Good Morning All. 63° and partly cloudy. How about a couple of sausage biscuits for me this morning, Flo. Weather forecasters have backed off the chances of rain for later today, maybe someone looked at the radar and saw nothing! Still in the forecast for tomorrow. I spent well over three hours mowing yesterday, not because I mowed a greater area, but the grass was extra lush and thick after all of the rain last week. I estimate that I got 1.75 acres done yesterday, only about 1.25 more to go. I'll actually start the day with the weedeater first though, as it looks a bit ragged where I usually use it. Weeds in the garden need some attention as well. Speaking of the garden, it isn't as plentiful this year as normal because it rained too much earlier in the season when I should have been planting, (that hasn't changed). I have been picking and eating asparagus, radishes and green onions from there. About half of the tomatoes are planted; the other half have been transplanted into medium-sized plastic flower pots waiting for the area to dry up enough to dig holes.
Thanks for the comments and likes regarding the printing company structure yesterday;
Patrick, Chet, Phil, Sherrel, Jerome, Garry, Curt, Joe and everyone else.
The last major diesel purchase made by ATSF before the merger into BNSF was GE's Dash 9-44CW. They purchased 100 of them, numbered 600-699, although later on #666 was renumbered as 599. The tail end of my modeling era includes this diesel series.
I recently pre-ordered a pair of them from ScaleTrains which are due to arrive this summer. I already have six others, here's a pair from Athearn.
I have an additional older pair from Athearn that includes a non-powered one.
Here is a pair from Kato.
Note that the Kato models have the hood/cab grabs painted the incorrect color! They should be red, not silver. All six of them need some upgrading, for example, none came with MU hoses. ScaleTrains offers an upgrade kit for converting their "operator" series models to "rivet counter" quality. The ones that I ordered are already "rivet counter" models; that's the only way they offer ATSF models on their first-run. I'm going to order some of the upgrade kits and I am assuming that they would work on Athearn and Kato models with minimum alteration.
Everything is on hold out in the train shed. After all of the mowing and other outdoor chores yesterday, I didn't much feel like modeling, and just had a few beers, perused the latest MRR and Trains magazines and ran trains. Had to quit early to fire up the grill later on.
Dave -
Luckily they have holes pre drilled for the grabs.
That will surely save on broken drill bits! Although I have much better success with wood than plastic.
Sherrel - Sorry to read about the horse. Condolences to the family.
OK Everybody have a wonderful day, whatever day it is! I lose track now that I am retired!