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!
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.
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.
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.