Good Morning All. 56° and mostly clear. Fall is not truly here yet, just a teaser. The rain that was forecast for sundown yesterday, arrived right on schedule at 4:30, maybe that's sundown for someone else. Barely .20" fell, didn't even wash the cars. I'll have to look later for any fallen tree limbs since there were some pretty stiff winds overnight. This cool front came in with a bang. By the way, it came from
Johnny's neck of the woods, so I cannot blame
Chet!
Headed out early today for an 8:00 am dental appointment, cavity work. It's scheduled to be the last major dental work that I will have done,
for now. Let's see now, 8 implants, 9 crowns and 7 originals...he'll eventually recommend more crowns when his kids get to college. Even with only 7 originals, I still get charged full price for cleaning!
No breakfast today Francine, I'll just take a tall glass of OJ. Trains and health today.
Thanks for the likes and comments regarding the weathered hoppers yesterday;
Lee, Sherrel, Tom, Z, Chad, Justin, Garry, Jerome. I'll get back to the rest in a couple of days.
Out in the train shed yesterday afternoon, I took a side trip. After getting in the mood by building those two covered hopper kits and looking at the still blank areas in my project area between Maultown and Vernon, I decided to make a background structure to fit between the casket manufacturer and mattress company. It will not be rail served, just a background structure. I chose to use some Walther's modular walls, despite my distaste for them, but I have quite a few kits and I need a variety of buildings. I am using walls with large rectangular metal windows.
One issue is that Walther's didn't make enough kits with wall columns to match the number of wall kits, so I am having to fabricate wall columns out of blank walls. A particularly tough job using a single edge razor blade and a flat file. My completed ones are in the upper photo in the lower left.
As I have pointed out before, Walther's didn't do a good job of matching up components, hence the two different shades of plastic in the parts. Note the difference below.
Some wall columns and corner wall columns do not match, thus necessitating painting the structure later, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Beady - Hell, I have two good knees and I still mostly take steps one at a time!
Joe - Regarding the knee and potential replacement surgery. Stairs will be a killer immediately after the replacement surgery if that's the chosen option. After five weeks my wife was able to climb the seven steps to the swimming pool deck, slowly and using the rail and cane. She probably didn't need the cane but it acted as her "comfort" device for the first few days. She stopped going to the physical therapy center after 6 1/2 weeks per the doctors recommendation, but kept up with the home rehab. She didn't feel like she made any progress in the last two weeks or so, but suddenly Friday she felt like a new person. Today marks ten weeks. Currently the other knee is giving more problems. They both should have been replaced ten years ago.
My vote doesn't count or matter any way, so it is what it is.
For all intents and purposes, mine doesn't count either. I am in
TX-13 which President Trump carried by 80% in 2016. He carried my precinct at 97%. So my vote either way would not have really mattered. He didn't need it and it wouldn't have helped HRC either. I still vote however. By the way, our congressional district is larger in area than thirteen states; and it is
only the second largest in Texas.
Garry - Those were nice pictures of the NJT units. I am not a commuter modeler or railfan, but they did look good. I'll take you up on your offer later.
Lee - I also have a large bag of Gulf Shores sand, but I haven't used it yet.
Louis -[
Quiet sounds]
Terry - Great post regarding your wife. Mine won't even come near the train shed, even when her knees weren't such a problem.
Everybody have a great Monday. Hopefully I survive the dentist drill.