Running Bear's Coffee Shop XLVI

[Milwaukee Road 113]

Greetings and hallucinations and someone once said...
Nothing to report here, warm and no snow, kinda miss my childhood Christmas!
But then again, should they get that sort of winters here, UK would stop dead!
So, maybe it's a good thing...lol
Been having my nose buried deep in my latest three Milwaukee Road books, those branches that they used to operate, they're pure magic!
Oh well, hopefully it won't be long before my other five Milwaukee Road books will arrive....

One of these days, my blood will change from red to Milwaukee Road orange, just saying! lol

Wish you all a continuous Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, when it arrives!

 

[montanan]

Nice photos Louis. I imagine your grandson had a blast. I would like to get by that museum. I have heard that it is pretty good.

 

[Burlington Bob]

Louis, it looks like someone needs an engineer's hat to go with that big grin! I'd say he had a great time from the looks of it.

Terry, if you keep posting pictures of your layout with that mixture of motive power, you may get me to push back my time period a couple of years to 1970 to include at least some Great Northern locos. I've always said there wouldn't be any pre-merger green on my layout but a little orange and green would look pretty good. Hmmmm.

 

[montanan]

Time to head to the house. 2 above with sunshine.

Here's a picture of my favorite steam locomotive, a Northern Pacific Z-5 Yellowstone. I had the opportunity to have ridden on them in their last days when they were used as helpers over Bozeman Pass out of Livingston, MT where this photo was taken.

 

[Trussrod]

Good afternoon all,
Hi Flo and Francine, How is everything at the diner today and how are bot of you? Well tomorrow is New Year's Eve, I'll probably be in then too along with most of the rest of the gang.

- - - - - -

The weather here has been on the cool/cold side as again my car was covered with a fairly good layer of frost earlier this morning. Temps dropped down to about 30* last night or early this morning. Today has been clear and sunny but temps are
only up to 44* and low tonight is supposed to be 28*, the rain that was forecast for for Tuesday is no longer in the forecast.

I figured I should get up on my roof again and do a bit more preventative patching as it was supposed to rain but I get a bit of a rest from the last couple of days.

= = = = =

On the RR scene I've been working on the window castings for the Horseshoe Meadow Depot and got involved trying again to use the window glazing I got from Micro-Mark. When it works it makes a nice looking window which is relatively clear but the stuff wants to run too much and always tends to loose tenacity in the larger openings as well as the long narrow openings. So I tried using a technique they mentioned using a smooth surface, I used Magic Transparent tape on a couple of windows to see how it would turn out? One of the locations was on the inside of the the Old Time Climax cab and I'm anxious to see how they turned out? Think I'll go out and take a look as I turned on the floor standing Oil heater and it will be a good place to help dry the glazing material. Well it been about 2hrs. now and I found that wen I tried to pull the tape off one of the windows areas in the Climax cab let go and the rest looked frosted due to the sticky surface of the tape being rather diffused. So I pealed the stuff off the inside of the cab/shell and reapplied a fairly heavy dose of the stuff using a long round wood stick with the end sharpened to a point as I had to roll the stick to get it to adhere to all sides of the larger windows and then spent the next hour holding the Loco shell over the heater a various angles to try and get the stuff to dry. Slowly but surely the stuff was drying and finally it looks fairly clear and makes a nice looking window and sure makes the loco look even more realistic. So I anxious to do the side of this Climax shell as well as the front and back windows but for those I have to glue a top section across each end window or maybe a complete top cross piece to seal off the tops of the windows as well as the space between the top of the cab area and the roof.

So now that I'm getting used to working with it maybe I can the caboose windows I have? I should really try the zap stuff to see if works a lot better an dries very clear too?

I got even more info to share but I'm too tired as I stayed up too late till early this morning so I going to take a nap.


Talk with you later,

David

Greetings and hallucinations and someone once said...
Nothing to report here, warm and no snow, kinda miss my childhood Christmas!
But then again, should they get that sort of winters here, UK would stop dead!
So, maybe it's a good thing...lol
Been having my nose buried deep in my latest three Milwaukee Road books, those branches that they used to operate, they're pure magic!
Oh well, hopefully it won't be long before my other five Milwaukee Road books will arrive....

One of these days, my blood will change from red to Milwaukee Road orange, just saying! lol

Wish you all a continuous Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, when it arrives!

I don't know Milwaukee R113, I think I can detect that Orange to start showing through already! LoL

Happy New Years Eve to you due to the time change between the U.S. and there in Glasgow, Scotland, UK Be careful some of those Irish and Scottish Lass can look very foxy!

The Best to Ya in the New Year!
Happ

Time to head to the house. 2 above with sunshine.

Here's a picture of my favorite steam locomotive, a Northern Pacific Z-5 Yellowstone. I had the opportunity to have ridden on them in their last days when they were used as helpers over Bozeman Pass out of Livingston, MT where this photo was taken.

Say Chet, that must have been quite a thrill to ride in one of those monsters, Good God, a 2-8-8-4, it looks like it's about 100' long?

 

[montanan]

Got home and buried the car in a snow drift. @#%#

 

[montanan]

Minus 4. Finally got the car extracated from the snow drift. Time for an adult beverage, or 2, or 3. I'm getting to old for this.

 

[PRR Modeler]

Evening All,

Was fairly busy today. Started out by finishing the bathroom mirror job. After that we took down and packed up all the Christmas stuff and put it back in the attic, then we moved some furniture around and finally we fried and baked the schnitzel for New Years supper. Later our daughter and grand kids came over and we went to a local Cajon restaurant. I'm not real impressed with it but MOH likes it so I don't say anything.

Tomorrow I need to go to the downtown hobby shop to pick up a flat car so I can mount the camera when it comes in. All my existing flat cars have permanent loads.

I hope everyone has a good night.

 

[Sirfoldalot]

Got home and buried the car in a snow drift. @#%#

LMAO! Sorry, just couldn't help it.
Reminded me of the time I lived in Silverton, CO, about 1/3 mile from main road .. and we had about 24 inch snow overnight. I had to leave for work the next morning and after fighting with the two wheel drive p/u trying to get the chains on, I went running back into the building digging thru the file cabinet. MOH asked me what I was looking for and I told her that I was not coming back without a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Kept the p/u, but bought a jeep Waggoner.

 

[bnsf971]

Thank you everybody for the well wishes, we had a fantastic time at the B&O Museum.

Here are a few photos.

My Grandson and the Tom Thumb, also the train we had a short ride on pulled by a GP38

View attachment 47356View attachment 47357View attachment 47358

Louis, are you aware of the significance of the GP38 used to pull your train?

 

[montanan]

There wasn't much snow on the ground but it was just a matte of where the wind put it. The drift was just about 2 feet deep and hard to judge with blowing snow. Just enough to high center the car. I took a picture through the dining room window and will post it tomorrow. On TapTalk now.

 

[kbkchooch]

Hi all,

Montana man, (and others in northern climes) please remember the sn*w is a four letter word, and should be treated as such!

I finally put a long standing project to rest, the elusive Whitcomb 25 tonner. (Ken is probably thinking its about time!!)

For the unwashed masses, a little insight. Jerome, (the switcher King) and I have each held on to some Penn line midget diesels, from the 50's. In fact, Jerome purchased one of mine a year or better ago. Its been a little project that has run in fits and spurts since then. 1st comes researching the prototype, yes in fact there is one. a 25 Ton Whitcomb locomotive. Google it, there are several survivors.

Then comes building a better powertrain, then shaving off all the details, and installing all the appropriate parts, then paint & decals. Along the way my interest waned a bit (especially after I smoked the 1st decoder), but now its done.


side view


rear view


front with unaltered midget


side with another midget


Currently, it's buzzing around the layout with 14 cars in tow,,,,quite happily!

 

[Flip]

KARL- That is beautiful. You do great work.

Flip

 

[kbkchooch]

Glad that you made it home Terry. Apparently you didn't blame your wife for the delay as you appear to still be alive and functioning.

.

Perfect! Just Perfect!

 

[kbkchooch]

KARL- That is beautiful. You do great work.

Flip

Thanks Flip

 

[kbkchooch]

Speaking of which...I have spent much of the past 48 hours shopping for a truck of my own, to replace our Dodge Durango which died of natural causes ~6 months ago. Been putting it off for as long as I could, but with my 19yr-old daughter in Nursing School and doing [off campus] "clinicals", she'll be needing my Toyota Solara for transportation. So I'm dipping into the savings and trying to find a used 4x4 Chevy Silverado 1500 that doesn't have a huge number of miles on it. I have just barely enough cash to buy one without having to borrow any money, but I need to find a low-mileage one before my daughter has to leave on January 8.

Later...

U coming to see me Ken??

 

[Trussrod]

Say Karl, About 2 yrs ago I bought a Model Power 'Porter Hustler', on a foolish whim, which appears to be the same or similar drive system, your little loco which I like the looks of better, has, having two non-connected drivers. My little loco is fairly heavy but only seems to drive from the rear axle and I don't think it will pull much more than on or two of my 36' Old time box cars.

I'm going to try it again and see.
It did better than expected, it pulled 3 of my 36' Old Time cars plus a Bachmann Bobber Caboose most of the way up my 6 to 8% grade and all I had to do was to lightly touch the cab to give it a bit more weight and off it went. So it did a lot better than expected.

Is your loco four wheel drive?

Talk with you later.

 

[Bruette]

...
Louis, have a great time at the museum -- when I'm back east visiting family, I need to make a point of checking that out -- I never have been, yet it's not far from where my mother and sisters live
...

Nice photos Louis. I imagine your grandson had a blast. I would like to get by that museum. I have heard that it is pretty good.

DSD, Montanan or anybody else coming to Baltimore to see the B&O Museum let me know when you will be there and I will try to see you there!

Louis, it looks like someone needs an engineer's hat to go with that big grin! I'd say he had a great time from the looks of it.
...

Bob It's funny you should say that. My Mom wants to get my boys Lionel engineers hats. I have to help her with that, it has been almost a year since she first said that. I did wear my Lionel baseball cap and my Lionel T-shirt. When I read they had an MTH O gauge display I had to wear them.

Louis, are you aware of the significance of the GP38 used to pull your train?

Terry all I know is what I read on Wikipedia that it was named "All American Locomotive" by Trains magazine in 1982, I hope you can fill in the blanks for me. It was a ride with Frosty the Snowman and he was the star of the show. They did not talk about the locomotive.


I did get a picture of the GG1 that crashed in Union Station in DC. It's not very good because I took it through the window as our train passed it sitting on a siding. Combine that with the fact that I am not a good photographer.



For those of you like me who can't walk very well I want to assure you the B&O museum is very friendly for us. Parking is close to the door. There are not many steps in the place and ramps are options in most cases. Best of all for me is there are benches and chairs, even some rocking chairs scattered throughout the place. A few minutes of rest and I can get up and go some more.

I told my wife "when the kids ask what I want for my birthday tell them I want a membership to the museum!" $125 membership gets unlimited entry for 4 adults and 4 children and free tickets to ride the trains! Parking is free and it's only 15 minutes from my house, 10 if I drive because my daughter goes a crazy way! I did not complain or tell her which way to go, unless asked when somebody drives for me. I just say thank you.

We had a great time and I encourage everyone to come and see the birthplace of the American Railroad.

 

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Evening! Today is Tue 12/30/14.

This is the first I have been able to get on the site today as it has been down for some reason.

Temperature in TIPTON IN

IN MEMORIAM - JEFFREY WIMBERLY​

 

[Sirfoldalot]

Been heavely overcast all day with minor "spitting" rain .. Just enough to make the wipers scrape on the windscreen.
Temp has been mostly high 40's - low 50's all day too.
Snow level expected down to 2000 feet with sharply lower temps overnight.

Say, Karl .. I like what you have done with the critter!

Say, Louis .. Sounds as if you had a very good time!

Anyone know what happened to the forum today .. ??