Happy Friday, Shop Dwellers! It's 38*F and clear with an 8mph West breeze in my central MD neighborhood.
Here's the roundup of thank-you's for the "likes" and supportive comments on my Wednesday night post:
Dave-LASM, Hughie, Garry, Sherrell, Lee, Joe, Patrick, Tom-C, Willie, Gary, Chad, Tom-O, Karl, James, Justin, Curt
Ken, love that train station, any chance of a couple more pics, and is it scratch-built or Kit ?
Gary, I do appreciate the kind comment! Unfortunately, the folder I had with photos of that old layout never made it onto any of the new PCs I'd bought since the time of that photo (July 2006). I dug up this one from a folder of rescued PhotoBucket images (as I did with the one I posted on Wednesday) but the station building is partially obscured by the CSX SD70-Mac...
BTW - It's just a "vanilla" copy of a kit I assembled that Life-Like put out while they were still headquartered in Baltimore, they did a few Maryland-based prototype building kits during that time. This one depicts the B&O Sykesville, MD station on the historic Old Main Line - about a 15-minute drive from my neighborhood. It's been converted to a restaurant called Baldwin's, named for the architect who designed this and numerous other B&O structures; I ate there
once, and haven't been back because the food was rather lame for the prices they charge.
Willie, those Walthers flashing crossbucks look
fantastic - so much that, in fact, I may consider replacing all my NJ International crossbucks with those. The quality of NJ Int'l products really took a nose-dive over the past 15 years, I suspect that may be because the U.S.-based craftsmen who once manufactured them retired, and farmed out the work to some China contractor.
. . .
Not much new on the train front. Work has kept me hopping. Too tired when I get home. . . .
Patrick -
I resemble that remark!
...and
that gives me the perfect segue into the remainder of tonight's post. I haven't done any mrr stuff in the past few days [unless posting messages in
here counts as such?] Similar to what Patrick shared earlier, on workdays my time belongs to my employer until ~5pm, after that it's time for the daily household chores (firewood and assisting with supper). My free time last night was used up because a local friend who I haven't been able to visit since the Covid plague intensified, called me right after supper and I spent ~1 hour on the phone with him. And then I spent the rest of the evening composing an email message for him with all of the pics I've shared in here of my F9-to-F7 conversion project.
I've also been closely monitoring the winter weather situation. It appears my region will once again be hit with snow on Sunday morning - not a 48-hour mess like last week, but enough that I'll have to use the snowblower again to clear the driveway. I've put ~4 hours of run time on it so far, and I'm supposed to do the first oil change at the 5-hour mark. I'm just going to start it and let it run for an hour or so tomorrow, so I can swap out the oil on the driveway while the outdoor temperature is above freezing. I don't want to wait until after the weekend when that Arctic blast is gonna invade the East! Remember, my garage is totally taken up by the layout and my shed doesn't have lighting - or enough space for me to work inside of it comfortably. 4 out of 5 meteorologists say we'll be getting a parade of these winter storms all the way into mid-March, at least once and sometimes twice per week. I don't want to have to deal with any new-machine maintenance beyond tomorrow...at least until next Fall.
. One of my Christmas gifts came from Sharper Image. It is a weighted pack that fits over the back and has both heat and vibration. Get that on and settle back in the Lazyboy and in a little while all is well. Don’t forget to get you a thermos of fresh coffee before you get in the LazyBoy.
