Coffee Shop XXXVI-2/4/2013

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PNKFLOYD said:
Jeffery- I understand the value of juggling one less part while installing a coupler.
I'm using an Optivisor more and more.
But, I cannot do much about my fat fingers, except use tweezer more often.

Stay warm and cozy this weekend.:D
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I hear it on the fat fingers. I'm 5' 10", 250 lbs and have next to no feeling in the lower half of my arms and legs. Working with small stuff gets real interesting at times and I avoid working with things that are sharp for reasons that should be obvious. Too many bad cuts to tell about but some sound like good war stories.
 
I said that the BN FP7 would be tomorrows project. Well, I got bored and converted it this evening. It now has a Digitrax DH123 decoder in it. I opened up the trucks to lube them and WOW! They were already lubed. Over lover lubed as a matter of fact. Big time! The gears were swimming in grease! I mopped out as much as I could then lubed the gears lightly and snapped the trucks back together. After it was all wired and ready I programmed it and took it for a test run. Quiet as an Atlas it ain't. It sounds more like an Athearn. I discovered one additional thing. The motor was tightened down too tight and causing the flywheel to rub against the frame. Loosening it up a little took care of that. Somewhere along the way someone changed out the axle gears. I have several of these FP7's already and they all have red gears. The gearbox gears in this one are red all right but the axle gears are white. I just looked at the gears in the UP unit and it's exactly the same. My other ones the gears are of uniform color. Of course these are around thirty-five years old so they have quite a bit of use on them already. This BN unit as I said is somewhat noisy but it's a stump puller and it's quieting down the more I run it. Right now it's coupled up with my CN C420 Frankenloco and being run back and forth around the layout. Soon as the donor FP7 gets here I'll fix the UP unit and convert it to DCC.

My CN C420 Frankenloco has a Bachmann decoder in it at present. It'll soon be getting a Digitrax DZ125.

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Wow! I'm off here since Monday and there's 7 pages to wade through. Surprised at the negative service comments about M.B. Klein's. I gotta admit I'm only a recent customer (international at that) but I find their site to be the best one on the net and prices, postal charges and packaging the same. It would be dissapointing if that changed because so far I haven't found any I like better. There's been a few that have had some items I was after (Norscot stuff usually) that were cheaper but not much range of anything else.
 
'Morning. There's a wet snow falling here in central MD, temps hovering at or slightly above the freezing mark. Roads and sidewalks covered in slush.

:) A perfect day for model railroading! :)
 
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Good morning. It's 35° with 66% humidity. It'll be sunny with a high of 55°.
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Well today I guess I'll tear into the CN C420 and rip out the Bachmann decoder that's in there and replace it with a Digitrax decoder. Other than that I suppose some layout cleanup is needed as there's locos, cars, boxes and other stuff all over. It looks kinda like the result of an explosion in a machine shop.

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Morning..

Kinda sunny but ccold out today...getting those little tiny snowflurries later on..high of 22F expected...

Got a few thing to pick up today then off to friend's to go play with his trains...lol

Have a good one!
 
CSX_road_slug said:
'Morning. There's a wet snow falling here in central MD, temps hovering at or slightly above the freezing mark. Roads and sidewalks covered in slush.

:) A perfect day for model railroading! :)
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Unless there is a honey-go list :(

BTW, 8 pm on Fox the NASCAR season begins! :D:D:D

I can see the TV just fine from the workbench!! :rolleyes:
 


tootnkumin said:
Wow! I'm off here since Monday and there's 7 pages to wade through. Surprised at the negative service comments about M.B. Klein's....
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I think that what they were referring to was live help from the salespeople while in the store itself, not online. Unfortunately that seems to be a running theme in many stores, not just LHS's.
 
Well this morning I got decoder in the CN C420 changed out. It now has a Digitrax DZ125. This loco is one of my Frankenlocos and as such it's an unusual looking thing. It's a Lima C420 body on a Stewart AS16 frame resting on Proto 2000 FA1 trucks that have Athearn blue box worms and shaft couplings. It's powered by an Athearn motor with hex flywheels. I made the drive shafts by gluing pieces of hex shafts into pieces of blue box shafts. Originally the steps of the Lima loco were part of the trucks. I cut them off of the trucks and super glued them to the bottom of the body shell. So looking at the front and rear of the loco there's no pilot facings, just the coupler with the steps to either side.

As an additional project I installed body mounted Kadee 148 couplers on a metal framed Mantua tank car.

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ahh i messing with these locos , its an articulted day :D my son is coming down to visit me from NH & we wll be going to scale rails club & im selling the cabforward so im gonna let him run it 1 more time before its gone & im buying a BLI big boy again & 1 more riverossi DCC big boy & call it good ;) after that just cheap diesels
 
Cjcrescent said:
I think that what they were referring to was live help from the salespeople while in the store itself, not online. Unfortunately that seems to be a running theme in many stores, not just LHS's.
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That's for sure!
I started using MB Klein when 1st Place Hobby went under. Haven't experienced any shipping problems and the response time is excellent. Prices are as good as any.;)
 
Well if you recall about a month back I dropped my Nikon L20 camera and broke the battery door latch. Obviously this presented a problem as the door wouldn't stay closed. A temporary solution was to use a piece of tape to hold it closed. This worked short term as the adhesive wouldn't hold for long and the tape had to be changed anyway when the SD card was inserted or removed. I toyed with several ideas on how to fix this inexpensively (as in as close to $0 as possible) but they all required tools I don't possess. Well being the ingenious redneck that I am I continued to mull over the problem and today I came up with a solution that would work, didn't cost anything and was so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I cut the handle off an old spoon and made a clamp. It just slides on and off the end of the camera, doesn't require adhesives and it doesn't get in the way.

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Got a little cleanup work done on the layout today. I was digging through a box of old stuff today and found a couple of decoders. A DH123 and an old Lenz decoder, model unknown. All it has on it is HND SL1 49/02. I clipped a 9-pin harness on it and tested it and it tests as good. The DH123 was toast. So at this time I have a Bachmann 44913 decoder, two Digitrax decoders (DH123, DZ125) and the unidentified Lenz decoder.

Well it's time to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

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kbkchooch said:
Unless there is a honey-go list :(
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I spoke too soon, As of now, the entire house is spotless! You literally could eat off the floor.
I was able to watch the race, we got done 15 minutes before the green flag.
Only good part, tomorrow I sleep in, I need it!
Cya!
 


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