Running Bear's October 2022 Coffee Shop

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Alcomotive said:
Personally I think our older generation had it right when we recycled glass and paper. I still prefer paper bags when I grocery shop. I use the paper bags at home for a number of things. I am one of those guys that like to re-use or repurpose things around the home. I sometimes use reusable cotton/denim bags when I do a big haul at the store. Not to mention my cotton bags are washable in the laundry. I dunno I just try to be mindful about waste and re-use or re-purpose things. I mean all the plastics we have and do not recycle is ridiculous. Here in NY upstate they used to pick up recyclables now they stopped that 8 years ago citing cost etc. They have very few areas which are far away where you can drop off the recyclables but it is not open at decent hours for people to access it etc. It's a pain in the booty. I try to be creative in reusing certain items even in our hobby etc.
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James: I have to agree completely. Recycling around here is a joke. There are State guidelines, that the Township doesn't follow. They hired a contractor, that sets the terms and requirements for recycling....Glass, metal cans, plastic bottles and jars, newspapers and flattened cardboard. Everything is loaded indiscriminately into the back of a garbage truck, with the crew deciding what to pick up or leave on a given day. Pickup is every other Wednesday.
The alternative is to take it to the township recycle center, operated by public works. There, bottles must be separated by color, cans and plastic bottles. Cardboard is accepted, as are car batteries and possibly car tires, scrap metaland tvs/computers. Leaves, branches and old clothes, but not motor oil or grass clippings.
Public works sells the stuff to recyclers/junk dealers.
No one knows for sure what happens to the collected recycles. Nor will anyone say.
Plastic grocery bags were perfect to reuse for litter box cleanup, and as trash bags in waste baskets. Now,I have to buy plastic bags for this...what have we gained here?
 
Boris said:
James: I have to agree completely. Recycling around here is a joke. There are State guidelines, that the Township doesn't follow. They hired a contractor, that sets the terms and requirements for recycling....Glass, metal cans, plastic bottles and jars, newspapers and flattened cardboard. Everything is loaded indiscriminately into the back of a garbage truck, with the crew deciding what to pick up or leave on a given day. Pickup is every other Wednesday.
The alternative is to take it to the township recycle center, operated by public works. There, bottles must be separated by color, cans and plastic bottles. Cardboard is accepted, as are car batteries and possibly car tires, scrap metaland tvs/computers. Leaves, branches and old clothes, but not motor oil or grass clippings.
Public works sells the stuff to recyclers/junk dealers.
No one knows for sure what happens to the collected recycles. Nor will anyone say.
Plastic grocery bags were perfect to reuse for litter box cleanup, and as trash bags in waste baskets. Now,I have to buy plastic bags for this...what have we gained here?
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At a recent hotel stay in Minneapolis, the staff informed us the "recycle" trash cans are dumped in with the regular garbage.

In my county, Cardboard and Junk Mail need to be separated. Kind of a blurry line lots of times, and if this stuff gets thrown in with the garbage I will not be happy. Sorting paper and having 5 separate recycle bins in our garden shed is not my idea of environmentalism.
 
On Recycling:

Here in our city we have a separate bin (blue in color) that is picked up weekly. It is all picked up in a jumble from the one can. Here is the list of acceptable items:

  • Paper (not contaminated by liquid)
  • Brochures/Magazines
  • Mixed Office Paper
  • Telephone Books
  • Catalogs
  • Newspaper
  • Cardboard (not contaminated by liquid)
  • Shipping boxes
  • Cereal and food boxes
  • Gift, shoe, and tissue boxes
  • Plastics
  • Juice & sports drinks
  • Laundry Jugs
  • Milk & soda pop jugs
  • Water jugs and bottles
  • Metals
  • Aluminum cans
  • Steel cans
  • Tin cans
  • Clean aluminum foil

Not sure what happens with it. I've heard that ut just goes to the dump with all the other trash but I don't think that is the case (there would be a big uproar and TV investigative reports etc).

The county is in charge of this (as recipient of the truckloads) and I've heard they are more restrictive than what is shown in the above list. No one seems to know.

Glass is not allowed in the bins but there are glass collection receptacles around town.

We also have separate green waste receptacles that are picked up weekly from Spring through sometime in November. Grass clippings, trimmings from bushes and tress, etc. I put our old Christmas tree in as I always miss the tree pickup they do. (Dang it -- Christmas doesn't end until Epiphony, Jan 6, and they always do the pickup right after Christmas and the week thereafter). They compost te green waste and sell it.

They also have periodical e-waste and shredding days where you can bring your old cell phones, computers, etc to a given spot and leave them and also they have industrial shredders for your papers. These happen about 4-5 times a year.
 



Weekend at Timonium was a nice outing. Only bought one item, a Woodland Scenics track scrubber because someone stole mine.
The layout went together pretty quick for a 50'X50' area.
Had a Gremlin pop up Saturday morning that was elusive, even with basic troubleshooting techniques employed. A sporadic loconet failure. Turns out on one of the previous layout tear downs, someone ripped a loconet cable out of its socket but didn't fully break off the RJ12 connector. The person installing the loconet this time didn't notice the connector was kind of cockeyed and plugged it in anyway. We usually have a few dozen loconet cables imployed between the boosters, UP5s and receivers.
Once that was fixed the layout ran great. Now, I have to fix all the wires I cut while troubleshooting.
 
I just had a nightmare of trying to start recycling at our condo.

The city's trash collector went bankrupt. They sold off their contracts piecemeal. The city hired one contractor.
Our condo complex has to contract separately, since we are in the city, but zoned differently. Part of our association dues instead of paying extra taxes.

We do have curbside (actually garage side since all open to a central parking lot without a curb) for trash. Old bankrupt company picked up without noticing what address they were at.

So, my big recycle bin got picked up for 2 years.

After the contractor switch over, Waste Management stopped picking mine up, but did the neighbors.... come to find out it's not "the city" doing the free pickup.

I have to pay for that - not part of any condo or city contract.

AND every time I went to WM’s website, it said my address wasn’t eligible for service. Got the phone # from our maintenance guy, and it was out of service number that didn't’ transfer with the change in contract.

After two months, we finally got a new number to call. I called on recycle pickup day. Paid the year in advance ($8/month) and the dude with the GPS in the truck still skipped me.

I may get a lawn chair,bundle up, and sit in the garage next week when he come around again. I’ll have receipt in hand and the number on speed dial if he drives by without stopping.
 
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santafewillie said:
Unless you need a whole lot of them, Tom's advice is best.

I have over 1000 already on the layout and about 300 still to paint. But here's what works best for me. First, use a fine pointed brush and wear Optivisors. I find that enamels work best but they are more expensive and there isn't as much variety. I gather 30-40 figures and lay them out on a piece of 9"x12" cardboard (cereal box type works best) that I have divided into boxes with a pencil. I mark each box with a color, red, blue, black etc; there's a bigger box marked "drying".
View attachment 153765
I first paint all figures with a skin color, I use Testors Cream for Anglos and a light brown for others. As they dry, they go into a box on the piece of cardboard for the next color. If I intend to clothe them in blue jeans, they go into the blue box, black suits into the black box and so on. Then I go to the next color and do everything in that box. Some boxes are marked "fix" or "think", and I also have one each for hair, shoes and belts/ties. I always paint the lighter colors first then go darker. I paint shoes and hair last so I have a "handle" while I paint the rest of the figure.
I keep that piece of cardboard next to the workbench and whenever I paint a structure or vehicle, I also paint anything in the corresponding box. I do not often finish a single figure from start to finish in one session. they move from box to box until finished. Some go back to be touched-up. After I have a dozen or so completed, they all get dull coated. This protects from chipping and fading. I have tried the alcohol/India ink wash but it doesn't work well for me.
View attachment 153769
I have recently gotten a large assortment of already painted Chinese manufactured figures that always need touch up or complete re-painting. Lots of flash as well.
Preiser offers large assortments of 100-120 unpainted figures which is quite economical, costing US 5¢ each. Painted Preiser figures run about US $3 each. I have recently started using them as well as Walther's, Woodland Scenics, and Noch; that gives me a lot more variety and poses. Bachmann and Atlas also make unpainted ones in smaller packages. Oh yeah! Upon recommendation from Tom O, I recently purchased some figures from MiniPrints out of Canada that are really cool. I intend to get more.
Click to expand...
I love the process Willie uses to paint the figures. Very efficient and I have switched over to painting one color for a group.
 
Boris said:
James: I have to agree completely. Recycling around here is a joke. There are State guidelines, that the Township doesn't follow. They hired a contractor, that sets the terms and requirements for recycling....Glass, metal cans, plastic bottles and jars, newspapers and flattened cardboard. Everything is loaded indiscriminately into the back of a garbage truck, with the crew deciding what to pick up or leave on a given day. Pickup is every other Wednesday.
The alternative is to take it to the township recycle center, operated by public works. There, bottles must be separated by color, cans and plastic bottles. Cardboard is accepted, as are car batteries and possibly car tires, scrap metaland tvs/computers. Leaves, branches and old clothes, but not motor oil or grass clippings.
Public works sells the stuff to recyclers/junk dealers.
No one knows for sure what happens to the collected recycles. Nor will anyone say.
Plastic grocery bags were perfect to reuse for litter box cleanup, and as trash bags in waste baskets. Now,I have to buy plastic bags for this...what have we gained here?
Click to expand...
From what I understand, China used to take a lot of our recycling but have cut back after the pandemic. Most recycling gets dumped with the trash. The recycle companies that are here in the US can't handle it all.
 
Recycling. It’s big here in Wisconsin.

The City where my business mailing address of 401 Geneva Way is wants everything recycled but switched vendors in January. We now have a list for the garbage items bin and everything else gets recycled

In the Town that the property we live on is at says throw everything in the garbage bin as it’s easier now for the sorters to separate stuff at the dump.

Both use the same County wide dump!

Up North, we separated stuff into 5 crate type baskets and it was picked up every week. We even had to sort the plastics by the codes on the stamping on the bottom. So every week I had these 5 crates separated and a trash bin. The trash bin was weighed everyoickup to make sure we weren’t consistently over the max weekly weight of 40#’s.

At work our recyclers used the bin method of sorting but cardboard and any paper had to go through a shredder 1st. I know though that changed after I retired
 
We spend a lot of time sorting our trash and are very diligent about putting recyclable waste in the correct bin. Not sure if if it actually ends up being recycled, though. It's pretty common knowledge that a lot of the contents of our recycling bins ends up in the dump anyway.

My wife is getting to the point where she doesn't like to let water go down a drain... she'll set it aside and water plants with it. I think she's crazy, but I know better than to say anything... because she's crazy, lol.
 


santafewillie said:
Unless you need a whole lot of them, Tom's advice is best.

I have over 1000 already on the layout and about 300 still to paint. But here's what works best for me. First, use a fine pointed brush and wear Optivisors. I find that enamels work best but they are more expensive and there isn't as much variety. I gather 30-40 figures and lay them out on a piece of 9"x12" cardboard (cereal box type works best) that I have divided into boxes with a pencil. I mark each box with a color, red, blue, black etc; there's a bigger box marked "drying".
View attachment 153765
I first paint all figures with a skin color, I use Testors Cream for Anglos and a light brown for others. As they dry, they go into a box on the piece of cardboard for the next color. If I intend to clothe them in blue jeans, they go into the blue box, black suits into the black box and so on. Then I go to the next color and do everything in that box. Some boxes are marked "fix" or "think", and I also have one each for hair, shoes and belts/ties. I always paint the lighter colors first then go darker. I paint shoes and hair last so I have a "handle" while I paint the rest of the figure.
I keep that piece of cardboard next to the workbench and whenever I paint a structure or vehicle, I also paint anything in the corresponding box. I do not often finish a single figure from start to finish in one session. they move from box to box until finished. Some go back to be touched-up. After I have a dozen or so completed, they all get dull coated. This protects from chipping and fading. I have tried the alcohol/India ink wash but it doesn't work well for me.
View attachment 153769
I have recently gotten a large assortment of already painted Chinese manufactured figures that always need touch up or complete re-painting. Lots of flash as well.
Preiser offers large assortments of 100-120 unpainted figures which is quite economical, costing US 5¢ each. Painted Preiser figures run about US $3 each. I have recently started using them as well as Walther's, Woodland Scenics, and Noch; that gives me a lot more variety and poses. Bachmann and Atlas also make unpainted ones in smaller packages. Oh yeah! Upon recommendation from Tom O, I recently purchased some figures from MiniPrints out of Canada that are really cool. I intend to get more.
Click to expand...
I've only eight to do, and although Tom's advice is sound I already have them, and I'm not prepared to throw them in the trash, I can't keep on buying ready made or painted stuff, I'm not going to learn anything that way, so I'll follow your method, as it actually makes sense to me, I need some flesh colour paint which I've ordered so as soon as I've finished the structure I'm doing, that will be my next project, I've four days off next week so hopefully I can get them done and maybe another structure.
 
Also on recycling. Out here in the boonies, you're on your own, however I am a firm believer so I take it upon myself to deal with it. Note that I have a 2 yard dumpster that I can use for anything but tires and batteries, that I pay for dearly for weekly pick up.
All vegetable matter including leaves, grass clippings and vegetable trimmings go into the compost pile for later use in the garden. Some grass clippings are used directly as mulch. Aluminum, copper, steel, other metals and batteries go to the scrapyard where they pay me. Most newspaper is used in the wood burning heater and the ash (along with the wood ash) eventually is reycled in the compost pile. Of course larger tree prunings are used as logs in the heater. Smaller ones and brush get shredded and used in the garden as mulch, or tilled in to loosen the soil. Excess newspapers are used as mulch under the shredded wood. Magazines and slick colored paper goes to a recycling bin near the city hall in the closest town. That ink generally has cadmium in it and that is not organic. Books go to the second-hand bookstore where they sometimes pay, but usually just recycle them through their own resources. Used tires I throw over the fence at the local tire store in the middle of the night, otherwise they charge $4 for each one. Electronic junk is taken to a specific recycler in Denton, they don't pay but they do recycle. No place for glass or plastic except our dumpster, but the dumpster company tells me that everything goes down a conveyor before being compressed to go into a landfill. The conveyor has a series of air jets that blow out most plastic water/soda bottles and jugs for further sorting. Different jets at different pressures both before and after those, blow out dry paper and then aluminum cans first and there supposedly are magnets that recover most iron/steel. All that equipment that I don't take advantage of still costs me a lot, although the fuel surcharge is the major component of my monthly bill. There are places that I could take glass for free, but saving and storing it is not justified. Might be different if I lived in the city, but I don't
Water. Like Jeff, my wife does use some kitchen water to water plants, and I regularly pump water from the septic tank to water trees; when the wind is right!
 
When ya go light on the water that would normally go down the drain, your pipes will begin clogging. Not enough water to push stuff out to the main sewer line or to the septic tank.
Ya don't know it until there's a month or so of flushings in the pipes. Each subsequent flush will fill the pipes and just gradually drain or soak through the blockage but not back up all the way to the drain where you would see it. When it eventually does breach your kitchen sink drain, no amount of plunging is gonna move a month or so worth of stuff.
 
Afternoon All,

Spent the day shopping with Dad. The only highlight was that I convinced MOH to go along. We finally got home at 2:30 of course just in time to get caught in the local H.S. letting out traffic. I hope to spend time in the train room tomorrow.

TomO- Nice weathering.

Chad- That is a huge amount of progress.

Dave- Nice scene.

Willie- Nice job on the vans and little people.

Joe- Thinking things out is not a strong humain trait for many people.

James- Best wishes for your sister.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
And the furnace guy just left after the fall cleaning.

Got a Trane forced air gas furnace with the Trane special electrostatic charged ceramic collection grid filters. The furnace guys clean them twice a year, and I do my own cleaning two more times, so once a quarter.

Finally remembered to ask about our AprilAire onboard humidifier. Wife gets nosebleeds easily, especially in dry winter months.

Since our furnace has a two-stage fan, I leave the low-stage run 24/7 to keep the basement air fresh. Otherwise, it picks up the basement mildew funk of a home built in 1974. And with it, the humidifier runs constantly. Talk about a waste of water.

So we've been running three small room-sized humidifiers around the house INSTEAD of the AprilAire. Figured it was time to get it straightened out.

The guy spent about 15 minutes tracing the wiring. And cussing out whoever installed the AprilAire (we suspect a previous homeowner.)

But, he got it so the water switch kicks in only when the HEAT activates. Not just when the fan is running.

That alone was worth the cost of the service plan. Now I can set it and forget it.
 
I have a question. For a new project I'm planning to build a Gondola. In RMC july 2022 the G47 is in S scale. I could rescale it to HO but does anybody know the w, l and h? That would really help. Foot/inches is ok (for this special time). I'm trying to CAD-sketch the ends. By the time I learn the program and be able to draw it and order it to print several weeks (months or even years) will go by so no hurry.
By the way something happened this morning...https://www.demorgen.be/video/productie/trein-ramt-bus-los-doormidden-in-nederlandse-bergen-op-zoom-334414
Nobody was killed or hurt, empty bus fortunally and the driver was out!
 
troyphoto said:
And the furnace guy just left after the fall cleaning.

Got a Trane forced air gas furnace with the Trane special electrostatic charged ceramic collection grid filters. The furnace guys clean them twice a year, and I do my own cleaning two more times, so once a quarter.

Finally remembered to ask about our AprilAire onboard humidifier. Wife gets nosebleeds easily, especially in dry winter months.

Since our furnace has a two-stage fan, I leave the low-stage run 24/7 to keep the basement air fresh. Otherwise, it picks up the basement mildew funk of a home built in 1974. And with it, the humidifier runs constantly. Talk about a waste of water.

So we've been running three small room-sized humidifiers around the house INSTEAD of the AprilAire. Figured it was time to get it straightened out.

The guy spent about 15 minutes tracing the wiring. And cussing out whoever installed the AprilAire (we suspect a previous homeowner.)

But, he got it so the water switch kicks in only when the HEAT activates. Not just when the fan is running.

That alone was worth the cost of the service plan. Now I can set it and forget it.
Click to expand...
Troy that's how it should be connected only when heat called for Never on the fan setting Should have been a connection on the board in the furnace for that
All the wiring should be right there on the furnace

And AprilAire are fine just make sure you change the water pad each year They tend to get limed up and also have a chemical coating that only lasts for about a year and do you have a humidity sensor on it ?? Should be mounted on the cold air return something like one of these
 

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JeffH said:
We spend a lot of time sorting our trash and are very diligent about putting recyclable waste in the correct bin. Not sure if if it actually ends up being recycled, though. It's pretty common knowledge that a lot of the contents of our recycling bins ends up in the dump anyway.

My wife is getting to the point where she doesn't like to let water go down a drain... she'll set it aside and water plants with it. I think she's crazy, but I know better than to say anything... because she's crazy, lol.
Click to expand...

Who re-cycled my 401K?
 
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