Running Bear's May 2025 Coffee Shop

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@montanan Chet I saw this and immediately thought of you!
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Back from the range. Real eye opener for my friend. Once he slowed down he started to group better at 25yds. After several hundred rounds I told him it was time to move the target board out to 50yds and we would just shoot 30 rounds. He figured out that the front fiber optic sight almost covers an 8" target at 50 yds. He kept 12/30 on the target. I had 26/30 which ain't bad for 65 year old eyes.

In all fairness to my friend his pistol is a very light Sig P322, with a 4" barrel and only weighs 17oz. I was shooting my 36oz S&W Victory that I added a Tandemcross match trigger and grips to.

We also went over to the silhouette range and he punched paper with his Savage Mark II and I knocked down steel critters with my 1947 39A.

The best part was that we had all the ranges to ourselves. The club is fairly empty M-Th and packed Fri-Sun.
 
I’m back from the hospital. They cannot do a stent due to the amount of blockage so surgery is next on the agenda. For now I’m home but the head surgeon was in surgery at the time so nothing scheduled yet.

Just to make the day even more interesting the Equinox threw a check engine light on the way home and stalled a bunch at lights.

Oh fun!!
 
Good afternoon to all............

After getting my servos and controller situation in order, I decided to order another SRV4 controller from BLOCKSignaling. These controllers will operate 4 servos with connections for panel LEDS and signals if needed. I have 4 of these on hand as from time to time, in the past, when I had a few extra bucks, I would order one these units because I knew I would have a need for them in the future. I still will need at least 5 more of these units, maybe a couple more to finish my layout.
First let me say these units are made in the UK. I tried ordering one controller yesterday and noticed when asked the "country to ship to" question came up, the good old USA was not listed. So I contacted Steven Heaton, the owner of BLOCKSignaling, to ask if he could send me an invoice. I received the following e-mail :

Hi John,

On 2nd May, the de minimus exemption for customs charges on small orders
(under 800 USD)
arriving into the US has been removed.

This is expected to cause significant delays due to custom's staffing
levels and the operation
of payment processing for these packages, storage of packages and the
process for returning
packages to the sender where the customer declines to pay the charge.

For this reason, we have temporarily paused shipping to the US pending
an understanding of the
implication of these new tarrifs.

We are planning to wait and see if this interrupts the free flow of
small packet deliveries into
the US before resuming shipping.

I am sorry for the inconvenience of this and hopefully it will only be a
brief pause.

Steve.
Well I hope this situation is cleared up soon. I really do not want to have to "shift gears" and use another servo controller and having a mixed bag of electronics to deal with. At least as I said before, I have 4 more units on hand to use.
Now that being said, I did order a Barrett Hill servo controller ( a 4 unit controller ) and see if I can use the momentary toggles with it instead of their touch-toggle system. Barrett Hill offers an 8 unit servo controller but they are out of stock due to electronic components being held up. Makes me wonder how long the 4 unit controllers will be available.
I have purchased a crap load of servos and mounting brackets to be used on my layout. So I really want to stay with this method of operating my turnouts.
I have installed 4 of the MP4 turnout machines but the wiring is a mess compared to the servo deal. And 2 of the MP4s I ordered have issues and don't work as they should. I decided to try some of these as they are a nice compact unit and operate in a straight movement to throw turnouts. I think I have 3 more of these and may use them just because I already have them but I don't think I'll order more.

Oh well, I solved one problem with my turnouts only to be faced by another.
As Roseanne Roseannadanna said : "It just goes to show you, its always something"

Everyone have a great evening...........John
 


J Albert I was at the dentist today and they had a new dental hygienist. She asked if I was retired, I said yes from 2 different jobs. One being the railroad. She said then you must know my ex. I said, who was that? She replied Rick Hadley. You must know him, right? I always liked Rick. He showed up at my house one day with a new motorcycle way back in the 70's.
Swal
 
J.Albert said:
George posted the Pawling video in post 232 above...

Looks different from the time I worked on the upper Harlem line, from 1983 til the end of 1990. The original station was long gone by then. No siding or industrial spurs, just straight rail through the entire area, with the PAWL block limit sign in there someplace (may have been close to MP 64).

We used to go out of Danbury on train WNDA-1, with cars for the Maxon mill and Tri-wall (old Borden's building) in Wassaic. The track ended just north of there back then.

Looks quite different today, even since my time, with the relatively new Wassaic Union Station...!

On the job, with WNDA-1, in the farm fields north of Dover, 1984:
View attachment 218653
Looking back, hard to believe that this was over 40 years ago... (sigh)

.
Click to expand...
Yeah, really. Thinking back those 38-2s with the single cylinder brake sucked compared to the older 38s. Yeah, been retired 17 years now.
FWIW, I saw photos of a retiree breakfast in Lakehurst on Monday Morning. I recognized maybe three from the group...Of course, I spent my last 10 at Amtrak, so I haven't seen most of the people from Monday for 27 years.
 
The measuring distance with time is an American thing. Everywhere I've ever lived we do that. It's also a Canadian thing according to posts on FaceBook.

I think it's a thing where ever people live that are not densely packed together. Both USA and Canada have relatively low population densities.
 


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