Running Bear's Coffee Shop XLVIII

[bnsf971]

Joe, the full OEM Tsunamis have less choices for sounds, but they have all sounds of one type or another.
The Bachmann Tsunamis don't have the full range of sounds. For example, the Bachmann decoders don't have startup pr shutdown sounds, they are either "on" or "off". They also don't have the sound of compressors, brakes, dynamics, or radiator fans. They also only have three horns, which is pretty much the only similarity between the Athearn and Bachmann Tsunami decoders.

 

[PRR Modeler]

Evening All,

Had ribs for supper tonight. Finished pressure washing the pool deck today, the pool is clean so the pool is open for the year. MOH is helping out at the grand kids school tomorrow all day, so I will vacuum the house before we depart on Saturday. MOH says we need to grocery shop Friday...Not sure why that is.

The only train related thing I did today was to fix the back drop in place. I will order the bridge after I return from TN.

Toot- Thanks for the info on Athearn.
Montanan- I am enjoying the great pictures.
Karl- Very nice gondola load.
Louis- I totally understand about the wife. I hope she has a great and safe visit.

I hope everyone has a good night.

 

[Trussrod]

Good evening Gandy Dancers,
It was a fairly nice day out here in Central Calif.

I got a notifications yesterday from Sherrel that he is doing better and is making steady recovery from having the Tumor removed from his Colon which I'm pleased to hear. He still has to under go the Aneurism surgery but hopefully that will be an easy procedure of just wrapping the area with a mesh material to strengthen it?


I went over to another friends house on this past Sunday to take a look at a HO layout he came into when a friend of his passed away. It's really rather unique and has a lot of possibilities to incorporate things which Joe is working on. He change the layout over to 'DCC' some time back using NCE and is getting used to it.

He was 'DC' before and after awhile he pulled a box off an upper shelf and said here, maybe you can get it to run right as it never did for me. What did he turn over to me to tinker with but a Bachmann three truck shay so I've fooling around with it

Good morning, everybody.

Uh oh, David. ... Now, you have done it.... You may be accused of being a rivet counter. LOL

Say Garry, I don't know how you can even think such a thing? I don't see one rivet on that dangling chain anywhere! LoL.

I hope no-one else noticed? LoL

 

[Bill Tidler Jr.]

Good Morning!

Mostly cloudy with a high of 54.

Temperature in Tipton IN

 

[Bruette]

Good morning everybody!

36 with clear skies in southeast Baltimore

My wife is safe in Kecskemet Hungary and all is well.

Have a great day everybody!

 

[BigE]

52° and light rain here today.
And that's about as warm as it's going to get here today.
Suppose to rain all day and into tomorrow.

 

[bnsf971]

Good morning. It's 47 and raining.

 

[montanan]

Starting off at 33 degrees this morning.

Louis, glad that your wife made it to Europe safely.

There another photo of a Milwaukee Road train, the Twin Cities Hiawatha. Looks a bit shabby, could probably use a bath or a repaint. A good weathering project.

 

[logandsawman]

Good Morning, we have 30 and very light flurries. Today in the 40's and 50's for tomorrow.

Yesterday was really nice in that we had sunshine and very little wind. The streams are beginning to open up and the water flowing. A big plume of smoke was up out west of town, I think a fire in a cattail swamp somewhere. This time of year, they run into the forest and go out as the leaves are wet and don't carry the flame.

 

[Boris]

Good morning. It's 31° and sunny this morning, going to 41°. They are still calling for 1" to 3" of "winter weather" for tomorrow. Yikes, and on the first day of spring, no less.

Louis: Sounds like everything is good. Hope your wife has a great visit.

Terry: Interesting insight on the Tsunami sound decoder. If I modify an Atlas RS1 using a sound decoder, I will probably go with a Tsunami, if I choose to run silent, then NCE.

 

[GarryCBQ]

Good morning, everybody.

I often think about Jeff. I miss that guy.

David .... That is funny.

Louis ... When my wife is out of town, I get a lot of work done on the layout. ... Unless, of course, she leaves an extensive list of honey-do's.

Curt... Pool open ! ... I recall we had a big outdoor pool when we were living near Ann Arbor, MI. It was a lot of work, and of course, it was never opened in March.

Starting off at 33 degrees this morning.

Louis, glad that your wife made it to Europe safely.

There another photo of a Milwaukee Road train, the Twin Cities Hiawatha. Looks a bit shabby, could probably use a bath or a repaint. A good weathering project.

View attachment 49049

Chet ... You photo brings back memories. The TCH was a good way to travel from Illinois where I grew up to Wisconsin Dells and the Twin Cities. It was common to see two F-units MU'd with an E-unit as in the photo.

I also road the Twin City Zephyr several times. E5's were used on the train as in this photos, but E7's were more common. This was a fast train ........

 

[montanan]

We traveled on a regular basis from Montana to Chicago to points east either on the North Coast Limited or on the Hiawatha. My memories of Milwaukee Diesels isn't as good as it should be as everything in Montana was handled by electrics, a Little Joe usually to Harlowtown, MT. From there it was a crap shoot when it came to the head end power headed to Chicago. I was always interested to see what was going to end up pulling the train. It always seemed that something just a bit different was up front on each trip.

 

[montanan]

Joe, the full OEM Tsunamis have less choices for sounds, but they have all sounds of one type or another.
The Bachmann Tsunamis don't have the full range of sounds. For example, the Bachmann decoders don't have startup pr shutdown sounds, they are either "on" or "off". They also don't have the sound of compressors, brakes, dynamics, or radiator fans. They also only have three horns, which is pretty much the only similarity between the Athearn and Bachmann Tsunami decoders.

I am a DC operator, but I do have one locomotive, a brass Z-5 Yellowstone which I custom painted for the Northern Pacific which has been converted to DCC and has Tsuanamis sound in it. We manage to get through Missouri, where my friend lives and have run on both his huge home layout and also his club layout which are both DCC controlled layouts. He converted the locomotive for me (he is a DCC wizard) and I was blown away by the sound. He said that this system was his favorite and I told him to go ahead with the installation. This is what I call my traveling locomotive, so I can operate on DCC layouts. When not on a road trip, it may get out of its box, get lightly lubricated and run faor a half hour or so and then go back in its box.

I really enjoy the sound, but I will say that during an operating session at his model railroad club, after a while with over a dozen trains all running at the same time, all of the sound did get annoying. It wasn't bad with just a few operating, but with so many at one time, wow.

 

[Bruette]

I am trying to stay busy for a couple of reasons

1st - I miss my wife, I am disabled/retired and she works, but I know sometime after 3pm she will be coming home, but not today or for the next week.

2nd - My layout is on the to do list but I have some maintenance and follow ups that have to be done on her vehicle first. Then I can play with my trains!

Playing with my trains makes the time pass by so fast. My only regret about this hobby is I did not graduate from Christmas trains sooner!!!

My wife wanted to take her car to the shop, I said no way, I feel better everyday, thank God, I can do it! Then I can spend the money I save on trains Thank God for toy trains!!!

Time to get back to my boring chores that are keeping me from playing. That sounds like something a 10 year old way say, I feel like I am 10 when I play with my trains!

I hope everybody is having a great day!

 

[bnsf971]

Good afternoon. It's 41 and raining.
The body shop says my truck may be completed today.

 

[montanan]

Time to take off again for the day. 67 degrees and sunny. Here's my parting picture, taken south of Glacier Park in northern Montana.

 

[tootnkumin]

Time to take off again for the day. 67 degrees and sunny. Here's my parting picture, taken south of Glacier Park in northern Montana.

Did you "lift" that off a BNSF Christmas card?

 

[montanan]

Don't know where it came from, but the country up by Glacier Park is breath taking. In fact, the whole western part of the state is. I left when I went into the service and couldn't wait to get back.

 

[IronBeltKen]

Evenin' gents! 42*F and calm here in central MD, with the temp steadily dropping thru the night and giving us snow in the morning. Nobody seems to think there will be much accumulation, if any. People here aren't getting all hysterical the way they often do with this type of forecast.

Louis - I can sympathize, my 'better half' had to spend a weekend at a conference in Atlanta in mid-February for re-certification training. So I didn't even have normal work days to take my mind off her absence. Nighttime was the most lonesome period, it was hard for me to fall asleep without her being on the other side of the bed.

Garry - we had a 40ft diameter above-ground pool in our backyard for ~6 years. It served us well until the steel wall beneath the chlorine dispenser was weakened by the constantly dripping chlorine, and one day while we were vacationing out-of-state, the wall burst open and all the water gushed out. That put an end to it.

Chet - I remember you saying you served in the Navy. I did a four-year stint myself (1972-76) and many of my friends, like yourself, were from far-inland states (Nebraska, Colorado, Arkansas to name a few) and they joined because they wanted to experience the ocean.

Here is some eye candy from the Mid-Atlantic region, two B&O passenger trains at Harpers Ferry, WV in May 1970. Anybody who's been to Harpers Ferry will immediately notice something very unusual: an E-unit on the Shenandoah Sub bridge. That branch only carried freight traffic, but on this particular day one of the twin tracks on the main bridge was closed for maintenance. So train #33 had to park on the old Shenandoah bridge and wait for #8 to pass.

 

[bnsf971]

Good morning. It's raining and 40.