a lot of credit for the conditions they lived with. There was another submarine movie that depicted this..."Das Boot", released both in subtitled German and later dubbed English. From the German perspective, but excellent never the less.

Today's photos take us to Browns yard in Sayerville, NJ:
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Conrail OI16 (Oak Island - Browns) with a large train crossing the Raritan River bridge between Perth Amboy and south Amboy this past Friday. The floating construction cranes are working on the replacement bridge. The train will leave the North Jersey Coast Line at ESSAY, and travel the Amboy Secondary to complete it's journey.
OI16 - 11-27-2020 @ Waterworks Road Old Bridge [Browns Yard] at Sunset.jpg

Return trip to Oak Island, as Conrail OI16 cleans out the "Westbound" from Browns and takes them "East" to Oak Island on Friday, November 27, 2020. The photo shows the train at the "Waterworks Road " crossing in Old Bridge, NJ at dusk. Conrail (Shared Assets) uses either NS or CSX power.
I spent a great deal of the third quarter of my career working out of Browns. Great place to work.
 
Morning! The Spousal Unit informed me yesterday that it's time, once again, to take down the 17 boxes of Christmas decor from the shelves built around two and a half sides of the garage. Since she has been with her mom since Thursday and won't be back here until Monday afternoon, I will try and get at least half of the plastic tubs down today and the rest tomorrow morning. I thought that I had the number of "tubs" on the decline, but somehow managed to accumulate 2 more last year. (maybe SWMBO did not pack as tightly?) Personally - I would like the number down to about 6-8, but that ain't going to be. It looks like MR. NUTCRACKER'S FARM when done - and these are not small ones hence the large tubs. I think she got her training from watching HALLMARK movies - they could move a camera in and start filming immediately.

Morning FLO, I'll just have a copy of what WILLIE ordered - his taste runs pretty close to mine!
OH, but I will need coffee too! It was 35 ° this morning - homie isn't use to this yet, but supposed to warm up to 73 ° this afternoon.

Willie - sure sorry to hear of your neighbors woes. That's a hard bitter pill to take!
GARRY - That's a great shot of the whatchamacallit trolly. Beautifully restored and the lighting of the subject is perfect!
CURT - Your layout is really taking shape.
GUY - Love the photos - and your store is the cat's meow! Great lighting!

I finally open a drawer in the workbench and whipped this out yesterday - just fooling around.
I think I have it piled a little too high?
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Morning! The Spousal Unit informed me yesterday that it's time, once again, to take down the 17 boxes of Christmas decor from the shelves built around two and a half sides of the garage.
Sherrel, It sounds like our wives are related. She also has 15-20 boxCars of decorations that must come up from the basement which has the entry door in the back of the house. Guess who carries them? At least I dont get involved in decorating except for the outdoor lights.
 
Good Morning Everyone.....sunny and nice for a late November Day. Yesterday was a great day as well with perfect weather.

Not much in the world of Model Railroading today since we were gone all day yesterday to the cabin.

Every year before Christmas we make a trip to the cabin and visit a Christmas Tree farm where most trees are choose and cut. This year when we arrived at the tree farm there have to be at least 300 cars parked all over the place where ever they could find a place to park in a field that had a rough rail fence acting as a divider to organize the vehicles parking. The main drive paths had turned to mud and it was difficult for some drivers to get through parts of the drive lanes.

Seems like every family had a dog or two along with them and each family was carrying a full size Christmas tree. Our main reason to go to the farm was to get Cathy a short Frasier Fir tree. Trees up at the cabin are at least half price of what you would find around our home. A three foot fir was only $9.00, plus we got Balsam boughs for free. It seems that everyone in the cabin's part of the world owns a 4x4 pick up. I guess a 4x4 is needed for winter driving.

It's funny that even owning our own wooded properties with thousands of white, red and spruce trees would we spend the money on a tree from a farm.

Many times I needed to use four wheel drive to get into our cabin during winter.

We have spent some time at the cabin during winter and we had to carry our water up from home since the well and water piping is turned off for the winter. It became a hassle for us to carry the six gallon water containers and as we grew older. The townships don't use salt on the roads other than at stop signs, hills and curves so our road stays snow and ice covered all winter. Driving during winter you have to be careful since road conditions can changes almost instantly from bare pavement to ice or snow covered.

The second stop was for fire wood and here again the price of firewood is at least half the cost if we had purchased it at home. We purchased some oak firewood on the last trip to the cabin at a roadside stand by a residence and the wood burned great. We when back to the same place and Cathy loaded another face cord of oak for $20.

There was about five inches of snow last week and most was melted, but some snow was still laying along the roads were the plows pushed it up in small piles.

Made an order from Micro-Mark and I can't remember what I purchased!!! Old age. But, I'm done Christmas shopping for Cathy...in the mall business for over 39 years and this year all my purchases were made on the web! Going to be a strange Christmas with no one coming for dinner or even cocktails. Cathy's sister's family will stay in California and Arizona and not make the trip to our home for the Holidays.

Cathy's Uncle is 87 today and is as sharp as a needle and he still plays golf, bridge and can talk about just about any subject. Cathy called him this morning and he was pounding chicken breasts.

It's down to the trains after lunch.

Talk later......................

Greg

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A G&D Box car by Steve Hurt. The decals for G&D box cars are available from the National Model Railroad Association store.-Greg
 
Whenever I take a photograph that I really like, I get it enlarged to 11x14 to hang on my office wall. I did that with my photo of the freight crossing the McLeod River rail bridge. Now it hangs on my office wall with my other photos that I like. When I build my train room in the basement, it will be moved to that room:
View attachment 121269
A poor quality photo, I know. I hand-held the camera at 1/15sec. exposure; so that's why it's fuzzy. They look real nice in person.

This reminds me of an Air Show I went to here in Utah back in the mid-90s. Salt Lake Airport #2 is a general aviation airport in the Salt Lake Valley and is shared with the Utah Army National Guard, who fly Apaches and Blackhawk helicopters there. Back around 94 or so there was an Air Show held there. Half was commercial and required an entry fee (we paid to go see all the cool stuff) and half was free and open to the public -- this part was sponsored by the US military. They had all sorts of planes, helicopters, etc. from all over the US and from Allies. (P-3 Orion was in from Maine, fighters from various Air National Guard units around the country, transports, etc.). One of the visitors was a CF-18 from the Canadian Forces [air force part]. I talked with the pilot and he said that they liked to do these air shows as they got to fly and get away for a day, and it helped them meet their national obligations for deployments/visits. He said they would fly to Bermuda and do touch-and-goes to fulfill obligations for X number of landings at allied bases. When the show was over, he needed to re-fuel and the airport truck came and filled him up. The bill was like $5000 and the fuel guy wanted to be paid on the spot (you'd think they would have billing arrangements etc between the various air forces). The Canadian pilot was going through his wallet looking for a card the guy would take. Standing next to his CF-18 and needing to pay for $5k+ in fuel. He had an Esso card and the fuel guy said they did not take it but the pilot pointed to the side of the truck, which said Esso, and said that was all he had. The fuel guy took it and came back and said he was all set. Rumor had gone around the other pilots that the Canadian guy was going to go vertical after taking off and blast his way out (which was totally prohibited). Unfortunately, he didn't... (They also had F-117 flyby and some former Soviet stuff flyby etc. all very cool).
 
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I forgot to mention one other model railroading item in my previous post. Months ago I was working on a box car that had KD couplers along with KD coupler boxes and covers. I dropped a coupler box cover on the floor and spend a half hour looking for the part on the floor. Evne having a plastic chair mat where I work at the bench and the cover was no where to be seen again.

A couple of weeks ago Cathy asked me if this plastic thing was from my railroad. It was a a coupler cover, but never thought of taking a closer look. Then two days ago I took the time to look at the cover and it was the missing KD cover. I suspect it got caught in my shoes deep sole thread and fell off upstairs in the carpeting of the den. The cover was undamaged.

Who knows how long the cover was lodged in the sole of my shoe.

Greg
 
For those that have requested more photos of my layout, I finally got off my duff and took a few. I’m not going to change the track plan, it seems to work for the most part, at least as far as reliable operation. Eventually, I’m going to replace the Peco switches with something that doesn’t derail everything, or short out when metal wheels roll over the frogs, but I have the track working reliably, with no issues other than those. I’ve replaced two of the curved Pecos with straight Atlas #6’s. As bad as the Pecos were, I really don’t care the switch machines are visible on the Atlas switches.

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Good afternoon.

Guy, Joe, and Sherrel . Thanks for commenting on the photo I posted yesterday of Illinois Terminal 1565. I took the picture at a RR museum in Illinois a few years ago.

Guy ... Illinois Terminal Railroad once operated a network of tracks in Central Illinois. The railroad hauled passengers in interurban electric cars which used trolley poles to get power from overhead wires. In addition to passengers, the company hauled freight with freight motors such as 1565. It could pull a short string of freight cars which would connect local industries with large railroads at interchange tracks.

A baggage door on each side of 1565 was for small shipments in packages or crates.

Everybody: Have a good rest of the day. :
 
Afternoon All,

I started out with some chores then put in half of the tracks in the mine area. I'm using old flex track from the last layout which is slower because the ends need cleaned and it doesn't bend as well because of previous painting, but it's free.

Thank you to everyone for the likes.

Garry- Cool looking motor.

Guy- Neat photos.

Joe- Nice photos.

Sherrel- Thank you. We have 5 boxes plus the tree. Great looking load.

Terry- Very nice layout. I don't understand the PECO T/O power issues. I have used PECO on both layouts without issue and that's using Insulfrog ones. Which kind are you using (Insulfrog/Electrofrog)?

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
Terry- Very nice layout. I don't understand the PECO T/O power issues. I have used PECO on both layouts without issue and that's using Insulfrog ones. Which kind are you using (Insulfrog/Electrofrog)?
Curt, they are the Electrofrog type. Peco turnouts have been banned at the last two clubs I belonged to, due to their horrible electrical issues. You may have better luck with the insulated frog versions.
 
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