Running Bear's October 2026 Coffee Shop

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Troy, Canada will not let you move there after posting your pizza. I've had Canadian Pizza, it's even worse than California Pizza for Pete's sake. They will arrest you at the border for trying to relocate there! 😁
Anyway on the ebay kerfluffle. Still no partial refund from the seller and no word from ebay either. However...
I did a little research. It's a Walther's car that the first run sold out. TrainW had them for $102 dollars then and the preorder ones are $115! There is no box with mine, however it is pristine and lighted. I paid $17 total. If all else fails and I don't get anything back I will let the seller know just how much it is worth. He blamed ebay's AI for the mis-information, so he can blame them for his loss!
 
Has Bachmann lost their minds? $95.00 a car?
I believe so!

I want to build the Amtrak Midwest since I see it run thru town quite often and we have rode it into Chicago several times. I bought the Midwest Siemens Charger a while back waiting on Bachmann to finally get the cars produced. They want $104 a car from Traimworld and most other online retailers. I don't want them that bad. I'm hoping like the Charger they over produced them and there will be a fire sale after the first of the year.
 


Major Award Rush.jpg


Two disks that deserve a "Major Award"
 
Has Bachmann lost their minds?
I think Bachmann are smoking crack. Their UK models are more expensive than the other brands and to me, not worth it. One thing that they do is make a lot of models, probably due to the size of the company and capacity, but with that, I'd think they could reduce cost and not just money grab.

Anyway, I still have the old 80's Bachmann stigma working against it and I am very cautious before buying anything from them. That's one brand that I will do a lot of research on before buying a model.

I know, unfair, and I've seen a lot folks completely satisfied by what they get.
 
And the ICAO code is CYYZ used internationally. Most counties are assigned a leading letter for the rest of the code. In some cases more than one code letter is used, and some countries use the same letter.

Examples: EDDF Frankfurt Main, EDDM Flughafen München, EGLL London Heathrow, LFPG Charles de Gaulle, LFPO Orly, etc., etc.
 
And the ICAO code is CYYZ used internationally. Most counties are assigned a leading letter for the rest of the code. In some cases more than one code letter is used, and some countries use the same letter.

Examples: EDDF Frankfurt Main, EDDM Flughafen München, EGLL London Heathrow, LFPG Charles de Gaulle, LFPO Orly, etc., etc.
To follow up, the 3 letter codes are the IATA codes used mainly for commercial travel and public facing uses and the 4 letter ICAO codes are used for technical uses, ATC, etc. IATA = International Air Transport Association. ICAO = International Civil Aviation Organization.

Some of the 4 letter codes mirror the 3 letter codes. CYYZ / YYZ. KJFK / JFK. Other's don't. EDDM / MUC, EGLL / LHR
 


Good Evening All.

Demanding day today as we get ready for the vacation. FINALLY, got the new tires for the Lexus chariot prior to leaving. I ordered and paid for these 14 days, 6 hours before installation and finally got the call to "come on down". This is a local tire place that we have used for over 20 years and easily 16 sets of tires for several vehicles over time; all with great response. Except this time. Since I paid, my wife has made 3 phone calls, I have made one and I made a visit. This one slipped through the cracks this time around. Never got a clear explanation for what went wrong, it was always "I don't know" from the lady behind the counter. I was faced with getting a refund tomorrow and heading out Wednesday morning on the factory installed tires with 38k miles on them. Probably safe but not what I wanted.
Rant over.

Meanwhile all else is going as planned, we decided to leave home at 6:00 am and slide around the north side of Dallas County on the tollway before the main brunt of rush hour hits. It's like the rim of a bicycle wheel and most traffic is on the spokes at that time of day. Wife found a few promising places in Alexandria LA that we'll consider for lunch, instead of pushing for Lafayette and we'll cruise into Baton Rouge around 3:00 before their rush begins.
 
Decompressing with YYZed (for those of you who don't know how to pronounce it in Canadian) after an "information" session of our HOA... Boy, did they step in it this time.

HOA meeting was standing room full, go sit in the other room and hope you can hear...

seems the board wants to hire a management company. They say it can be revenue neutral. That means to anyone - even people who know what "for those of you in Rio Linda" means... - they're going to fire our two full time maintenance guys who know the community, and people here actually to trust to enter their property in the event of problems.

Some of what the new management company does is good: Community newsletters, recording meetings for up to date meeting minutes - that has been very lacking.

But they also do "on-site visits" to take care of "covenant violations".... following the debacle they had over trying to rewrite the landscape and architecture rules earlier this year, this board has turned chicken, and won't actually write notes to members when they spot something that should be corrected. And they still left some major areas of resident rights and protections unresolved when the board tried to railroad their preferred rules through earlier this year.

I know, many of you refuse to live under HOAs. This community is great. We have 1.5 miles of paved walking trails in a wooden neighborhood. Maintenance under the current crew is responsive and good. We get a few odd neighbors, but so does everyone. Even Willie gets feral kittens invading his train shed!

We just have to weather this storm and get some better people on the board this fall.

But, I'm definitely going to downsize the model railroad into manageable modules. and make it so we can move if the board gets the community too screwed up.
HOAs tend to grow into controlling entities. A management company will try to take over after a while raising "management" rates because of this or that.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
 
Troy, Canada will not let you move there after posting your pizza. I've had Canadian Pizza, it's even worse than California Pizza for Pete's sake. They will arrest you at the border for trying to relocate there! 😁
Anyway on the ebay kerfluffle. Still no partial refund from the seller and no word from ebay either. However...
I did a little research. It's a Walther's car that the first run sold out. TrainW had them for $102 dollars then and the preorder ones are $115! There is no box with mine, however it is pristine and lighted. I paid $17 total. If all else fails and I don't get anything back I will let the seller know just how much it is worth. He blamed ebay's AI for the mis-information, so he can blame them for his loss!
If you contact the seller and say you are giving them a "One Star" review/feedback, they will usually refund your money.

John
 






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