Running Bear’s August 2019 Coffee Shop


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Good Afternoon Everyone.....another hot 90 degree and humid day in Wisconsin. Maybe storm later....we need the rain.

The Mrs. when to the State Fair today by herself. She does that every year since I can't do the walking anymore nor do I like the crowds.

Beady: There's a Mexican store in Wautoma that sells Fanta Orange Soda made in Mexico with REAL sugar. It sure tastes good in a tall glass of ice. Better than locally made soda with the fake sugar.

Jerome and Dave: That green CNW car is sure pretty. A little weathering.

My good friend from high school follows a rock and roll band that the Mrs. heard listen to at the fair today. My friend and I used to meet at a teen beer bar every weekend until he joined the Marines and I was the last person to see him when he left for 'Nam and the first to see him when he returned. The group he follows is called the DOO-WOP Daddies and they have a busy schedule. I may go and see them in Waupaca, WI next Sunday at a church picnic if the weather is fine. I need a change of atmosphere.

https://doo-wopdaddies.com

I like good rock n roll music and I haven't been to many live groups lately. I'll listen to music while on the computer. In fact I'm listening to them right now.

Justin: Some nice C&O photos. No graffiti on that photo of that high rise C&O bridge. I stocked up on some replacement wheel sets before Life- Like merged with Walthers, but I haven't needed to use any knock on wood. Glad you worked out your problem with the noise when running the eBay GP7 locomotive.

Hospital tomorrow for my weekly blood tests.

Hopefully, I'll be in the train room tomorrow afternoon and have something on trains to report for a change.

That's all for now.

Later.....

Greg

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Laughting chipmunk.gif

My doctor when he is listening to my problems.-Greg
 
Flip said:
Good afternoon. Had our first t/s around 10 a.m. Sun back out with it's heat and humidity. Waiting for a second round of storms.
Thanks again for all the pixs. Really enjoy seeing the artistry and talent so many of you possess.
Prayers for us in need
Phil

WHEREVER YOU GO THERE YOU ARE. YOUR LUGGAGE IS ANOTHER STORY.
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We got thunder at about the same time! I had the window about 2" open in my work truck and the boss comes in to tell me. Hardly any rain on the seat however, must have been the right side.

rumbling again out there. I guess they were severe a little north of us.
 
81F at 9:45AM Tuesday morning in Sapporo.

Got the computer set up again after a few days of travel and a different hotel each night (having left my wife's sister's house for a week).

Most interesting train shots were the KiHa 261 (DMU train) we rode from Hakodate on Hokkaido to Sapporo. And then a freight yard with lots of DF200 diesel locomotives and EH800 (dual unit electric locomotive coupled at construction). The EH800 was developed to allow freight to continue to run through the Seikan tunnel from Honshu to Hokkaido (and back) after the voltage was raised from 20K AC to 25K AC to allow the Shinkansen to run through the tunnel about 3 years ago. So the EH800 was made as dual 20K/25K electric locomotive.

Before heading north I took the kids to Kyoto and a railway museum. I'll post some shots from that later (once I find and catalog them).

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Hi gang, it's 74*F, cloudy and calm here in my central MD neighborhood.

As some of you may have seen in a separate thread, my friend Keith dropped by this afternoon and gave me an old laptop that his daughter was throwing out. He reformatted the hard drive, then installed Windows XP on it along with the latest version of JMRI. When we plugged it in and booted it up, everything [including DecoderPro] worked flawlessly - no tinkering needed! Now I just need to wait for the router I ordered to get here (~Thursday) and then I can setup my layout for WiFi/smartphone throttle operation.

As for my recovery, it's at the point where I feel confident enough to venture farther away from my house. The pain has greatly diminished although I still need a regular [but reduced] dose of ibuprofen every 8 hours.

Sirfoldalot said:
. . .
IB Ken - Sure glad to hear that you are on the road to recovery! Please don't try and rush it too much? At this stage in the process - you may be subject to a setback, or two. Not uncommon from all the drugs draining from your system?
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No worries Sherrell, I'm well aware of that. I've told my employer I'll need to operate at reduced capacity for a few weeks and they're ok with that. Might even end up working from home some of the time.

Catch y'all later...
 
Spotty rain on and off in p.m. then about 6:25 second t/s came in. House shook twice-rumbles lessened but drizzles kept on.
Same for the rest of the week- Hot and humid. Tis summer the grass is growing like weeds.

Wish all a good night. Prayers and Blessings,
Phil

LOOKED UPON MY LAYOUT, THOUGHT I SAW A SPIDER. BUT IT WAS JUST A PIECE OF YARN. IT"S DEAD YARN NOW.
 
Good morning Everybody!

I don't know what the weather is here in southeast Baltimore. I still have not set up my little weather station after I moved. I can tell you it's not raining! I'll go out on a limb and say it's warm and humid. :)

I'm going to be delivering groceries this morning for Amazon's whole foods market. They must be desperate to have asked me, so I won't let them down. I don't mind, I'll probably work for less than an hour and get paid for 4. Most importantly an Amazon customer will get their groceries on time.

It's off to work I go, have a great day Everybody!

Oh, in baseball news; Jonathan Villar of the Orioles hit for the cycle last night. I can't for the life of me remember the last Oriole to do that. It must be nearly 10 years. As a team the Orioles did not fair so well, damn Yankees!
 
Good morning all,

Got the wife's flower bed finished and the plants she's been wanting planted in it done. I had the GS helping with that and picking tomatoes. We saw several dragon flies buzzing around and he asked me what king of insects those were. I told him and that they are good insects to have around and asked him if he knew what they ate. Being the sharp little cookie he is he replied "Peasant flies".
 
Good Morning All. It's clear, no wind and 78°. After dealing with a somewhat cooler summer so far, the forecast is for a week of 100°+ high temperatures starting tomorrow. Lows if you could call them lows, will be in the upper 70's.
My morning yesterday was filled with household/nursing chores, with a short break in the train shed. Therapy session at 12:00 kind of broke up the day. After a nap, I used my new shredder/chipper some more, but that pile of brush doesn't seem to be getting any smaller yet! Today I have to prune two sizable branches from a tree in the back of the house. They droop to within four feet of the ground and make mowing and walking to the pool a bit difficult. I hate to prune in mid-summer but sometimes it has to be done. This is a regular thing with this particular tree.
Just an English muffin and a handful of bacon this morning Flo.
For those asking, my wife is doing well now a week after the knee replacement. Went to the second therapy session yesterday and they were complimentary. She has been doing twice daily workouts at home since the day after returning home. Swelling has diminished to the point that we're only using ten pounds of ice a day in the ice water recirculator, down from twenty pounds a day initially. Sleep cycle is back to normal. I did have to get her an anti-nausea prescription yesterday, but we can't really connect that to anything from the surgery unless it's the pain medications. She has backed off them a bit to the dismay of the nurse at the doctor's office who apparently believes that one should be a zombie for 2-3 weeks after surgery. She was encouraged yesterday by a gentleman of the same age at the therapy center who had the same surgery/doctor and quit using the walker after 2 1/2 weeks. He also skipped the cane part and seems to be walking just fine six weeks later.

Thanks for all of the likes and comments yesterday; Sherrel, Jerome, Dave, Garry, Louis, Justin, Ken, Patrick, Phil.

Some more progress in the train shed yesterday, painted some random ties different shades as planned. Since I did that in the morning, I was able to ballast both the main and passing siding through the area later in the day. Haven't attached the spur track yet because I ran out of N scale roadbed that I need in order to make the transition from the siding. I do plan on visiting the LHS sometime in the next week or so with my extensive shopping list.
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I wonder what that white sheen is?
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Later I was running trains and the 0-5-0 switcher dropped an Accurail boxcar to the floor. Parts were everywhere, but the only stuff that broke was one of the original Accumate couplers and coupler box cover on one end. This was a really old Accurail model that came with the "friction pin" cover so I drilled it out and added a screw instead.

Garry - As Dorothy once said, "There's no place like home". Glad to read that all went well and you're home safely.
Greg - I like Doo-Wap music quite a bit. Unfortunately I had to give up live music shows over twenty years ago due to my deteriorating hearing, mainly from going to live shows. Last testing showed 43% loss in both ears. I sure miss going to them though.
Continued best wishes on your recovery from the tick bite.

Everybody have a great day.
 
Good morning everyone. 71 and cloudy out there. We really need the rain around here, and it supposed to rain a lot this week.

Took the day off yesterday and did a lot of work out in my woodshop. That's my default location - - if I'm not at the layout, I'll be in the shop. Working on some new projects. Need some power tools that I don't have, but that's my dilemma now - buy stuff for the trains or stuff for the shop?!?! Man I wish I were rich, then I could do both!!

Willie, Patrick, Flip, Chet, Sir Fold, Wheeler, Garry, Ken, Luis, and anyone I may have missed - thanks for the comments on my recent photos.

Willie - Great photos from your layout, as usual - - napkins, too, in that diner?!? Man, you're really into details, aren't you!
Chad- keep those Japan rail photos coming, they're great.

Here's a photo I like - the billboard shows a young Bing Crosby (my favorite crooner from that bygone era) inviting you to drink Royal Crown Cola like he does (yeah, right). This is looking down the road through Albertville, my smaller town on the layout. Pretty sure I'll keep that name for the town.
BingSign.jpg


Have a good day everyone.
 
Forgot to add:

Willie - glad your wife is doing so well.
Garry - welcome back from your trip. Sounds like it was well worth it, especially the ride on the cog railway and the lahb-stuh!
 
Following a trail on the RR'd websites: I came across another MRL fan on an FB post and because he spelled color with a "u", asked if he came from a from another or the same place as me. (waiting for an answer). He had said he was drawn to MRL by the colours, so I also asked if he knew of the BC rail operation, SRY. I mentioned that it appeared that all their power had been repainted into the latest scheme (large red dot or, "Meatball"). I scrolling through I discovered they also have 3 SD38-2's and 1 SD38AC. I know from the roster that gets done regularly for MRL, which shows previous owner history, that MRL have had none, so, they didn't come from there.

I figured that they must then have come from IMRL (I&MRL) which co-existed with MRL for a short time, early in the piece. Which proved to be so, but there was a twist. They had gone to IMRL from SRY to begin with, here is one in that original livery and it retained it's number throughout, and came back again.
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Now, here it is in '07, in the workshop, repainted with the Lion's head, large W logo.
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And now in July '19, patched with the new logo and looking rather tired and beat up.

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I just happen to have a Proto 2000 GP38-2 that I got very early on in C&NW, non dynamic like all of these, that I've never had any success in selling.
Hmmmmmm?
 
Ray, probably a reason you had trouble selling the Proto GP38-2 was some nitpickers got after it pretty severely over some discrepancies. There was a time not long ago you couldn’t sell a new one for $50. They seem to still be wildly unpopular, though asking prices have risen.
 
Good morning, 68 and humid, heading for 88.

Sounds like hot and humid all around.

I took the afternoon off any projects on the layout, it got really hectic around 3 pm at work so really needed to just read and unwind.

MY wife turns 64 today. It is her birthday "month". She was kind of a spoiled child and some of that carries over. Fortunately, she has lots of girlfriends to celebrate with. One more year and she gets medicare. That is my earliest threshold for retirement, won't have to work for her insurance anymore.

TOOT: nice MRL photos

Johnny, really nice scene!

Willie, not sure what sheen you are referring to. Nice expanse to fill in, there!

chadbag, very interesting locomotive pictures

Patick, smart grandson

Here is some of the progress on the module, did some detailing around the tool shed and getting some landscape down:

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The paint bottles are holding down the grass patches.

more later, Dave
 
Good Morning Peeps! We have a reprieve today - only supposed to be 91* as compared to an even 100* yesterday.
Last year it was 103*on this date and the record of 103* was set in 2012.
Well - what a shame -- Padres have dropped into the cellar once again - bummer! Cubs are looking good - YAY - and the Angels are holding on to playing .500 ball!

IB Ken, Greg, and others! Glad to hear that things are looking up for you all.
Willie - Arlene is included in the above statement.

Chad - I am loving your pic. Are there any "homeless" living near the tracks? (as there are in the LA area)

Dave - congrats on your wife's birthday - my Spousal Unit's birthday is tomorrow, Lord help ... she will be 71 .. yikes!

Patrick - G-son is funny!

RAY - Guess I have not paid notice before - I've not seen a non-dynamic SD-40 - I kind of like it!

Later guys - need more caffeine.
 
Good Afternoon Everyone....sunny and warm, the inch of rain that came early was very welcome.

Finally made it to the layout to run trains. I ran an Athearn SW1500 and the locomotive always had showed some problems in certain areas of the track where other locomotive just cruised through these sections of track. I took the locomotive to the test track and cleaned the wheels with alcohol and still had some problems. Checked the wheel gauges they were in limits. Found a coupler glad hand that was extend below what it should be and raised it slightly and that looks like it cured the problem. It was striking the turnout rails and slightly lifting the locomotive.

I did find a small section of a finger print in AC on the side of the cab of the SW1500. I never use AC near any locomotives for just this reason. The area is small and I hardly notice it. I may try some nail polish remover or AC remover for hobbyists to cure (remove) the problem.

Spent most of the time working on that locomotive.

Why is it that locomotives usually run perfect on test tracks then act up on the layout?

The layout room again needs a good cleaning.

That's all to report......

Greg

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