Running Bear's December 2022 Coffee Shop

[TLOC]

You and me both. I'd have to build kits 'til I die and would probably still not get finished!

I have just a couple more merchant row kits left to sell off and all the structure kits will be gone. Been selling them off since 2015. The Fine Scale Minatures kits though were the biggest selling disappointment. Didn’t get the prices I was hoping for except on a very few that went much higher then I thought.

The rolling stock finally got down to the 50’s level I wanted but then I started buying stuff to weather and sell. Then I started on buying unit trains. Need 3 maybe 5. I’m like the little kid in the candy store, not really sure what I want but love all of it. I have an inventory list of everything that I will review after the New Year move and I will re-evaluate then.

 

[Bruette]

Looks like Christmas to me!

I think the old Kentucky Colonel would be proud.

 

[santafewillie]

Gotta start thinning out the fleet.

You and me both. I'd have to build kits 'til I die and would probably still not get finished!

I did manage to stop buying freight cars in 2014. I still need a few more structure kits and I am replacing Blue Box engines with newer ones from ScaleTrains. I can't bear the thought of thinning out the fleet though. However if a deal that I can't refuse comes up on freight cars, I might budge!

 

[bnsf971]

As most of you know, my layout is exclusively DCC. That means now that it's in storage, and my empire consists of a 3x4 plywood base with Unitrack, and DC only, I needed to pick up a few DC engines.
I have 5, plus a pair of the old LifeLike steam engines I hadn't converted yet. There are only two that I got that aren't DCC ready. They were so cheap I couldn't resist. Both of them are the old Atlas/Kato RS3s.
Whenever I regain the use of my layout, everything but them will be converted, and I'll make a decision on them at that time.

 

[Boris]

Hi. Back again. I'm resting up after yesterday, and almost ready to head to the recliner for my mid afternoon nap. I still have a significant number of DC locomotives that need to be upgraded to DCC, as well as a box full of decoders to complete the conversion. Something to do in my spare time.

The Enola PA "Hook", on stand by air, steam and electric at the East End of Enola Yard near "Day" Tower. July 1976 making it the Conrail era. No photographer credited.

 

[logandsawman]

Morning all. Work is pretty slow these days. In my business all of the clients are taking their Christmas vacation. It's slow this time of year, so we can all take a week or two without worrying about something exploding or burning down. Lots of factories (including ours) will shut down over the holidays. I can't take a long vacation this year because I had to burn it all due to my surgery, but it's so dead it almost won't make a difference.

Well, it happened again! Those dirty so-and-so's at Tangent released another new tank car model. This time it's a 10,000 gallon General American car, used for oil, and one of the schemes was for Union Oil out of California. So, you know I couldn't let that one pass, being an SP steam rea modeler. I'm getting to the point where there's quite a variety of these things. I'm thinking maybe a WW2 era oil tank train where lots of different companies' cars would be mixed together, anything that could load oil. That might be interesting! They did their usual bang-up job:
View attachment 158143

A little something to work on ever the holidays!

Those are nice looking tank cars and fit nicely into my era!

I have two of this same style, Roundhouse kits I think or else blue box. As far as thinning out the herd goes, we moved 5 times in 6 years and that takes a toll on posessions. The last two moves we purchased a shipping container and put it on the land where we eventually built our home and that is where the bulk of my RR possessions ended up,

However I continued to purchase truss rod box car kits with appropriate road names, gave me something to putter with. I will probablly purchase a couple more locomotives, that new H600 at trainworld is pretty tempting, would have to buy one and strip the paint to get my color scheme...

 

[rgeiter]

I did manage to stop buying freight cars in 2014. I still need a few more structure kits and I am replacing Blue Box engines with newer ones from ScaleTrains. I can't bear the thought of thinning out the fleet though. However if a deal that I can't refuse comes up on freight cars, I might budge!

I’m a sucker for the old Roundhouse, Athearn, Accurail, Walthers and P2K kits. I find it more satisfying to build my cars. That said, the newer stuff today is absolutely amazing in detail that a kit just couldn’t do. A few came close like Intermountain and P2K.

 

[rgeiter]

BLASPHEMY!

Just my intermodal stuffs, that all.

 

[rgeiter]

Morning all. Work is pretty slow these days. In my business all of the clients are taking their Christmas vacation. It's slow this time of year, so we can all take a week or two without worrying about something exploding or burning down. Lots of factories (including ours) will shut down over the holidays. I can't take a long vacation this year because I had to burn it all due to my surgery, but it's so dead it almost won't make a difference.

Well, it happened again! Those dirty so-and-so's at Tangent released another new tank car model. This time it's a 10,000 gallon General American car, used for oil, and one of the schemes was for Union Oil out of California. So, you know I couldn't let that one pass, being an SP steam rea modeler. I'm getting to the point where there's quite a variety of these things. I'm thinking maybe a WW2 era oil tank train where lots of different companies' cars would be mixed together, anything that could load oil. That might be interesting! They did their usual bang-up job:
View attachment 158143

A little something to work on ever the holidays!

Beautiful looking cars.

 

[TLOC]

Terry is gone shopping, the cell phone is on but ringer was off, the house was silent until I plugged in my IPod and started playing some Tina Tuner. Door bell was ringing. I really wasn’t even sure what it was, as I can’t remember anyone using it. Anyway, Isabel was ringing the bell because I wasn’t answering the phone.

Seems the ground crew has sold some firewood and needed some advice. Guy made an appointment to buy some firewood which I am told he does a few times a year in a 20’ box truck and has since we started advertizing dry firewood. Today he came with a lowboy trailer and a large lift. We have lots of live edge Maple slabs, about 28” x 140” x 3 to 4” thick air drying near the wood shed. Many hundreds more narrower but same thickness. The slabs he wanted have been out there since 2019. Everything is dated. He really checked them over the last time he was here with Isabel. She said today that he had some moisture meter with him then but that was it, no offer. Turns out this guy has sold specialty woods as his side gig forever he said when I spoke to him. He finally retired last October and his side gig is now his full time business/job. He made an offer to Isabel for the maple slabs that she said she needed to talk to the boss about first, me!

His offer seemed pretty good but I went online in front of him and Isabel and checked anyway. A bit low but he said the offer was per slab and there were 26 slabs out there roughly the same size. He wanted all of them. He asked if we’d take a check and we don’t. We take cash or credit card. Called his bank and they would e-transfer to the firewood account.

He said best thing we did was cutting those thick 3-4” slabs. They can be slotted, biscuits added and glued together to make wide tables or desk tops. Hand sanded or run through a plainer. While his employee loaded the lowboy, Isabel showed him the 2 other air drying sheds we have that he had not seen. She is no dummy. He came back and asked me if he could sell what’s in the sheds for a commission.

The crew gets a split of the firewood sales and also for the slabs but this is the first real decent sale we have had on slabs. Based on the preliminary numbers for this sale, the crew of 5 on Friday will each get one hell of a check. It was a good morning and early afternoon.

 

[JeffH]

We have a neighbor who logs for a living. He specializes by doing logging with work horses rather than heavy equipment. It seems a lot of wealthy land owners appreciate that he doesn't make a big mess when he goes into the woods to harvest trees. He'll spend a day harvesting a few trees from deep in the forest where the trees grow tall without a lot of lower branches. He also tends to harvest trees with large burls (sp?) whenever he come across one that looks promising. He also does a lot of work for Amish communities here in Ohio.

 

[TLOC]

We have a neighbor who logs for a living. He specializes by doing logging with work horses rather than heavy equipment. It seems a lot of wealthy land owners appreciate that he doesn't make a big mess when he goes into the woods to harvest trees. He'll spend a day harvesting a few trees from deep in the forest where the trees grow tall without a lot of lower branches. He also tends to harvest trees with large burls (sp?) whenever he come across one that looks promising. He also does a lot of work for Amish communities here in Ohio.

I knew of a couple Amish families in North Central Wisconsin that harvested down timber using their horse teams and dragging out the Timbers in the Winter time. Always was an interesting sight

 

[Espeefan]

I have just a couple more merchant row kits left to sell off and all the structure kits will be gone. Been selling them off since 2015. The Fine Scale Miniatures kits though were the biggest selling disappointment. Didn’t get the prices I was hoping for except on a very few that went much higher than I thought.

FSM kits are tricky. Way WAY more get collected than built. Also, Sellios' methods are dated, and his kits contain a pretty strong amount of whimsy where the trend these days is towards more prototypical looking structures. Don't get me wrong, I like his stuff, but if you compare his kits to kits by say, Sierra West Scale Models, there's better stuff out there, that's easier to build. When selling them off, you have to find the guy who wants "that kit".

 

[Espeefan]

Beautiful looking cars.

I’m a sucker for the old Roundhouse, Athearn, Accurail, Walthers and P2K kits. I find it more satisfying to build my cars. That said, the newer stuff today is absolutely amazing in detail that a kit just couldn’t do. A few came close like Intermountain and P2K.

I think we all cut our teeth on those. P2K and the old Intermountain and Red Caboose kits build into nice cars, but they came before etched metal parts and are very delicate. You look at them mean and parts break off! I had that issue with Red Caboose tank cars. Beautiful, but don't touch them! You can get the same detail level out of resin kits, but they are close in cost to these RTR cars and you often have to provide trucks and couplers. I'd rather budget my modeling time towards building structures and stuff I can't get any other way. It's all about priorities!

 

[PRR Modeler]

Afternoon All,

Started out with some chores then ran errands. I picked up a couple more books at the library to read at night.

Our family tradition is on the 24th we get together and go to a movie. This started when daughter and son were young to take their minds off of Christmas for a couple of hours. On Christmas we go to daughter's house to exchange gifts and share a family supper.

Christian- Great photo. They could be related they look so much alike.

Joe- I'm glad that things went well for you, but sorry to hear about the valve. Interesting crane photo with the hose.

Jazz- That meme is great.

Jeff- I like orange rolls but haven't been able to find them locally for 2 years.

Willie- I didn't realize that you had European cars. Do you have a full train? At my old club one guy had a WWII German train along with AAC cars and a railcar cannon. It looked impressive.

Alan- Nice looking tank cars.

I hope everyone has a good night.

 

[TLOC]

FSM kits are tricky. Way WAY more get collected than built. Also, Sellios' methods are dated, and his kits contain a pretty strong amount of whimsy where the trend these days is towards more prototypical looking structures. Don't get me wrong, I like his stuff, but if you compare his kits to kits by say, Sierra West Scale Models, there's better stuff out there, that's easier to build. When selling them off, you have to find the guy who wants "that kit".

Alan. I agree with every word you typed here.

I didn’t buy the FSM kits to sell and make money. I had a friend getting a divorce in 1976 who owned the LHS where I grew up. He offered me 70+ FSM kits, all his Campbell kits, all the Athearn, all his brass steam for truly pennies on the dollar. I basically gave him $2500 for about $30,000.00 worth of MRR stuff. This was 2 months before I got married. He didn‘t want his wife to get anything from his business. He also sold bikes and they all but a few mysteriously disappeared one weekend he had the kids with him on a weekend vacation. I got none of those.

So even though I might have sold them or a bit above the suggested retail I still made money. After I retired in 2014 and found the buy/sell sites on Facebook, I put the remaining FSM kits online. The ones I thought would bring in the dollars didn’t, others I didn’t did. You never know. George Sellios is IMO a master artist but his grimy image of the world is not mine. He made wonderful kits, his detail parts in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s were the best and as good as anything now.

 

[Espeefan]

George Sellios is IMO a master artist but his grimy image of the world is not mine. He made wonderful kits, his detail parts in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s were the best and as good as anything now.

He definitely had a vision! His detail parts are available separately now, a company whose name escapes me at the moment markets them. I've bought a few! They are nice, but Sierra West has begun 3D printing detail parts, and they are finer than George's cast parts. I have a box of them here on my desk. Here are a few examples: What do you think?

 

[chadbag]

Terry is gone shopping, the cell phone is on but ringer was off, the house was silent until I plugged in my IPod and started playing some Tina Tuner. Door bell was ringing. I really wasn’t even sure what it was, as I can’t remember anyone using it. Anyway, Isabel was ringing the bell because I wasn’t answering the phone.

Seems the ground crew has sold some firewood and needed some advice. Guy made an appointment to buy some firewood which I am told he does a few times a year in a 20’ box truck and has since we started advertizing dry firewood. Today he came with a lowboy trailer and a large lift. We have lots of live edge Maple slabs, about 28” x 140” x 3 to 4” thick air drying near the wood shed. Many hundreds more narrower but same thickness. The slabs he wanted have been out there since 2019. Everything is dated. He really checked them over the last time he was here with Isabel. She said today that he had some moisture meter with him then but that was it, no offer. Turns out this guy has sold specialty woods as his side gig forever he said when I spoke to him. He finally retired last October and his side gig is now his full time business/job. He made an offer to Isabel for the maple slabs that she said she needed to talk to the boss about first, me!

His offer seemed pretty good but I went online in front of him and Isabel and checked anyway. A bit low but he said the offer was per slab and there were 26 slabs out there roughly the same size. He wanted all of them. He asked if we’d take a check and we don’t. We take cash or credit card. Called his bank and they would e-transfer to the firewood account.

He said best thing we did was cutting those thick 3-4” slabs. They can be slotted, biscuits added and glued together to make wide tables or desk tops. Hand sanded or run through a plainer. While his employee loaded the lowboy, Isabel showed him the 2 other air drying sheds we have that he had not seen. She is no dummy. He came back and asked me if he could sell what’s in the sheds for a commission.

The crew gets a split of the firewood sales and also for the slabs but this is the first real decent sale we have had on slabs. Based on the preliminary numbers for this sale, the crew of 5 on Friday will each get one hell of a check. It was a good morning and early afternoon.

I’m just seeing guitar bodies. Screw the tables etc.

 

[chadbag]

Wednesday morning at 10:50am here in Tokyo Odaiba. Partially overcast. 44F (should get a bit warmer). Rain forecast.

family left a 1/2 hour ago as we have an appointment in Asakusa for a Kimono rental for the daughter. The son didn’t want to do it but he was having second thoughts so I think they’ll ask if he can fit in.

I wasn’t ready yet (one bathroom — 4 people) but I’ll be leaving shortly to join them. Asakusa and the Skytree are the agenda today I think.

Hilton breakfast was approximately the same. Some of the chef hat guy specialty order stuff was different (and I didn’t partake as my plate was already full) and no tater tots but fried potato chunks. Some of the Japanese foods may have been switched out. Here is a pic showing all 4 of our initial plates. Kudos to whoever can place the person with their plate (me, wife, 19 yo son, 14 yo daughter).

 

[kbkchooch]

Oh boy, what a mess near Chattanooga !