Running Bear's November 2025 Coffee Shop

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Good morning all!

Not a bad day weather wise shaping up. Currently 33F with a high of 49F. Should be a mostly sunny day. Probably a good weekend
to finish up the leaves and put the mower away. I also have to get the snow blower ready. I have brought it from the shed to the
garage, but that's all I have done with it.

Usual Saturday household duties. Weekly grocery trip. Have to get the rest of the Thanksgiving items so the list will be more lengthy
than usual. Got a lot of it last week. I also have a toilet in the main bathroom to install at some point this weekend. I ran down to HD
to pick it up earlier in the week.

Other than that, not much else going on as of yet.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Marlin39 said:
I had to go and check emails at the shop and was able to catch a train passing next to me after I parked. Portland and Western #2317 (formerly Willamette & Pacific) GP39-2 "Tigard" pulling a string of empty center beams to one of the local mills. Ironically, I was in downtown Tigard. All P&W engines are named after a town on the route. The flashing crossing is at a pedestrian crossing.
View attachment 248616View attachment 248617
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Willie - I should have mentioned just as a point of interest/trivia to you that the P&W fleet of GP39-2's are all former SF engines.

Portland & Western Railroad

Serving OR and WA, G&W Portland & Western Railroad operates 478 miles of freight service with railcar storage. Explore flexible regional shipping today.
www.gwrr.com www.gwrr.com

Here's the locomotive fleet info

en.wikipedia.org

Portland and Western Railroad - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Tools... I have a fully stocked Snap-On toolbox sitting on my back porch. Those I paid full price for, and they paid for themselves many times over.

I have three tool bags with basic hand tools, plus two more that include hand tools along with cordless drills and drill bits. There are also two tool bags dedicated to electrical tools. For plumbing, I use a tool bucket, and I have another for painting and punch-out work. In each of my desks, I keep small screwdrivers, a set of precision screwdrivers, a small awl, a folding razor knife, and a 12-foot tape measure.

I know I have more tools than I need, but the redundancy saves me from wasting what little energy I have searching for one. I keep a tool bag on every floor of my house, with extra tools in the attic and utility room, so I rarely have to do stairs to find what I need.

In the past, I bought from the wholesale grey market and resold pallet loads of assorted tools. Many of my tools cost me very little.
 


santafewillie said:
Troy - It seems like the gaming companies were really smacking customers with the tariff costs. ScaleTrains had written in their newsletter that they were going to absorb some of that cost and would not pass it on. I thought that $5 on a $200+ loco was pretty reasonable. I can't compare to other manufacturers because I haven't bought anything else.
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There are only one or two game companies with the margins to absorb costs like tariffs on the full retail value. And I don't play with stuff from Games Workshop, so I haven't paid attention to what they're doing about it.

Scale trains imports & pays tariffs, then sells mostly in the US if I recall correctly. So their tariff impact is different than the little toy soldier companies. ST pay on the cost of their goods imported, not on the MSRP of those products.

In the case of Mantic, Warlord, or Para-Bellum (the three mains ones I deal with), they manufacture (mostly) in the UK or EU, so US tariffs only affect them when they sell to the end-user. That means tariffs on full retail MSRP, not on manufacturing supplies. They've absorbed by raising pricing to the USA.

Plus, in the case of Para-Bellum, they got hit with UPS charging them just to file and pay the tariffs for their shipments of finished products to the US. Again, this is on full retail price. So it's a bigger percentage of the MSRP that gets hit compared to Scale Trains.

I'm not sure what hoops companies in the UK are jumping through to pay those tariffs to the US govt on our behalf, but I suspect there is a charge for the service like Para-Bellum is paying to UPS.

I just looked at buying a two-player starter game from Mantic. It's $159 MSRP and ships from the UK. I'd get free shipping, and the tariffs are rolled into the price. Found the same set from a hobby/game store... IN the UK. It's out of stock on this side of the pond. By the time I added shipping and customs/tariffs it was within a few dollars of what the company was selling for.

Wargames Atlantic, another small producer of little toy soldiers was US based production. Until the tariffs hit.

They stopped shipping out of the US due to reciprocal tariffs once the de minimus went away.

They've since partnered up with production facilities outside of the US (pretty much UK and EU) so that consumers in those countries aren't paying reciprocal tariffs. They're shipping the metal molds back and forth for stock runs in different zones just to expand their production capacity into different markets. When molds for a run of little toy soldiers cost $10,000 and you need two or three such per box of toy soldiers, it takes a while to earn out the initial start up cost on that product.
 


santafewillie said:
Good Morning All. Clear and 45° out there this morning. No real change in our forecast except the high today has been revised downward to 66°. Still expecting heavy thunderstorms starting around dusk tomorrow and lasting overnight, with a 2" total predicted. At least it's not snow! It has snowed here in November but it's rare. Our first snow if we get any at all, is usually in January

If you're old enough to remember this, it's time to ask what were you doing on this day back in 1963? I was at recess playing football with classmates in the 7th grade.

Ho-hum day yesterday around here. Did a load of laundry, burned the burn trash and did a little more work on the compost pile. Finished emptying the car of the non-refrigerated groceries that I didn't unload in the rain Thursday. Mother Nature did a good job of washing both cars! I chose to wait until today to prepare the Prime Rib roast for supper, in order to clear some leftovers out of the fridge instead. Looking forward to doing that today. No real plan for today either. Might just head out to the roadside and cut down a tree that was damaged by the wind last month, and is invading the road easement a bit. Better than waiting for the county road crew to hit it, run over it and drag it up the road next Spring when they mow again!

It was also a slow day out in the train shed yesterday. I did a little painting of details, some already destined for the layout, some just to finish up. I tried to better organize one of the shelves under the layout so I might not lose track of what's there.:( Ran some trains, primarily on the lower level. Cleared some cobwebs here and there. These tiny spiders are definitely HO scale.

Troy - It seems like the gaming companies were really smacking customers with the tariff costs. ScaleTrains had written in their newsletter that they were going to absorb some of that cost and would not pass it on. I thought that $5 on a $200+ loco was pretty reasonable. I can't compare to other manufacturers because I haven't bought anything else.

That's about it this morning. Everyone have a safe and productive Saturday.
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I was a Junior in High School, was in study hall when it was announced.

On another note, I am watching a PBS documentary "American Revolution". Up to episode 5 and am wondering how we actually became a country. My history classes were mostly, Paul Revere made his famous ride, One if by Land, Two if by sea, three if by air. We signed the Declaration of Independence. Shot a few Redcoats and Became a new country. Not exactly the way it happened. This is a great series for anyone who is interested in the Real American history.
 
santafewillie said:
Good Morning All. Clear and 45° out there this morning. No real change in our forecast except the high today has been revised downward to 66°. Still expecting heavy thunderstorms starting around dusk tomorrow and lasting overnight, with a 2" total predicted. At least it's not snow! It has snowed here in November but it's rare. Our first snow if we get any at all, is usually in January

If you're old enough to remember this, it's time to ask what were you doing on this day back in 1963? I was at recess playing football with classmates in the 7th grade.

Ho-hum day yesterday around here. Did a load of laundry, burned the burn trash and did a little more work on the compost pile. Finished emptying the car of the non-refrigerated groceries that I didn't unload in the rain Thursday. Mother Nature did a good job of washing both cars! I chose to wait until today to prepare the Prime Rib roast for supper, in order to clear some leftovers out of the fridge instead. Looking forward to doing that today. No real plan for today either. Might just head out to the roadside and cut down a tree that was damaged by the wind last month, and is invading the road easement a bit. Better than waiting for the county road crew to hit it, run over it and drag it up the road next Spring when they mow again!

It was also a slow day out in the train shed yesterday. I did a little painting of details, some already destined for the layout, some just to finish up. I tried to better organize one of the shelves under the layout so I might not lose track of what's there.:( Ran some trains, primarily on the lower level. Cleared some cobwebs here and there. These tiny spiders are definitely HO scale.

Troy - It seems like the gaming companies were really smacking customers with the tariff costs. ScaleTrains had written in their newsletter that they were going to absorb some of that cost and would not pass it on. I thought that $5 on a $200+ loco was pretty reasonable. I can't compare to other manufacturers because I haven't bought anything else.

That's about it this morning. Everyone have a safe and productive Saturday.
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Like most I was in school, 6th grade. Those times were also 'get under a desk' just in case... And the Kennedy assassination.

Off to CostCo in Hayden, then Super 1 in Bonners Ferry.

L8r
 


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