Running Bear's January 2026 Coffee Shop

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Good morning! It's Tuesday, 45°F and partly cloudy. :cool: Have a great day!;)

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Well, howdy there internet peeps and those with carefully placed tools and faulty memories.

It's Troy again.

Managed to sleep in until 5:50 this morning. That extra 1.8 hours of sleep might make a difference. In what, I don't know.

It's currently 37 F-degrees, high of 45 today. About an hour of light showers expected.

I was able to get in a walk outside yesterday. Good, since I'm on a negative cookie cycle following the holidays. Need to drop at least 10 lbs before the cruise in 6 weeks. And that means I need to walk outside.

Today I need to head to the bank to cash my jury check, and then off to find the nearest can recycling bin to benefit Habitat for Humanity. They only want aluminum, so all the diet Dr. Pepper cans will head that way.
 
Good morning all!

Should be a decent weather day today. Currently its 36F with an expected high of 44F. Only downer is it will
be mostly cloudy.

Not sure what today will bring. Have a few things to do around the house and some errands to run, but nothing big is planned.

Daughters basketball game is away tonight so dinner will out somewhere,

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Good Morning All!
34F @ 91% and dark. White has pretty much gone away. More maybe sometime during the week, although the day temps are 38F and up; 'cept for Thursday @ 32F. Wondering what happened to the Montana winters? Ya, still the rest of this month, Feb and March so we will see. At the Jan/Feb split we usually have -F weather for a week or two.

Just keeping up with life, things are progressing ... slowly.

One more fix try on the dishwasher and if that don't work, I will fix it with a BFH.

For your giggles and grins:
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I installed a Leviton Motion Sensor in the pantry. Works as advertised. Problem is that this cat ( Muchkin ) will go in the pantry, jump up on the small freezer that sits below the sensor and look at it. Light turns on. She then will jump down and go out of the pantry, turn around, wait for the light to turn off ( 30 seconds ), then jump back on the freezer. Light turns on. This continues until she get bored or something else gets her attention. Well, she thinks she is turning the light on by looking at it? Anyway, I finally found out that it is a PIR sensor vs RF/UHF so a piece of black electrical tape on bottom of the viewport worked. What we have to go through...right?

I am Dragon .. 1952

IPhone - boy, what you all go through with those. 15ish years ago ( or more ) we were thinking of getting one cuz a good friend had one and was hawking it to us. Problem was it would butt dial on occasion. Heck the thing even decided to dial sitting on a counter all by itself with nobody around. We got some interesting conversations every once-in-awhile. Went with Samsung S4 I think, at that time and still am Samsung. If the current Samsung S15 starts doing crap like y'all go through, back to the flip-phone I go -or- even more ancient - 1 ringy-dingy, 2 ringy-dingy....

L8r
 
Morning all,

40° and clear, high later of 64°, which will tie our record for the date. Then expecting a cold snap with a possibility of snow here Friday night.

As far as Christmas being the season that keeps on giving, the wife has done a great job the past few years of getting either the gifts or saving ahead to pay cash for everything as we get them. Not saying we don't use a credit card, but the bill gets paid in full upon receipt.

Had a call come in yesterday that a part-time person can't get his email. Upon further review, he started near the end of August, changed his password, and then promptly never logged in again. Password expired 60 days later (October) and is now trying to get into email. Guess what, you have to logon once at least every 60 days to reset your password, can't do it from outside the network. He needed it sooner, but he thinks he can come in on Wednesday sometime to get his stuff reset. If you need something bad enough to get with HR instead of IT, and then you can't come in for a couple of days, why are you even on our active employee roster? I'm getting old, I guess.

BBL
 
Good very wet morning from a totally confused State of Wisconsin. It’s raining and what remaining snow cover including those pesky plowed mounds of it might be gone when it turns to freezing rain this afternoon! Mother Nature has her way of doing things and I think she’s washing away the gloom of the last few days.

It’s Tuesday and possible movie day. Last week was Song Sung Blue that I reported on as a must see. Today, we are not wasting any $$$ on what’s showing this week. Our monthly trip to Terry’s friend in Racine was supposed to be this week but life interrupts again, this time on the friend’s side. Maybe next week the car will somehow find itself turning off I94 to Hiawatha Hobbies. I have an itch to buy 2 diesels for my fleet that really are not needed. I want Hiawatha’s final 2 Sd30c-ECO’s but not so badly to have them held. If they are there next week when we stop on the way to Terry’s friend fine, I’ll buy them. If they are gone,it’s no biggie.

Thursday night I’m invited to a last minute OPS night. It’s a bring your own motive power which happens at most 3 times a year within the operations groups I belong to. But this layout is not part of either group. This will give the Wisconsin Interstate a real chance to stretch its feet. The main line on this layout is 2 decks and almost 500’ between staging yards or 8 times more than my mainline! Since Racine is out, I said yes to going. 7pm to 11 and only 3 miles from me. A rare treat as I’m not generally an invited guest operator there

Today will involve some weathering. I did receive 3 box’s of freight cars yesterday from an old client returning to the fold. This project will get me back to posting in my Weathering Rolling Stock a Continuous thread… Today I will inspect, clean and fade.

I am on break from the power plant build. Shortages of sheet and structural styrene has really slowed the pace on this build. Availability is short and the prices a joke. Because it’s not a commission I jumped in with both feet without following my normal plans, now we wait for the styrene to show up. For the paper mill it’s somewhat the same but for the toughest part, the digester/ recovery boiler / power room annex complex I do have more than enough materials. I just don’t want to start it. I have the paper mill construction plan broken down into 5 segments and this and the warehouse/shipping structures can be built. The other 3 segments I don’t have enough styrene parts!

Enjoy your day
 


Good Morning All. Hazy and 54°, mid-70's again today and for the rest of the week. The NWS is persisting with their rain forecast for overnight Wednesday, but they have narrowed the window and lowered the chances. Looks like cold will return this weekend with overnight lows in the 30's all of next week. Of course the weather geeks have a dismal track record here.

Did the usual household stuff yesterday and there's more of the same today. Epiphany today, so down comes the Christmas decorations. Outside I continued my downed branch project and almost completed it. Looks like I am going to have to call the professionals in to remove one tree in the front yard. It hasn't recovered from the tornado in 2024 and is getting to be a danger. While not too close to the house, it is sloughing off branches randomly and looks horrible. It's about 16" in diameter and I don't feel that I am capable of dealing with it's removal by myself.

My plans of not going anywhere this week, got changed. I had forgotten that my PCP had ordered an MRI that I go for tomorrow. We need to get to the bottom of this sciatica issue that has been bothering me for a couple of years now. While I am claustrophobic, I've had a couple before, and I just put the headphones on and close my eyes for the whole ordeal. Pink Floyd CD's do the trick.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I finished cleaning and vacuuming all of the industry spurs and sidings in my targeted project area. Main issue was a couple of track nails that were sticking up a bit. Not enough to interfere with operations, but enough to snag the track-cleaning pads on the Woodland Scenic's wand. I also made some minor repairs to the grain elevator, not the silos, but the tower that moves the grain through the piping; ie. this thing:
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I had already added the support rigging, but this picture is older and doesn't show it.
Over at the workbench, I had set aside a couple of freight cars to get some graffiti added. I used Blair Line decals. The SP grain hopper already had the big fish on it, and I added another to the left.
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This one will now get some additional weathering. I never saw a clean, unweathered SP freight car in all of my years of train-watching. While it is an Athearn Blue Box car, it does represent a real car that I can use as a guide.
I added one to this BAR boxcar just because I had it off the tracks for rotating it into another train.
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This too will get additional weathering (it has some rudimentary weathering already) while it's off the layout. This is a cheapo Life-Like train set car from the 80's. I converted it to body mounted couplers and metal wheels years ago before I started keeping records. I can't find any real pictures of this model, only similar boxcars with ribbed sides, but those shots give me an idea how I want this one to look.
Not sure of today's direction yet.

Michael - Even though we don't get much, I never wish for snow. When it comes, it usually doesn't last more than 48 hours although one year about 15 years ago, we had 3-12" events in the same year!
David (Marlin) - I am also in the "measure twice and cut close enough" camp.
Mikey - What are you going to with all of those figures now? The Mop & Glo sounds interesting, but I think that I will stick with the Dull Coat, since I hate shiny on the layout.
Kusojiji - Through all of your iterations, it still looks like I am from the year of the dragon.
Chad - Your tool placement is the method that I used for many years. That is until I began forgetting where the last place that I used it was. I have been training lately to return tools to the workbench out in the train shed.

Everyone have a great Tuesday.
 
Good morning folks. Already 49°F here at 0830 heading for 64°F later today.

Well, the Christmas season comes to an end today. Fasching is up next starting in February running into March.

Grocery shopping done and waiting on delivery, nothing else planned today, but I will be visiting the train room for a session after lunch.

I still haven't fixed those rail joiners on the north yard lead. Every time I look at it I think about how long of a physical stretch it is to reach and put it off yet again. Not much moves in or out of that yard. It's just a parking spot for three trains waiting to be run. The only real problem is a spotty electrical connection in one rail at the start of the yard lead. Sometimes a locomotive has to be helped over the bad spot.

One of these days I'll have enough enthusiasm to get in there and do it.

Have a great day folks and enjoy the mild temperatures if you got 'em.

Servus!
 
Good morning folks, 58 here already and sunny. Supposed to get to the low 70s today. LadyC has the Accountant coming in a bit to check over the Church records and I will stay out of the way. Then gonna take her for lunch somewhere in Cabot, AR and do some shopping. Had some supplies and buildings show up yesterday for my HO TTrak module and the home layout [N scale]. I have a hare-brained scheme about using some thim sheet foam for a street area and possibly ground cover base, so will pick up some of that in the next couple of days when I will be where there are some Hobby Lobby stores.
Hope you all have a great day.
 
Well, my wife just spent her fun money. She has bad teeth. Her poor dental habits have probably paid for our dentist's off shore boat. 80% her fault, 20% genetics. She had a crown put on a molar 3 weeks ago. Probably the only molar that didn't have one. New Years Day, as she's leaving Planet Fitness, she grabs a handful of tootsie rolls. This ain't the first time either. She knows she's not supposed to touch sticky, chewy, candy anymore, but let's throw caution to the wind.

She comes out of the bedroom after her shower and shows me the crown and with a piece of her tooth attached. I wasn't even surprised or mad since I knew it was only a matter of time. I find little handfuls of tootsie rolls or their wrappers around the house.

The dentist was closed last Thursday and Friday, so she was able to get in yesterday. He had never seen anyone bust off a crown with a piece of the tooth. It's unrepairable. Just f'ng wonderful. She gets a temporary cover, then bone graft, then an implant.

This is coming out of her fun money budget, not mine. I dearly love the woman, but I'm just SMH.
 
I think I know the answer to the following question (from.just looking around on the interweb) but would appreciate confirmation from the experienced gang here...

I preume Ebay is the best place to sell used model railroad items?

Since I'm currently starting from scratch In HO scale.... I'm going to sell my late 50's O scale 3-rail Lionel set (locomotive, rolling stock, lots of track, controller). Going to take pics this afternoon and will post a link to the listing (if that is permitted here... I need to check the forum rules first)

Thoughts welcome if there is a better way/place to sell than eBay

Thank you
 
Well, my wife just spent her fun money. She has bad teeth. Her poor dental habits have probably paid for our dentist's off shore boat. 80% her fault, 20% genetics. She had a crown put on a molar 3 weeks ago. Probably the only molar that didn't have one. New Years Day, as she's leaving Planet Fitness, she grabs a handful of tootsie rolls. This ain't the first time either. She knows she's not supposed to touch sticky, chewy, candy anymore, but let's throw caution to the wind.

She comes out of the bedroom after her shower and shows me the crown and with a piece of her tooth attached. I wasn't even surprised or mad since I knew it was only a matter of time. I find little handfuls of tootsie rolls or their wrappers around the house.

The dentist was closed last Thursday and Friday, so she was able to get in yesterday. He had never seen anyone bust off a crown with a piece of the tooth. It's unrepairable. Just f'ng wonderful. She gets a temporary cover, then bone graft, then an implant.

This is coming out of her fun money budget, not mine. I dearly love the woman, but I'm just SMH.
I can relate!

My wife pulled one off eating Skittles. We were driving on I-80 in Iowa heading to a wedding. She didn't realize it was the crown, and tossed the sticky wad out the window between Iowa City and Des Moines. Probably would of been fixable since it was just the crown that pulled off. Nope we had to pay for the whole thing to be done again.

Such is life, I guess!
 
I think I know the answer to the following question (from.just looking around on the interweb) but would appreciate confirmation from the experienced gang here...

I preume Ebay is the best place to sell used model railroad items?

Since I'm currently starting from scratch In HO scale.... I'm going to sell my late 50's O scale 3-rail Lionel set (locomotive, rolling stock, lots of track, controller). Going to take pics this afternoon and will post a link to the listing (if that is permitted here... I need to check the forum rules first)

Thoughts welcome if there is a better way/place to sell than eBay

Thank you
Current Ebay fees, non paying bidders, returns, shipping, etc. are all the reasons I stopped using it to sell.
 
I think I know the answer to the following question (from.just looking around on the interweb) but would appreciate confirmation from the experienced gang here...

I preume Ebay is the best place to sell used model railroad items?

Since I'm currently starting from scratch In HO scale.... I'm going to sell my late 50's O scale 3-rail Lionel set (locomotive, rolling stock, lots of track, controller). Going to take pics this afternoon and will post a link to the listing (if that is permitted here... I need to check the forum rules first)

Thoughts welcome if there is a better way/place to sell than eBay

Thank you
EBay defiantly has one of the biggest audiences, but there are the steep fees involved. along with the other pitfalls that come with it.

A train show might yield decent results but if you don't have much it may not be worth it to rent a table, set, up and bring back what doesnt
sell.

Facebook marketplace might be a place to list as well if you already are on that platform.

There is probably selling groups similar to HOswap.
 


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