Running Bear's February 2025 Coffee Shop

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Good morning from a cold Wisconsin. Actual temperature is +5f degrees but feels like -9!

The snow removal service has cleaned up twice since noon yesterday. I just watched 90 minutes ago as he was loading up the trailer when the City snow plow came through and dumped a good 2' high and about 3' deep onto the driveway apron. He unloaded and cleaned that again. I think we had 8"+ but NWS says 6. So 6" it is. Either way, it's more than doubled our total for the season. Terry says the TV guy said this morning we are about 20" behind the seasonal amount.

The layout work session for today was cancelled last night due to the snow as one of the guys going wanting to know if the owner was going to cancel. Finally he did! I would have gone as 5-8" the next morning usually means the roads are fine, but...

I'll spend time on a few things in the train room today. I did order a buddy board, a Soundtraxx Tsunami2 decoder, a SSS speaker and new LED's for the GP15-1 received Monday from a client. The front ditch lights didn't work as the LED's were dead. I would have returned it but when I gave the owner a price he didn't finch. This unit will also get heavily graffiti and the front end will be similar to the picture below! By the way, that is a NOSE!
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I skipped the 2-3 mile treadmill walk to nowhere this morning, so a nap is in order. Soon!

Enjoy the day
 
Morning all (actually it's lunchtime here now!)

Postman has brought me two very different items of mail this morning. You may recall from earlier last week that I acquired a box car from an ebay seller which carried the fictional Davan Valley name, probably came from a deceased modellers estate. Well, the same seller had another box car from the same fictional fallen flag and the two have been reunited:
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I do wonder if there is a DV loco out there somewhere to go with them but the seller doesn't have any more DV stock. I may assemble an old Blue Box switcher to match.

The other item of mail was this Chinese switcher thing:
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It's parentage is questionable but appears to be loosely based around the old Athearn Hustler model. These are being churned out brand new from a Chinese manufacturer and my initial thought that this could provide a replacement chassis for my old Athearn rubber band drive Hustler.

I'll do a separate review thread this evening.
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 19°, should hit 41° later on. Up and down temperatures for a few days, and then it may not get above freezing next Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe rain again Tuesday. Could be interesting. No snow predicted at this time.

Still wet outside, but not so bad that I couldn't do a couple of chores out there yesterday, just had to stay on the grass. It was cold though and never got above 39° with a stiff north wind. Still have the wind this morning, except it's coming out of the east instead. I did laundry inside first. Today's plan includes the weekly grocery trek. I need to stop by the hearing aid place to get a new earbud for one that separated. He'll replace both while he's at it.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I completed the P2K covered hopper kit; took lots of pictures but left the camera out there. That's getting to be much too common here lately.
I forgot to mention that earlier this week, I pre-ordered 6 more SD40-2's from Scaletrains. They're due in September. That should finally replace my remaining Athearn Blue Box locos with the clear blank numberboards. My attempts to add numbers has not been very successful, I managed to get only 1 out of 4 attempts satisfactorily. They're also beginning to show their age and are just not as detailed as the newer ones. I've added some stuff, but I can't duplicate the quality of the new Scaletrains models. These Athearn ones have those unsightly gaps below the couplers. I hid some with snowplows, but disassembly became more complex. I also ran a few trains since it has been about a week!

Here's one of the trains that I ran.
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Terry - Yep! That's how my brother keeps his gin cold.

Everyone have a great Thursday.
 


Woke up to rain on 1" snow accumulation. Temp at 34 degrees. Last night weather
folks expected the snow with freezing rain. Would have had a much different
outcome if the temperature dropped 2 more degrees. Not complaining.
We shoveled the slush since the snowblower would not pick up the slush.
 
29 degrees, 20+ mph gusts, and 2"-4" of snow starting about 7am. This evening it's some freezing rain, then another 1"-2" of snow on top Friday morning. Saturday rain and 42 degrees.

We're at about 500' on a 15%-20% grade, in unincorporated county. The major roads around us get de-icing, but no plows or salt. The top of our street is at about 750'. Many cars have lost it over the years coming down and piling up, in the S curve just above our house. I'll never understand people thinking that AWD and street tires will be all you need. :rolleyes:

I'll go out this morning and get a few things, but we will be hunkered down for the next day or two. I've driven on 1" of ice with chains on, but I won't play that game anymore.

SFWillie - Do you know if Scaletrains has plans to produce any 1st generation switchers or engines?
 
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Good Morning All!
-1F @ 50% - weather guessers lied. Now saying up to 25F by 1700, 18F tonight/tomorra morning. No clouds in sight. White starting tomorra until Wednesday. We will see.

Maria has 2 Dr appointments - 0830 and 1000 so morning is going to be filled up. I suspect I don't need to go to the 2nd (Colonoscopy) so another day of keeping the house warm.

Willie: Ya, Larch or Red Fir would be the cat's meow although since the cook stove is not air tight, it still burns stuff pretty fast. No way I can fix that either else driving a new air tight under it.

Got out in the Train Shed for a bit yesterday. Had the screw-it's so did not do much, my bad. Watched a couple of movies and napped. It is so much fun waking up in the next movie queued up and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Guess that I needed it as I have been running around like a headless chicken.

For those that remember - I quit Ozempic the 1st week in January. Ordered a new batch before the end of the year - didn't arrive until the end of 2nd week in Jan so I figured what the heck have been out for over a week so - get off of it. So now I am over a month and half without. There have been body changes for the good. Not dizzy, can walk and chew gum at the same time and my general balance is better - no ladder climbing though. Have not gained any weight - still hover around 205 - 210 and I am sleeping better. Blood Sugar has not changed much. Most of the time I am under 120 fasting. Downside is my sinuses are back although not bad. After the fact I did find out that Ozempic targets muscle and shrinks them so I am trying to eat more Protein with some simple exercise to build back up again. The new GLP1's target fat and leave the muscle alone. Don't know what the difference is for Type II like me though.

L8r
 
Good morning all!

Its a cold Northern Illinois morning:

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Yesterdays snow storm was less than overwhelming! We were lucky if we got 2" total. Far cry from the 8"+ that was predicted. I did fire up the snow blower and clear the drive and sidewalk this morning.

Ran out a while ago and got all my Valentines shopping done for tomorrow. Also dropped off the packet to the accountant to see what the damage is.

Not much else happening today.

Stay safe and warm everyone!
 
Bruette said:
The pass-out game, also known as the choking game, involves teenagers depriving themselves of oxygen to achieve a high, which causes them to lose consciousness and faint. However, this dangerous activity can lead to brain damage, seizures, and head trauma
Not my kind of game. o_O
Click to expand...
We did are share of stupid stuff as youngster, but nothing like what's done for social media attention.
 


Well, howdy there internet peeps, and those who participated in take your toddler to pressers with the prez day!

It's Troy again.

Weight loss: down 10 lb from my high during the winter sweets binging. Hit that milestone today, despite the pan pizza yesterday. Cutting sweets seems to be the trick.

I'll need a nap this afternoon. Waking at 1:30 ish wasn't in my plans, but here we are.

It snowed about 1 inch, with freezing rain over night. It wasn't hard to clean off. We've gotten about another half-inch since then, and we're on the diminishing side of that.

Here's a pic of the clean patio: While it lasted.

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This morning while trying to sleep I did remember that not all water softener salt is pellets. I checked the availability at my local stores and I can get "crystals" for my use on the patio in the softener salt area. So lack of "ice melt" solved. One bag should last the rest of the season. Anything left I can make salt brine out of and get a garden sprayer. Pre apply the brine, and the freezing rain shouldn't stick too badly.

My goal is to make shovelling (pushing snow, not lifting and flinging) as easy as possible.

Looks like it's about lunch time. BBL
 
Good late Atlantic Time Zone afternoon.
A major winter weather event has just begun here in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
My PC has died, which ought to mean I can actually get back to model railroading. We shall see.
To keep things going, posting a pic from my N Scale Cape Breton and Central Nova layout.
Dinner prep has been called by SWMBO so things to do, things to do...
 

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der 5997 said:
Good late Atlantic Time Zone afternoon.
A major winter weather event has just begun here in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
My PC has died, which ought to mean I can actually get back to model railroading. We shall see.
To keep things going, posting a pic from my N Scale Cape Breton and Central Nova layout.
Dinner prep has been called by SWMBO so things to do, things to do...
Click to expand...
Ah, the CBNS. I used to run the roads all over NB and NS, based out of Saint John, I would usually take my camera and shoot what I could of the trains. Somewhere I have some shots of a dimensional load going to Pt Tupperware as it crossed the causeway. I liked the GP50s, I thought they looked good.
 
migalyto said:
That is an awesome model! A true train-room treasure!

Can you tell us a little more how you went about building it?
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Mike the hardest part was making the wheels. I went to Home Depot and bought 4 of these 18 X 1 round wood stool seats. I routed the edges and made the flange with the router. Then I took a 2 inch hole saw and drilled the outer holes in the wheels and then a 1 inch hole saw and drilled out the inner holes in the wheels. Then I took a drywall type saw to join the 2-inch and 1-inch holes together. I took 4 lazy susan's and screwed them to each wheel and then screwed each wheel with the lazy susan attached to a plywood back board. All the wheel now moved freely. The rest I can only guess because I forgot, I know there's a dowl in each wheel that fits into a plastic bearing that's glued inside the main driving rod which enables' everything to move in a circular motion. This is the bearing that fell out and has to be glued back in for everything to work again. I would have to take everything apart for this to happen. So for now, it's just a stationary display.
Swal

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