Running Bear's January 2022 Coffee Shop

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Good morning all,

looks like an early crowd, it is -24 here with wind chill about -40. Made it to work, only met about 8 cars and caught up to about 6 others on my 60 mile commute. Pretty rural area.

Smudge - I am not much of a fan of any sports. Sometimes I do enjoy reading the banter about it, however!


I am getting stuff transferred to the new layout table top - it is going to be a good time to touch up some of the buildings.

Here is a shot of some dusty stuff. No use cleaning them until it is time to set them in place and have the landscaping done around them:

IMG_1878.JPG


This height is 48" which will be a dream to work under. My last one was 36 or 38, which was easy to reach, however I find I have to do very little bending when working on scenery

Have a good day

Dave LASM
 


Morning all,

15° and clear this morning. Going for a high in the low 50's.

Gotta go to the bank when they open to get a new debit card. Bank is refunding us the lost money and I do think they were "testing" the waters to see if we were paying attention. 2 things eating at me about the whole situation: How did they get my card number and why did their stuff go through without me getting a flagging email? Every online purchase I made since I got the new card in November, got denied until I called the bank, except these to Apple computer (which by the way. I'll never own an Apple Product). Oh well, crap I'll never know. I do know when I travel further than a few hundred miles to call them so they know we're traveling.

RIP: Bob Saget. I really loved his comedy, even before his TV shows.

On to trains:

Got to work on my GP-9 yesterday. I don't know why I keep thing it's an SD. Anyway, Using the many of the wrong parts from the GP40 box it was in, I got most of the short stantions I needed and was able to make additional short ones using the longer ones. The GP9 and the GP40 use the same straps and brake parts, so I was able to utilize those and the headlights I adapted to to fit by cutting them in 2 and gluing them individually.

While I panted the railings I made, I had to remake one as there appear to be 2 different railing types on one side of the GP9.

Here are my pictures:

20220109_105453.jpg
20220109_124616.jpg
20220109_161616.jpg
20220109_161645.jpg
20220109_161706.jpg
20220109_161709.jpg


I did install "glass" in the cab windows. I'm not sure I like the way the turned out, but they are better than not having any. Cab is not yet attached to the base as I still need to get the horns. They appear to be still available and I'm not sure if I can attach them with the 2 pieces together. I will say the rails don't look quite so bad in person.

I also cleaned and lubed the motor and running parts again. I cleaned the rails with a piece of denim cloth from an old pair of my jeans. This was a tip I found or heard several years ago, and I gotta say I was surprised at what appeared on a piece of dry cloth and how much better the trains ran. That said, what cleaning fluid would any of you recommend?
 
BigGRacing said:
Is that a scratch built station or kit Dave ?
Click to expand...

The station is a scratch built. I drew plans using several photographs, it was originally constructed around 1892 I think,

This is the back side, I can see it is a little out of square where the bottom of the wall meets the floor, all the flaws are on the back of the building, which will be towards the wall.
 
Good morning all. Cold, but sunny here in southeast Illinois. Day number 3 of my vacation and really enjoying not being at work. I have to go by work today to exchange some faucet supply lines I bought since I bought the wrong size. Stupid me knew exactly what to buy and I still managed to pick up the wrong ones somehow. Need to pick up some other hardware items while I'm there and then hopefully won't see the place again till Saturday.

Going to spend some time with out oldest granddaughter today (and buy here lunch and college books). Growing up, she spent nearly every weekend of her life with us and I sure miss her now that she's out on her own. She was my little buddy and we did so much together.

Haven't started on my Accurail kit yet. Need to run somewhere for glue. I did find some good candidates for weathering practice so I can learn on them before doing anything to stuff I care about. I had forgotten about a box of old freight car shells out in the garage. Those will be perfect to learn on. Just need to get some weathering supplies and do a little learning before getting started.

Nothing else going on. Hope you all have a great day!
Ken
 
Patrick said:
Morning all,

15° and clear this morning. Going for a high in the low 50's.

Gotta go to the bank when they open to get a new debit card. Bank is refunding us the lost money and I do think they were "testing" the waters to see if we were paying attention. 2 things eating at me about the whole situation: How did they get my card number and why did their stuff go through without me getting a flagging email? Every online purchase I made since I got the new card in November, got denied until I called the bank, except these to Apple computer (which by the way. I'll never own an Apple Product). Oh well, crap I'll never know. I do know when I travel further than a few hundred miles to call them so they know we're traveling.

RIP: Bob Saget. I really loved his comedy, even before his TV shows.

On to trains:

Got to work on my GP-9 yesterday. I don't know why I keep thing it's an SD. Anyway, Using the many of the wrong parts from the GP40 box it was in, I got most of the short stantions I needed and was able to make additional short ones using the longer ones. The GP9 and the GP40 use the same straps and brake parts, so I was able to utilize those and the headlights I adapted to to fit by cutting them in 2 and gluing them individually.

While I panted the railings I made, I had to remake one as there appear to be 2 different railing types on one side of the GP9.

Here are my pictures:

View attachment 138533View attachment 138534View attachment 138535View attachment 138536View attachment 138537View attachment 138538

I did install "glass" in the cab windows. I'm not sure I like the way the turned out, but they are better than not having any. Cab is not yet attached to the base as I still need to get the horns. They appear to be still available and I'm not sure if I can attach them with the 2 pieces together. I will say the rails don't look quite so bad in person.

I also cleaned and lubed the motor and running parts again. I cleaned the rails with a piece of denim cloth from an old pair of my jeans. This was a tip I found or heard several years ago, and I gotta say I was surprised at what appeared on a piece of dry cloth and how much better the trains ran. That said, what cleaning fluid would any of you recommend?
Click to expand...
I find IPA, works quite well, for cleaning motors and wheels etc.
 


Greetings all!

Still around. Back to a routine now that stay-cation is over and hopefully wife on full mend. Her flu morphed into a URI and she was not well most all last week. Still managed to have a decent time away from both offices, but not what we hoped. Now back to routine.

I did get one job done on the layout. One of the two electromagnet decouplers (Kadee) energizes, but does not produce enough magnetic force to actually uncouple the cars/locos. I suspected bad soldering connections, because I foolishly did not solder on pigtails before installation, so was working way up under the bench. I did some vid-research and some practice, and resoldered the power connections with a good western union splice. But still no joy! Won't uncouple cars.

I suppose I will contact Kadee and see if they can give suggestions. Otherwise, it will be time to cut the track and remove/replace the unit. Not the end of the world, I guess. - - -- Steve J
 
Greetings from the West! Starting at 44F looking for a 66F high with partial sunny.

FLO, another Monday, I would like a CFS with home fries, lots of gravy, and two eggs up with whole wheat toast and a glass of WILLIE's famous OJ to drink!

Lots of "running around" today! The Spousal Unit is coming home around noon - after she gets a Covid test with the daughter.
No news from the son in law last evening and so far. Later guys!
 
chadbag said:
well, they did. The IBM compatible market came because people were able to reverse engineer the BIOS. Before that they had IBM kind of compatible and the test was if it ran flight simulator. IBM didn't do anything to open up their architecture. People just worked at it until they had broken the BIOS and had compatible code.

Apple's hardware was no more proprietary than IBMs. Apple used industry standard CPU chips from motorola, and industry standard bus and (most) ports (ADB pr Apple Desktop Bus being the only real proprietary port)
Click to expand...
You are correct

IBM threatened, but quickly settled with those few companies who reverse engineered the Bios.

IBM could have chosen to challenge the Compact Portable but they did not. That and IBM's use of commodity components opened the door for what became an industry standard selling point "100% IBM compatible" for HP, Dell, Gateway and many others, even my little, but very profitable company, Bruette Computers.

i can't leave out intel, direct sourcing of the 386 was a big boost to us clone manufacturers and helped make Intel the industry leader.

Cyrix with their original foundry parter Texas Instruments and later IBM offered another hi-performance, lower cost option to Intel. I chose to agree to only using Intel parts in exchange for a wide variety of support from Intel.

No one successfully reverse engineered apple. By success I mean to become competition to apple. I think for two reasons, apple would have challenged them in court and apple would have substantially cut into the profits of apple clone manufacturers if we had to use proprietary apple components, even for just a few parts. I don't think we would have ever seen "100% apple compatible" or will we ever.
 
kbkchooch said:
Good idea. Thanks!

I’ll see if I can find it locally before ordering from the evil empire.
Click to expand...
Evil Empire! From the man who just got an apple phone!? 😮

If you were an Amazon employee I would understand you thinking of them as the evil empire. As customers they bend over backwards for us and often have insanely low mark up on their products! They are sometimes so cheap that I buy from them for resale.
If Amazon has done something to upset you, call them, they will try to make you happy. Best of all, a real live person will answer the phone!
 
chadbag said:
I have nothing against WordPerfect and don't use Word myself (being an Apple person I just use the Apple word processor "Pages") but I worked at WordPerfect from 93-94, about 18 months, and had friends who continued to work there for a while, and it seemed that they were no longer modernizing it and still using the old 80s based technology.
Click to expand...
Corel is the current distributor. While it's still oriented toward Lawyers and PHDs, it is updated annually, and some of the most annoying features are less annoying. Perhaps the crudest part is how it handles PDF files. But it works for my purposes, and doesn't hold me hostage for an annual fee. I'm a spreadsheet user, and Quatro Pro works well for me. At best, it's on a par with Excel, but I haven't used Exceel for a few years now. BTW, come February, I'm two upgrades behind. I rarely use the presentation program, but it reads Power Point.
 
Alcomotive said:
Here we go again.....


www.ebay.com

2 Utah Belt Athearn HO ACF 4 bay covered hoppers | eBay

These 2 Utah Belt ACF 4 bay covered hoppers, numbers 209325 and 209317, are the older Athearn "blue box" models that have had the cast on grabirons replaced with wire. The end stirrups have been replaced with those from A-line. The brake wheel is a Kadee item. They both are equipped with...
www.ebay.com
Click to expand...
Still shocked as to how much folks will pay for his stuff. He is a Model Railroader legend that MR created and that’s good for him. It is my understanding he is a great guy besides a good modeler.

TomO
 
When it comes to software I think it's like a baseball glove. Use the one that fits you best and you like the most.

Personally I use Microsoft's Office. Considering the extras I get, like the 1TB cloud storage and Publisher I'm happy with what I pay for it. Microsoft even has rewards points for every purchase and using Bing I get points with every search. Not that I get to use the points for myself. The points go the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, but that saves me money buying games they provide for free.
 


Good Morning All. Clear and 28°, supposedly the last sub-freezing temperature in the ten day forecast. Kinda nice yesterday after the wind died down. Beautiful sunrise this morning.
IMG_0166.JPG


Household chores this morning, then some pre-planting garden prep after that today. Tomorrow a doctor appointment for me for a change. The annual dermatologist look-see. I was clear the last two times after a couple of cancerous spots were removed in 2019.

Hockey - I love that game even though I rarely watch it any more. I know and understand all of the rules. Fast paced and exciting. One intriguing thing at in-person games is changing on the fly. Takes really close observation by the coach/team and excellent coordination.

My other SIL now has Covid. Very mild and he wouldn't have known if he hadn't taken a home test. At our delayed Christmas gathering last Monday, he sat on one side of my wife, and on her other side sat my other SIL who's positive previously was the reason we had postponed to begin with.

Many thanks to all who liked the various photos yesterday; Tom, Tom O, Christian, OB Ken, Justin, Joe, Louis, Karl, Hughie, Gary, IB Ken, Guy, Chad, Patrick.

Just a toasted, buttered whole wheat English Muffin with OJ this morning Flo. Still stuffed from our trip to the Italian Ristorante last night.

Short day out in the train shed yesterday, as Sundays usually are. I mainly did a little more painting on the eight figures that are on the workbench right now.
IMG_0165.JPG

I also retrieved a late Birthday present from the mailbox that came Saturday. The first ever product that I have ever received from Monroe Models. A set of six metal castings that my wife said will make any home on the layout resemble ours.
IMG_0164.JPG

These parts are real nice, very minimal flashing and well detailed. I am looking forward to getting to them; I have a number of places that they will fit in well. Deciding which place is going to be tough.
Train shed should be warm enough for more ground foam later today. It was 65° out there yesterday but time was short.

Smudge - Loved the story about the three-legged race.😍
OB Ken - My LHS is 55 miles or so away, but in Texas that's considered local. It's also less than 5 miles from all of my local grandkids, so one trip usually kills two birds. I also seriously considered purchasing the one about 30 miles away when that owner decided to retire. But he confided to me that he was no longer making money, especially since I was retired and no longer purchasing as much. I was also at the time in my life that I no longer wanted or needed another job.
Joe - I actually enjoy painting the "little people". I think that they really bring scenes on the layout to life. Buying them pre-painted would break the bank, although around 10% of mine are "store bought".
Tom O - I particularly like the excessive wood chips overflowing onto the tracks. Quite realistic.

Everybody have a great day. Stay safe.
 
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