Good Morning All. Cloudy and 40°. Might warm up to 50° today, mid-60's Monday but with rain. Looks like winter will hit here next Friday night with a low in the teens.
Not much of anything yesterday except the same old household chores due to the rain Thursday night. There is still some standing water around because I failed to reestablish the runoff pathways last summer. Just too hot all season. Today will be no better, dishwasher needs to be emptied and it's Epiphany so the Christmas decorations will start to be removed. Tree is tomorrow. But I will get out the totes today. Caught two rats out by the woodpile last night, so disposal this morning. I got another trap on the Thursday grocery trek and set them side by side...I guess that seeing one of their companions caught in the adjacent trap meant nothing to the second one. That's six this week. I might just have to see about getting a "barn cat" from the shelter.
Out in the train shed yesterday, I diverted my attention for what will be a couple of days. While moving the trains out of the staging yard, I noticed a few that were a bit dusty. So I looked at the cleaning log and realized that the last deep cleaning (other than tank cars) was in 2018. So as I move complete trains back into the yard, I am cleaning and inspecting each car one at a time. Yesterday I did 39 freight cars and 3 engines. I had to make repairs on two steel coil cars, both needed reattachment of the 3" grab rails that ran along the sides of the coil covers. One was completely missing, and the other I knocked off while handling. Today I will paint the new one that I made.
View attachment 179109
The car inspection part entails checking coupler height and coupler action; and looking for any missing parts. Other than the missing grab bar on the coil car, all was OK with the cars that I did yesterday. I still have 4 air brake reservoirs that I have found over the past few years that I am still looking for a home for. However they were all found on the upper level and these cars are on the lower level.
Just to keep the grain elevator/cemetery project going, I did finish the second grain delivery pipe and started on the third "extra long" one. It's the one between the elevator head and the building itself.
Todd - I don't think that we have ever run out of TP. Wife starts panicking when the stash gets down to 10 rolls and I have to buy another 30-pack at Target. She had me put it on the list last week, and when I went to put the new package in to storage, I noted that we still had 14 rolls left!
Troy - Re: PepsiCo' profits. I often wonder who the "industry analysts" are who make these projections; and how much we should really listen to them.