Running Bear's July 2025 Coffee Shop

ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.


Status
Not open for further replies.
Morning all,

74° and clear. Non severe storms dropped another inch of rain on us. 7" in the past week. We are expecting snow and ice over the next few days. Hazardous travel conditions through early next week. People advised to stay indoors as much as possible.

You're welcome for my forecast! 😁
 
Patrick said:
Morning all,

74° and clear. Non severe storms dropped another inch of rain on us. 7" in the past week. We are expecting snow and ice over the next few days. Hazardous travel conditions through early next week. People advised to stay indoors as much as possible.

You're welcome for my forecast! 😁
Click to expand...
I guess that gives "Christmas in July" a new meaning.
 
Good Morning All!
55F @ 65% and clear again. Only to 85F later. Better, but still indoor stuff after 1500.

The neighbor's house has been forsale for about 5 months now. Couple of folks were out walking the property at 0530 this am. Saturday? Must be a real dedicated Real Estate guy. House is a cracker box that rambles - additions after the original square box, none are really assimilated into the plan, although the floor is level. Footprint is close to 30 x 30 with a 10 x 12 bump out, single story, no basement. Shop is about twice the size of the house and another rambler with add-ons, and that floor is not level. $475K for about 4 acres in a 'L' shape. West side of the property borders Flower Creek for about 1000' and that is probably the 'I want it part'. Problem is most of the land is in a flood zone, impossible to get insurance without big $$$ if they want to build, and if it even is allowed. In the County, so restrictions are negligible, but the .gov might have a say. Go figure.

Today for me is bending 2" PVC 90 degrees in 3 different sections for Pex and Power to the chicken/goat house. That should not take too long, then connect it all together and bury it. Then push/pull the pex/romax through, hook it up to the water/power in the Train Cave and test for leaks. Ya, pretty sure the power isn't gonna leak.

L8r
 


Today is starting out great. The marine layer moved in to the valley overnight, mixed with a light smoke from fires, and made for a great sunrise this morning.


image000000.jpg
 
Good morning all!

Welcome to the weekend!

A very wet stormy Northern Illinois day. Currently 72F heading to a high od 79F. Rain started around 9:30 last night and hasnt let up since, Still steady rain this morning that will continue through the early afternoon hours. We are finally getting a decent rain and making up for some of the dry conditions.

Have a gender reveal party to go to tonight. My Nephew and his wife are expecting their 3rd child. That is tonigh and its in town so no travelk with that. Should be good food and great company.

Have a few things to do around the house this morning, but nothing big planned.

Train room last night was just some minor cleaning and running trains. No building.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Good muggy, foggy morning from Wisconsin. Friday didn't go the way I was hoping. My trip to Hiawatha never happened. I couldn't get anyone to go so I ordered online. It stayed humid as predicted and the breeze didn't provide relief when sitting on the south facing deck or in the shaded front porch. I spent way too much time either in my cave reading or flutzing around accomplishing nothing in the train room.

Around 3 my wife asked if I going to help her prepare for dinner? Seems it slipped my mind (a senior afternoon not a moment maybe)that I was playing chef for dinner at the daughter's for 17 people. That definitely got me out of a strange funk yesterday as I had to prepare, greet the son and his girlfriend and take the prepped food over to the daughter's new place.

Turned out to be a great time. The stuffed grilled cheese sandwiches and the shrimp were excellent and I ended up making more sandwiches than I had prepped. But I was prepared for that even though there was a lot of other food last night, There was great organizational help from my partner in crime (Terry) but lots of kitchen prep help from the granddaughter. The son manned the 2 fryers and the SIL's dad played the role of gofer extraordinaire. We worked well together. I do love to grill and the outdoor area at the daughter's new place was built to entertain. The son in law Wednesday was first to fire up outdoor grills to test them out for any issues (none). He, his dad and our son will man the grills, smokers and fryers the rest of the weekend. Everyone here is helping the kids to completely move into their new place. The balance of the furniture was either delivered from storage or delivered Wednesday or Thursday except for 1 couch and the SIL/Daughters new bedroom furniture.

Of the 17 last night 8 are locals so there was plenty of room for the rest between our place and the new one. The kids and grandkids moved out of our place Thursday so it was much quieter at our place last night. 5 of the 17 helpers are 13 to 11 years old and they are scheduled to race on the slot track unless needed! !

Breakfast this morning for everyone was here at 7. The granddaughter stayed to help clean up (done) and we will venture over to help soon. . Both the wife and daughter are super organized people that outline duties on an ever changing white board. The plan as I read it last night was to be done by noon today and start partying at 3. Except for the pool (hopefully ready by Labor Day) and some landscaping the house was ready to move in Wednesday.

I know most of my day will be playing gofer as I'm not lifting anything and there are plenty of 35 to 45 years olds for those tasks. I didn't think there was enough for everyone to do but this weekend was mainly a house warming and party time anyway!

Most of the visiting helpers are leaving Sunday afternoon. The son and his girlfriend will leave around 9am Monday to pick up the charter group he dropped off Friday afternoon in Indianapolis.

Be well
 
bnsf971 said:
I saw one of those on Feebay yesterday for $58 (new). I was very tempted, and had to talk myself out of it. I don't have anything other than North American stuff, and don't have any electric stuff. But $58 for a new Kato engine...
Click to expand...
I feel your pain! I saw an MTH Premier O Scale with Proto Sound 2.0 Conrail GG1 in Bicentennial colors on Ebay for $375.99!
1753541362014.png

I'm not a huge fan of MTH and I need another full O-scale locomotive like I need a whole in the head. But I want it!
 
Last edited:


Didn’t walk yesterday. Got too late in the evening.


Headed out soon. It’s 85F (and presumably dry. It’s only humid while it rains or right after). Partly to 2/3 cloudy and breezy. I may also do around tonight to make up for the days missed this week.

Wife is painting. I need to do some stuff around the house and also try and get a test version of a guy’s app out that I’ve been working on. I need him to add some permission back to my account. They used to be there but he hired some off shore peole late 201x to 2023 and they took the permissions of my dev account so I can’t build the test version and distribute it. It’s the app I mentioned that helps people reduce alcohol consumption.

Also have my class I need to get back on daily.
 
Mornin', folks. It's 90.5/62% on the patio today. Never did get much above 94F yesterday, to my considerable surprise; we'll see how today is. The weather app says a high of 89F with a 50% chance of rain in four hours. Already half wrong, so I'll believe the other half when I see it!

Spent a bunch of yesterday putting together what I am now calling my "playout". Just a bit of Unitrack that lets me play with trains until I get something more permanent designed and built. It is still amazing to me just how easy Unitrack is to work with; nothing was ever this easy when I was a kid! And I don't think it's just because I'm older now...

My cats have also discovered the trains again. One is terrified of them as expected, but the other... well...

trainroom-parked-kitten-cropped.jpg


I had to bring a cat bed in; most of the time he prefers that to sleeping on the tracks. The rest of the time it's a fight.

One of these days I'll figure out how to take good stills off that camera with decent focus. Video works fine, and I'm currently too lazy to either figure out how to focus properly, or to extract frames from the video.

I still have a lot to do in the train room, but at least it's starting to actually look like a train room now. I expect it will take weeks to get a design somewhat finalized, and then I can start building something more entertaining. I'm looking forward to it.

Only things on the plan for today are (maybe) a haircut, and receiving of more track bits for the playout so I can extend it along the other side of the table. After that I'll probably do a bunch of train tinkering and sketching my plans. Then again, sometimes things don't go as planned, so we'll see.

Hope y'all are having a good day!
 
bnsf971 said:
Free shipping.
www.ebay.com

KATO N scale Electric Locomotive Vehicles EF58 150 Miyahara Operation 3049-1 | eBay

About Importer's Obligation.
www.ebay.com
Click to expand...

That’s a good deal. I guess the good exchange rate has helped as well.

Btw the way if you want a more modern japanese
locomotive look for the EF210 and EF510. They’re modern freight and you can pick up a few KoKi 100 series (104, 106, 107) container cars and some containers and run the best modern Japanese train there is and you too can be overcome by the most powerful addiction there is. Japanese containers. All the brands are interchangeable so you can buy Tomix or KATO KoKi wagons (the container wagons) and buy Tomix and KATO as well as a bunch of smaller makers for the containers and they all work. The Arnold coupler is the default for both Tomix and KATO for freight and most locomotives so it all works. (Yes you can replace with more prototypical knuckles).

I saw EF210 and/or EF510 on eBay when scrolling through the “similar items” section for not a lot more.

Beware the scalpers trying to charge $30 for a container wagon here is a set of 10 for $100

ebay.us

KATO N Gauge Koki 104 107 No JRF Mark No Container Loading 10-Car Set Railway for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for KATO N Gauge Koki 104 107 No JRF Mark No Container Loading 10-Car Set Railway at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
ebay.us ebay.us

Looking on eBay there are some reasonable $30 for a set of two of like the set above (which I should probably buy but without a job no mon no fun).

In Japan a single KoKi 10x is usually $5-$10 in a store at the current exchange rate.

Without containers but they’re not expensive. Amazon.co.jp is also a source.

Start a new and fun facet of railroading. 😉😉😉😜😉

Japanese N scale is darn cheap. (And Japanese H0 is darn expensive).
 
The EF64/EF65/EF81 are still in use but older. They work too. EF58 is old and long retired. They look really cool though.

Also, except for special excursion trains and memorial one off services there are no more locomotive hauled passenger trains in Japan. So normal passenger wagons you can get won’t be used in modern Japan but would have been in the 1900s through to the 2010s for the last ones. I don’t remember when the last scheduled ones ended or the last somewhat regularly scheduled special services.

Passengers rail in Japan is all bullet train (Shinkansen) and EMU/DMU style trains.
 


insomniville said:
It is still amazing to me just how easy Unitrack is to work with; nothing was ever this easy when I was a kid!
Click to expand...
Thats a great test track!

When I switched from N scale to Ho, After I built my bench work I used unitrack to get up and running. I ran all this on 1 feeder and DCC for several years with no issues. I ended up doing it permanently in flex track.

I bought 2 huge totes of it on auction, so it was pretty inexpensive. Still have all of it tucked away.

1753553266969.png


1753553289549.png


1753553313417.png
 
Status
Not open for further replies.




Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a commision from some of the links and ads shown on this website (Learn More Here)

Back
Top