Running Bear's April 2023 Coffee Shop

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Good morning all. A warm day today in the land of the former North British Railway.
Playing nursemaid to Dawn today as she is not 100%.

Fill her up 1 - 76 'Lady of the Lake'

IMG_4685 by David Harrison, on Flickr


Fill her up 1-1 'Tornado'

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Where I live in the North Tyne Valley we are used to Military Jets screaming overhead.
Way back in the late 1970s I began to take the dogs for their walk.
Suddenly there was a loud, slow drone.
"What the ------- is that?"
Looking around. Nothing, but it was getting closer.
It went dark.
Over the rooftops, and I mean over the rooftops an Avro Vulcan blocked out the light.

Avro Vulcan


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Stay safe Everyone



David
 
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Oh, I am so far behind ..
Happy Birthday, TOM.
WILLIE - Hope ARLEAN is better today and forward.
MIKE CGW, hope the spouse is feeling better

Really nice sunset photos, GUYS!

Ships come right behind Trains and Airplanes.
I haven't quite figured out where to stick the trucks, but they are on the list too, PV DAVE!
TODD, sure hope things are OK there too - with the spouse?
CURT - That was a fast few days.

Couldn't sleep last night - back to bed for a few zzz's.
 
According to Willie, the white patches are non-skid areas.
bnsf971 said:
So much for adding 2+2.
Click to expand...
The original car 808240 was BNSF 400674 and prior to that BN 410345. The 808xxx #'s were given when they were converted to buffer cars. There were 50 of the GATC built cars that were converted, among many others from FMC. All were in the 808xxx series. Pictures dating as far back as 1979 show the gray paint on the GATC cars, in BNSF and BN livery prior to their conversion.
Check out Railcar Photos for additional pictures and more history than RR Pictures archives. BTW, the capacity of the cars was raised from 4155 cu ft to 4180 cu ft when converted to buffer cars.
 
Good morning gang!

49° under cloudy skies with a high of only 59° today. Being Good Friday traffic was light coming in, but I did pass beneath 1 leaky cloud, just enough for 2 swipes of the wipers. No real rain on tap for today, which I am certain Louis will be happy for the Orioles home opener. Gonna be a slow day here, as half the shop is off. Looks like I'll be watching some YouTube later.

Hoping to get the lawn & garden whipped into shape tomorrow so I can finish the spline on the main part of the layout the begin work on the benchwork for the extension Sunday.

BBL
 
Morning all,

Had to reboot a server this morning and change the UPS (battery back up) on the firewall. So far so good. Trying to get an addition to an application running. It installs, but won't configure. Not sure what the issue is. Took a 9 hour sick day Wednesday, and got back 2 hours with the Overtime yesterday. We can use sick time for Dr. visits, dental, escorting family to medical appointments, etc.

TOM (CambriaArea51): Happy belated. Hope you had a good day.

No rest for the working stiffs...BBL
 


Sirfoldalot said:
Oh, I am so far behind ..
Happy Birthday, TOM.
WILLIE - Hope ARLEAN is better today and forward.
MIKE CGW, hope the spouse is feeling better

Really nice sunset photos, GUYS!

Ships come right behind Trains and Airplanes.
I haven't quite figured out where to stick the trucks, but they are on the list too, PV DAVE!
TODD, sure hope things are OK there too - with the spouse?
CURT - That was a fast few days.

Couldn't sleep last night - back to bed for a few zzz's.
Click to expand...
Thanks. she is a tough old broad. Sleep is getting better she is walking ok. Looks like we will make church Sunday.
Mike CGW
 
santafewillie said:
According to Willie, the white patches are non-skid areas.

The original car 808240 was BNSF 400674 and prior to that BN 410345. The 808xxx #'s were given when they were converted to buffer cars. There were 50 of the GATC built cars that were converted, among many others from FMC. All were in the 808xxx series. Pictures dating as far back as 1979 show the gray paint on the GATC cars, in BNSF and BN livery prior to their conversion.
Check out Railcar Photos for additional pictures and more history than RR Pictures archives. BTW, the capacity of the cars was raised from 4155 cu ft to 4180 cu ft when converted to buffer cars.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I guess I didn’t dig far enough into Railcar Photos.
 
Good morning fellow train enthusiasts. The weather in my part of the world will be dry in the 50’s with calm winds. I can recall so many Good Friday’s being gloomy and wet. But being Wisconsin, wait some and the forecast can change.

I am on a roll in the weathering department. The long 4 days off I took has gotten the juices flowing again. I posted in the Weathering, a Continuous thread what I have been processing this week, not including the 78 unit double stack and spline train project. I stopped at the LHS yesterday and gave him a list from my stack train commission on 160 various containers, 40 container chassis, 20 tractors, and 30 trailers he wants and then weathered. Left the list with the owner of the shop around 3pm. Purchased a couple containers to get an idea how much time and therefore cost to weather. Around 8 got a call from the LHS owner, The order is more than his credit limit he has at 2 of his distributors. I was kind of shocked yesterday looking at prices of just the Walthers Scenemaster containers let alone the price of the Jacksonville Terminal and Athearn ones. I am heading to the LHS to meet with the owner to make a deal before he opens at 10. Terry is coming with, she loves to make these type of deals. NO, I am not buying into a hobby shop

enjoy your day
 
Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and 43° to start this Good Friday morning. Back into the mid-60's later on and a return to the 70's for more than a week starting tomorrow. No rain in the forecast for at least a week, but that can change at any time as accurate as the local weather bureau has been.
It's been a hectic few days and I may have missed wishing people well on the storm damage around the country. I am glad that all are safe and best of luck in getting repairs done.
Thanks to all who wished my wife Arlene (note the spelling Sherrel, Curt and Karl got it right!) well. What could have been a much worse situation has turned into a manageable one. It does appear now that it wasn't anything to do with her self-diagnosed gall bladder possibility, but a back muscle that got turned wrong when she tried that new exercise about two weeks ago. We will know for sure once all of the test results are in; doctor should call today, otherwise we're going to see him for a regularly scheduled visit Tuesday. Yesterday morning she started out with the same pain, which gradually subsided throughout the day. It's still there but greatly reduced. She took Advil and Tylenol throughout the day and never succumbed to the temptation to take a Hydrocodone, which totally knocks her out. She was well enough to make some stuffed cheese/bacon- Jalapeno poppers yesterday afternoon to go along with the glasses of wine. Another reason she didn't want to do the Hydrocodone. I don't know about this morning yet as she's still sleeping.
Meanwhile I made the grocery/beer trek yesterday and stocked up on a lot of stuff. However bad news when I got to the hearing center at Sam's Club afterward. My "ears" had not been returned from the lab yet. Deeply disappointed. They are trying to locate and expedite them so I can have them by Sunday. The techie even said that she would drive them to the house for me when located and calibrated. Waiting for that call. An interesting thing that I learned is that the hearing aid center is a third party contractor and all of the inventory is owned by Sam's. That is why they could not offer "loaners" in cases like this.
No train shed time yesterday as taking care of my wife and other household chores prevailed. I thought about it though! There will be some limited time today, although the grass in the yard is beginning to get away from me after the rain last Friday. I first have to locate all of the extension cords and get them picked up, the shredder, electric chainsaw, and weedeater are all hanging around the yard in various locations where I abruptly left them Tuesday.
When I do get in the train shed, I'll have a choice of what to do. I need to pick up where I left off on the quarterly layout section cleaning, or other options are painting figures, hitting my "project list", making more trees:eek:, or running trains.:)
For the layout cleaning, these are the first few business structures and locations that will get attention. None look very dusty but I like to examine each one and possibly add more details to either the structure or the location as I go.
First one is American Plastics. Note that these pictures were taken before I added the road out front about two years ago.
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I think that I have since installed the unloading magnet. Haven't switched it lately.
Then there is C&T Refrigeration, an A/C company that is not rail served.
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Moving south we come to D's Diner.
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D's is a little tough because the base warped and had to be glued down. Woodland Scenics has sent me a new base, but I haven't addressed that yet.

Tom - Belated Happy Birthday wishes to you. I didn't know whose birthday cake you were referring to yesterday morning.
Guy - Love the picture of the Sky the dog. You have a knack for taking animal pictures.
Mike - Good to read that your wife is continuing to recover well.
David - I too opted for early retirement myself at 63. I did give notice however and got the remaining vacation time plus some severance. The lead time for products that we made (windows and sliding doors) was 7-10 days during my management. Under the new team, it went to three weeks almost immediately and has gradually gotten worse. Covid didn't help them 5 years later. From my remaining sources they say it's four months now. We were producing 30,000 units a week, they lost many customers and are now about producing 18,000 a week. The only reason they are still operating is the deep pockets of the family owned corporation. My job daily ended as soon as I left the parking lot and didn't begin again until I exited the car upon arrival. Never took it home with me.
Todd - Sorry to read about your wife. I am sending positive thoughts and prayers her way.
Terry - Good luck on the job search. It's a shame to move 650 miles and have to start over this soon.
Tom O - A BNSF engineer that I know sarcastically said that the white was for workers who couldn't read "buffer car" so they would not load. But he also admitted that it was the roof and not the hatches and that the yard crew knew better when making up trains. He thinks that the hatches are welded shut anyway. He also told me that BNSF has many ACF center flow covered hoppers with the centered hatches used as buffer cars, and they don't have any markings on the roof, just the former airslide ones. I already knew that there is some disdain from engineers/conductors towards some of the other RR employees, at least on the BNSF.
It is ridiculous what Walther's and Athearn charge for trailers and containers. I certainly know as I have nearly 200 of them. I think that part of it is licensing fees are quite high.

As I pointed out yesterday, today is National Beer Day to commemorate the first day of alcohol sales after Prohibition was ended. I don't think that sales ever actually ended, as beer and spirits were still legal in Canada and Mexico.
Everybody have a great day and a wonderful weekend.
 
Goood Morning!

First job today, with the melting snow, is to pick-up the dog doo minefield that somehow got hid under the snow. I try to pick it up as we go along all winter. But, there always seems to be more doo-doo than I can find in the cold.

Then it's back to the renovations after our dog walk. I'll be trowelling on a thinset membrane onto the shower surround glas-rock. I only have one more wall to do before I can start priming and painting the room. Then, once my Listello tiles come in, I can get it tiled. Ordering the Listello tiles was an after-thought, which is why the project was delayed.
By the time I'm done, with all the new fixtures, vanity, and tiles, this is probably going to be a $10k place to read a newspaper.

Yesterday, I took a 2hr walk down to Beaver Creek.
BeaverCreek_04-06-2023.JPG

Every spring I go down there early to see what the melt waters expose in the form of rocks. I must wait for the melt flood waters, because we are sitting on hundreds of feet of sand, with very little rock. The waters wash rocks into the creek bottom. - It's just another hobby of mine; rocks and mineral identification. - Once I found a pre-dinosaur age horn coral.

Karl - Love the steam photos. I have never known a child who liked the Thomas and Friends cartoon shows. My children hated that show. Perhaps the kids like those Bachmann steamers more than the show.

Curt - 'Sky' is a smart dog. She knows how to tell time; waits by the door at 7pm when the wife will come home; knows when the walk and food times are, and knows to stay out of the wife's flowers.

Thank you for the likes and comments on these simple posts.

Here's an older photo of some train action downtown. Just to add something train related.
CN Yard_WtCrt_10-06-2022.JPG


Time to make tracks. Have a great day!
 


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