Good Morning All. 71° and overcast. Been sprinkling off and on all night, might have .1" in the gauge. Hard to tell when there's that little. Rather cool for August, temperatures not expected to go above 90° for the next ten days, with thunderstorms forecast for six of the next seven. That will make my hay grow even taller. Headed out for routine doctor appointment this morning, I will visit Discount Model Railroad, just north of Dallas while I am out. I'll pick up a few needed items and some unneeded ones as well. No I am not addicted! Finally finished mowing the rest of the yard following the major rainstorm of ten days ago. It usually doesn't take this long to do all of the acreage that I mow, but with the heat some days, I pace myself.
Trainwise, I just ran trains yesterday instead of working on any aspect of the layout. I did do a bit of railcar maintenance as a few more McHenry couplers failed and were replaced. I replace both even when only one fails, the other will fail soon. I don't really know how many cars still have them...I guess that I could run a query in my inventory database to see! No time to program that right now.
Johnny - Your travelog through SE TX highlights some interesting places. You mentioned Lumberton, in the very far SE corner, "city of highways" so to speak, with a really small but beautiful state park, Village Creek State Park. At 1100 acres, it is smaller than most farms and ranches in my neighborhood. Did you happen to visit it? You mentioned the windows in the Brook Hill Dairy yesterday; I assembled their Ashmore Hotel about a year ago and it has 230 windows in it! It is however, 11 stories tall. I am using the Brook Hill structure as "Federal Cold Storage", since small dairies were pretty much non-existent in my era and locale.
Regarding your question about the two engines. I have found over the years that I can only really count on successfully "double-heading" two identical (same model type) locomotives from the same manufacturer. I do have some examples that don't follow this rule, such as a GP35 from Atlas with a GP20 from P2K (not too sure if I got the manufacturers correct here, I'd have to go look). And I am able to use SD40-2's from Kato with Dash9-44CW's from Kato as well.
Dave - That's a really nice shot of the depot. I have kept up with the thread as well.
Eric - Prayers are still with you regarding your next scan. Regarding manual turnout controls; I use Caboose Industries #202S. I buy them at a discount from my LHS, but I am sure that MBK has them.Some modification of the turnout throw bar is necessary when using them with Atlas switches.
Chet - You're not the only odd man out.
David - It is twelve acres, so it is cut with a regular John Deere tractor with either a "hay mower" or a "brushog"; then raked and finally baled with a large round-bale baler. Right now the large bales are fetching $100@ and I should average 3 bales/acre. Although the part of the field behind me will yield 4.5 bales/acre, some of the rest of the field is rocky and yields far less. This is not planted, but is natural-growth; some other parts of the field are seeded.
Karl - No it is not really mutant grass, but stands 5'8" tall right now. I do resemble a garden gnome now that you do mention it!
Joe - I repel deer and rabbits by liberally sprinkling blood meal around the perimeter of the garden. Deer are vegetarian and seem to go elsewhere when they smell the blood. It is an organic fertilizer as well, adds lots of nitrogen to the soil. Re-apply after heavy rains though and don't apply too much around root crops.
Headed out now, everyone have an awesome day. Need to start composing earlier but I'm out walking my daily mile.
Willie
