Good Morning All. Clear and 72°, going up to 92° later today, a repeat of yesterday. Pretty active in here already this morning.
Resumed my summertime pastime of mowing parts of the yard yesterday. No wind so it was a good time to mow around the pool and avoid the mower ejaculate blowing into it for cleaning out later. At 50 GPM, the filter pump takes almost an hour and a half to circulate everything and doesn't get it all the first time. I mow some more today.
Eggs Benedict this morning Flo. It's a holiday!
Thanks guys for all of the likes and comments regarding the grain elevators;
Sherrel, Louis, Phil, Lee, Chet, Joe, Ken, Curt, Justin, Chad, Guy, Tom.
Still just doing small tasks in the train shed with the newest project section. I installed traffic signs and applied more ground cover. That part is not easy, as that section is immediately in front of the window A/C and ground foam flies easily. I have to clamp a piece of plywood to the layout to block it. However, afterwards, the air flow dries the glue rather rapidly.
OK, the last two grain elevators coming up. I just posted the first one a couple of weeks ago when I upgraded it with signage. Its a styrene kit from American Model Builders, who are more well known for their laser-cut wood structures. This kit has since been re-issued in wood. I call it Red River Valley Feed and Seed
And lastly is Prairie Coop elevator. It is yet another kit from Walther's, whose name escapes me at the moment.
Right now it is on another of those unfinished segments of the layout. I have many industries like this that are just plopped down on their spurs to assure that they fit, and I can switch them, albeit without scenery or figures. Note that this one still has the capability of loading grain into boxcars with the lower spout. Management has just never removed it.
Joe -
There are others, who haven't worked since March, when Knucklehead shut the State down, and not everyone is getting paid. Businesses are realizing that they can get by with fewer people and smaller facilities, so that indicates portions of the economy are due to shrink, in the near future. Guess it depends on what one looks at.
I'll refrain from commenting too much as it might get political. There appears to be governors who don't really have a clue so they have kept everything shut down rather than reopening intelligently. Then you also have the politicians who don't believe the rules apply to them...on both sides of the aisle.
By the way, I am worse than a pack rat, I am a hoarder!
Lee - Celebrity tomatoes work well for me also. I mostly plant Early Girl with Celebrity being the second most popular.
Alan -
Here we go again! Wanna make someone's day really interesting? Send them a completely disassembled steam engine, and put EXTRA hardware in the baggie
Maddening but funny!
Chet - Yes, grain hauling is a big time operation on my layout.At peak harvest time, as many as 35 covered hoppers might be on rail spurs, while another 80 are in unit grain trains traversing the layout making things fun for local switching jobs. The rest are in yards or in mixed freights.
Lucky is the man who has such an excellent club to run trains at in addition to an excellent home layout. The closest model railroad club to me, while close at 30 miles away, is modular only, with no place to set up except at local shows and a Christmas display in a local mall.
I too have almost stopped purchasing any new model RR stuff, freight cars at least. I have been a sucker for some of the ScaleTrains locos though and have purchased nine of them. However I have found that I need quite a few more structures than I planned for prior to retirement.
Curt -
Willie- Nice grain mills. I had no idea you modeled so much of the grain industry.
Thanks
Curt. Yep! I basically model generic flatlands with a lot of off-layout grain farmers. On the entire layout, I actually only have two industries that receive grain, an ethanol processor and an flour mill. However nothing goes directly to them. Everything goes to staging/classification yards first.
Hughie
I just have a concern about getting bored in time once you memorize all the moves. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way.
That's the beauty of having ten industries to switch like that layout. Just switch two or three per session, vary the way you stage the cars so it isn't repetitious, and set out at some industries and pick up at others. Another trick is to have industries that use a variety of cars. A printer for example might receive ink in tankers, bulk paper rolls in high cube boxcars and ship out in regular boxcars. Lumber yards might receive lumber on flatcars and bricks in boxcars. Leave a car, empty or full, on a spur or the runaround track so you have to move it on the next session.
Besides being Labor Day here in the states, today is National Beer Lovers Day. I'll include myself in that category. It does seem like we have a lot of different "National Beer xxxxx" Days. I'm not complaining, but I don't really need a commemorative day for that hobby!