Running Bear's September 2020 Coffee Shop


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Good morning y'all. 73° and wet, going to stay cloudy going to 83°.

RDG # 1515 - SW900 8-29-1964.jpg

Almost brand new SW900 # 1515 switching at Wayne Jct. (Philadelphia) on 8-29-1964.
 
Morning All! Starting the day at 61 going up to 87 they say with sunny/breezy skies.
Should hit 90 tomorrow and 99 on Friday :eek: !

LEE - I was just about to ask you how large your O layout was, but you beat me too it!
12x16? Is that around the walls or how?

Morning FLO ... A nice BLT with avocado and lots of bacon, please. If MEL has the cooker hot, throw a handful of French Fries in with that. A DP sounds good for a drink - after I have my usual 2 cups of Italian Dark Roast coffee.

Many, many chores on tap for today - try to check in between some of them on a break.

Willie - How is the misses doing? WOW - I'm impressed with the Spousal Unit here! The inches are coming off, and it really shows. Already she said that I was just going to have to take it ... said she is not buying new clothes anytime soon -- whew!
 
Good Morning All. Raining lightly and 71°. Light rain most of the night after a heavy downpour yesterday around noon. There's an additional 1" in the gauge this morning after 5" by sundown yesterday. Forecast is for three more days of this gloomy weather. We needed some rain, but not this much at once. Temperature yesterday started in the low 80's at dawn and hovered there until the rain came at 10:30. Stayed below 71°the rest of the day and night where we're starting this morning. Cool overcast days mean bad news for the pool temperature! :mad: Looks like all indoor activity today, with the morning and mid-day devoted to household stuff, and mid-afternoon until supper for trains.
Wife continues to improve and her spirits were buoyed by finally getting an unemployment direct deposit that had gotten screwed up by the Texas Workforce Commission, (used to be the Unemployment Commission). A cool $6200 for the month of August. The amount is quite a surprise. We're not spending it on anything just yet; they have accidentally overpaid before and deducted it back! I can already envision a trip to Goodwill after my wife is mobilized and buys some new clothes! Oh! And a trip to the LHS soon.

Chilly this morning Flo, so I'll have a bowl of chili, with plenty of onions and cheese.

Thanks for all of the reactions on the yard scene yesterday; Chad, Garry, Sherrel, Chet, Lee, Patrick, Tom O, Curt, Phil, James, Tom, Ken, Karl.

While I made it out to the train shed yesterday, I didn't do any serious modeling because of sporadic power issues due to the storms. It did go off a couple of times briefly. I ran trains because I could, if power went off, they just stopped! I also cleaned some stuff up and rearranged my over-loaded storage shelves to hold more. I also sat at the workbench and watched the rain overflow the pool. While watching, I assembled an Athearn kit that has been on the "to build" shelf for at least 10 years. Just a run of the mill double plug door 50' boxcar.
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This "Blue Box" kit cost me $6.80 in 2009. It is of MDC Roundhouse lineage, after Horizon bought them as well. Not a lot of assembly. I did have to add 1 oz of weight to bring it up to recommendation (glued ten pennies inside), and I added Kadee metal wheels and #148 couplers.
It came with those McHenry knuckle couplers which went immediately into the rubbish.
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I also changed the duplicate number, not my best effort, that will be forgiven when I weather it.

Garry - Yes, it is a very nice Santa Fe "yard mule". It's made by Athearn and externally looks remarkably similar to the ones that we used at work over the years. To watch a good driver handle it correctly was a "visual work of art"! On my infinite project list, I have it down to add air and brake hoses since it is so front and center on the layout. It's a bit too new for your yard though.
Your yard doesn't look too small for the era that you represent. There were dozens of small ones like that in every big city until the railroads realized that they could centralize things and make the truckers come to them, and save a bunch of $$ switching.
Lee - Thanks. Your O scale figures are quite good as well.
Tom O - Thanks for the explanation. I'll have to look into that photo lamination stuff.
Alan - You have displayed some amazing talent with those steamers and passenger cars. Kudos to you.
Ray - All of these recent MRL photos really show off the Big Sky Country scenery well. At least it looks that way for two months of the year. Can you say "SNOW".
Troy - "Patience my son". It took me 35 years to amass 80+ locos, and 27 years to amass 800 freight cars. I intentionally stopped purchasing freight cars in 2014 because I had more than I thought that I needed. I operated for a couple of lean years when I started paying for my kids college education, with a single Athearn GP50 and a very cheapo Bachmann GP38.

Running a bit late for me this morning, wife needed some attention while I was in the midst of composing, then I stopped completely and fixed a couple of breakfasts.
National V-J Day today. Let's all remember it and salute all veterans whether they were there or not.
Everybody have a great day.
 
Man,

It's turned into a Monday for me. As I was posting earlier, the email server decided to lockup...No rhyme or reason, took over an hour to get it to finally restart (Virtual machine) and then another nearly 2 hours to get all the services running again. Machine very slow for about another hour, but once I got everything running again, all is sort of well. 4 users lost connection to the email server, which fortunately I got reconnected fairly quickly. Their Outlook profiles on the local computers got toasted when the server stopped. With them being on Office 2016, it was an easy fix. Office 2019 (the app version) is a bit trickier. Slowed back down in time for lunch.
 
Good morning. Our cool spell is over, Got down to 40 degrees yesterday morning but we were up into the upper 70's by afternoon. September is sort of an anniversary for us. Moved into our house 43 years ago in September. Not sure of the exact date, but it was nice go get out of the rental we were in during construction. Time flies when you're having fun.

Ray - Enjoyed the MRL photos again.

Joe - That is one massive Baldwin switcher. Like the Reading switcher also.

Willie
- Nice work on the yard goat. Don't think they had anything like that in the 50's/ Just a small single axle tractor. You must have your fill of rain by now.

Garry - Outstanding photos. Thumb up.gif

Alan - Nice work so far on the Santa Fe steamer.

Lee - Nice work on the UP box car. While I was building my layout I custom painted a number of freight cars for my freelance railroad. Cheapeis, blue box Athearn car that started off as black undecorated freight cars. Probably have around 20 or so different cars. Done letter by letter.

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Troy - After switching from N scale to HO scale around 40 or so years ago I guess I have around 30 or so locomotives and maybe around 120 or so freight cars. I keep everything I have on the layout with the exception of what I use at my club. The only thing I have in boxes are a few brass locomotives that are too large for my 90 foot turntables.

Here are a few archive photos again.

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Time to make some lunch and head down to the hot springs for some swimming exercise.

Later
 
Good afternoon. Both Terry and I had our dental appointments this morning and this afternoon we meet with the attorney. Cleaning up the estate business in case something happens and we want it 100% clear what we did and why. Did the Healthcare stuff prior the pandemic.

Lets see, 48 cars for use switching on the layout, all new since retirement and fit my 2015 timeframe.

48 cars split between 2 mix manifest run through trains and for sale.

1 yes 1 current locomotive for use on the layout.

There are 2 other locomotives left but they are WC Gp35’s that are DC and for sale. So 96 total pieces of rolling stock of which 48 will be for sale.

In 2014 at retirement 6 years ago TODAY, I had over 100 locomotives both brass (kept 1 brass shelf queen) and plastic and over 300 mixed era pieces of rolling stock. Have a great day. TomO

My only at this time DCC equipped locomotive. There are 2 Gp38-2’s on backorder and 1 more GP40-2w also backordered.

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Afternoon All,

Today I conducted a experiment on the layout. I'm starting to lay down track in the engine servicing area and on my last layout I used caulk to hold track directly to the painted wood (no roadbed) but I ruined a lot of track over the years when I wanted to make a change. So today I decided to try Elmers instead and put weight on it while drying. It seems to work well. I wasn't thinking and glued down the drawbar on a turnout but a little RA fixed that problem. The 2 issues that cause a lot of dead time is cleaning the ends of used track and turnouts, also the glue drying time. I figure it will be about a week to get all the track down.

TomO- Nice looking loco.

Lee- Nice job on the decaling. It's nice when you don't need magnifying glasses to see what is printed.

Toot- Interesting history, especially about pilots flicking the buzz bombs away.

Patrick- It's a nice feeling to be financially comfortable.

Sherrel- I'm glad your wife is doing well.

Willie- Nice looking box car.

Chet- Great layout photos. In the picture with the Sinclair truck is that the method of filling them? I don't think I have ever seen that type of filling device/setup.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
Well, I got some of the decktop for the benchwork cut. I was incorrect in remembering measurement, it's 1/2 inch board. Foam will go on top in at least 1-inch thickness.

Time to position the first half, and get them screwed into place.

Then the DeHumidifier in the basement beeped. Time to empty. Ran the bucket upstairs, and decided to check the mail.

The maildude brought me a surprise. I might not be getting much much of the benchtop secured tonight.

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Dammit! I have to figure out which combo of keys keep deleting my "replies" before i finish typing them!
Curt - YES - over the top filling was done on a regular basis - still is as far as I know - both crude and refined products.

Did I read correctly that you are just using Elmer's to hold the track?
 
don't know why Verizon can't fix that,

Karl: Simple reason is They don't want to! :p
Black Locos Matter

Karl:
As long as they're Penn Central :p Seriously, nice Alco photo.

Louis: Nice photo of the 4877. Looks like Cliff Underwood at the controls.

Curt, Chet and others who commented on the Center Cab Baldwin, They were awesome locos, They were used in transfer service and helper service around Philadelphia, and on the Schuylkill Valley branch between Phiadelphia and the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania. They were 2400 HP units, essentially two 1200 HP diesels in one car body. I meant to look up how many the PRR had, but I haven't gotten round to that yet. There were also similar locomotives from Lima - Hamilton.

RDG RDC preparing to Depart Allentown (Conrail Era).jpg

Take a Ride on the Reading, RDC prepares for departure from Allentown, PA during the short lived experiment to extend the Bethlehem RDC service to Allentown. Front end has SEPTA stripes instead of Reading Logo, but still says Reading Company on the side letterboard. No date, probably the late 70s or early 80s.

RDG VO at Pottstown, PA.jpg

Reading Baldwin VO and Cab at Pottstown, PA .
 
Good afternoon ...

Willie .... Your comments are interesting about the yard mule. Yours looks like it already has plenty of details. Thanks for your remarks on my TOFC facility. The ATSF boxcar looks good.

Chet .... Thanks for remarking about my photos. I always like looking at your layout pictures; so keep posting them

Troy Photo ..... I like th GN Lines East book. I have a copy of it and the GN Lines West book too.

Boris .... Your Reading RR pictures are interesting.

Karl .... Nice picture of the WM Alco's.

Louis ... I never tire of seeing GG1 pictures.

TLOC ... CN 9468 looks like it needs strip to the paint shop.

Everybody .... Have a good evening.
 
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