Good Morning All. Clear and 61°; no real change in the forecast except a cool spell hitting this weekend and another one later next week. Cool means overnight lows in the 50's. We won't be here so it doesn't really matter except for my stored Onion harvest from last Spring. They'll sprout with temperatures like that, so I'll put them in a carton and move them inside, into the train shed to keep warm.
A rather ho-hum day here on the SFW estate yesterday. Laundry in the morning before venturing out on the mower to complete every square inch of the yard. Since nothing is really growing right now due to no rain for the last 30 days, everything looks even! My hayfield looks good but I haven't talked to Marty to see whether he's going for a second cutting this year or not. First cutting earlier in the season was not as bountiful as it should have been, and he may need to add to the stock of bales. Two cuttings in 2023 (some held over) saved all of his livestock in 2024 when the tornado totally flattened my field as well as his.
Today will be spent preparing for the vacation trip coming up. We're leaving Saturday morning and spending the night in Baton Rouge. Sunday is a short trip to Gulf Shores AL, with a lunch stop and a visit to the model train museum in Gulfport MS on the way. Using the southern route of IH20 to IH49 to IH10/IH12 to get there. We'll bypass New Orleans this trip. We'll come home using the northern route of IH20 through Jackson and Vicksburg MS, and overnight in Monroe LA, before heading to Shreveport and Dallas. Since we're leaving on Saturday, we don't have to leave at 5:00 am to be ahead of the rush hour traffic in Dallas. It's about 7 hours to Baton Rouge counting a stop for lunch. From there it's 4 more hours to Gulf Shores which gives us plenty of time for the train museum in Gulfport. Condo check-in isn't until 4:00.
Out in the train shed yesterday, I moved some of the trains back into the staging yard until I got the main line opened back up. Then it was just run some others around for a while. As I have posted before, I use Woodland Scenics Tidy Track wand for cleaning track. If you are not familiar with it, here are the two wands that I use. One is my oldest one that broke in half a few years ago.
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These come with multiple cleaning pads. The one that I primarily use is the grooved eraser-like pad shown on the back one.
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Turn them over and I use the short wand to clean the track on switches. No snagging or tearing up the grooved side. These are used for mild cleaning and are eraser like. They supply 4 different pads to use, here are the other three.
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The one on the left is an abrasive one, similar to a Bright Boy, used for aggressive cleaning. I normally never use it. It too can be flipped over for a non-grooved surface. Note that they can be rotated 90° and used on N scale track. The brown one is meant to be soaked in your favorite cleaning fluid, while the white one is run dry to absorb any remaining fluid. While their instructions don't point it out, I believe that the best way to use them is to put one of each on the base and use it accordingly. I don't normally use them on most track, preferring to use my Centerline car when and if needed. I have used them on remote spurs where the Centerline car is impractical. Additional pads are sold separately. As you can see in the second picture, I have nearly worn out the grooved white ones, the flat white ones have already been worn and flipped. Thankfully, even though I have all of this stuff, my track generally does not get dirty and I use everything in a proactive mode.
Michaeljoe - I believe as Karl posted, that it's a Pinto. It's rather generic and not real detailed.
Kusojiji - I don't think that LaBelle oil really expires, but I don't know for sure.
Everyone have a good hump day today.
But I needed more of the tomatoes with the green chilis in them, so I ran to the store, picked up a short grocery list. Then spent the next hour browning the meat (HB and Pork Sausage), dicing the bell peppers... and I dumped in a big can of tomatoes AFTER I had already put in enough Tomatoes (including the ones with the green chilis).... Hmmm... that was supposed to be tomato sauce, not more tomatoes.
