Running Bear's Coffee Shop LXIII


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D&J RailRoad said:
Now that is some messy weather out there. I pitty the homeless.
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My thoughts and prayers are with the homeless as well. God bless you Ken, you are a good man!

Baltimore has shelters capable of giving temporary shelter to all the homeless. They even have busses to pick them up. Another of former mayor Blake's great programs! The problem is many of them suffer with mental illness and refuse to go.

God Bless us Everyone!
 
Good Morning Folks. 32° and partly cloudy...probably our last freeze (barely) of the season. Another nice day yesterday, I think that I have finally cut up all of the tree prunings that have occupied the yard for the last few weeks. Won't be so bad in the years to come, now that I am caught up with 10 years of neglect.
Managed to get a little time in the train shed yesterday, continued to work on odds and ends. Ran trains while waiting for glue/paint to dry. Nothing significant right now. Replaced plastic wheels on a few more freight cars. Down to my last three sets so I'll have to visit the LHS soon. Can't wait!

Chet - Great pictures of the restored engines and of the MRL shops.
Beady - Virga, now that makes a lot more sense.
Sherrel - Thanks.
Johnny - Enjoyed the cartoon.
Curt - Thanks.
Karl - I look forward to your re-paint of the "two-headed wonder".

Everybody have a great, dry and safe day.

Willie
 
GarryCBQ said:
Karl .... I'm glad to seee WM 202 covered and protected from rain. It would be nice too see 202 in action.

CB&Q 4960, a 2-8-2 was operated for steam excursions by the the railroad in the 1960's. Now the Grand Canyon Railway owns it and sometimes runs it.
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Bruette said:

Congratulations Chet!!! I mean that in all sincerity. With all the snow you get you deserve to be on the good side of the weather map for a change.

Here in southeast Baltimore it has been alternating between rain, sleet, snow and a combination of all three. We have about an inch of accumulation on the grass and less than half of that on the sidewalks.
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What a difference a few miles make. Only 2 tracks in the snow in front of the house,,,, mine. Development and the 1st main road were unplowed, remaining commute was on hard packed snow, near work it turned to slush. Just me, my boss and 2 techs made it today, gosh I'm bored!
 
One of the primary reasons for using 4-8-4's for excursion service is they are the most capable of handling longer trains unassisted. A 4-6-2 looks great, and would pull a 7-8 car train. More than that, and it would require a diesel helper, which spoils the effect. A 4-8-4 looks impressive, and most of them can pull a 20 car train. Add to that the fact most 4-6-2 engines were built circa 1920, and most 4-8-4 engines were built in the late 1930's-late 1940's, as Joe mentioned, and have the latest technology of the day.
 
Good morning. We have 45 degrees with light rain. The rails should move out and leave sunny skies later in the day. Looking at the radar, it does look nasty on the east coast. Hope everyone effected comes through the storm without any problems.

Sherrel - We are at 5,305 feet in altitude at the house.

Justin - Take the shell off and clean up the drive train and lubricate it and it should quiet down.

Willie - They have quite an operation at the MRL shops. This was a major facility for the Northern Pacific and the BN after the merger in 1973. tears ago when the BN had it, I knew the shop supervisor, Marvin Varnes and he would always give me a call if they had something interesting in the shops. There were three stalls left in what was a pretty good size roundhouse years ago. All of the roundhouse is now gone as you can see from the sat photo, but they do still use the turntable. Here are some photos of what was a common sight years ago. Cast offd from other railroads getting ready for a rebuild in the MRL shops.

diese-diesellok-chicago--northwestern-473567.jpg ex-chicago--northwestern-dieseloks-jetzt-472432.jpg 367.jpg

When the shops got through with them, they looked and ran like new. They used these rebuilt locomotives for quite a few years and in recent years have been able to purchase the latest, newest locomotives. Unfortunately, I don't get over there as often as I used to.
 
I am late this morning because my internet, TV and home phone went off. That is very rare. I called Comcast on my cell phone and they said there were no outages in my area. I knew straight away where the problem was.

I had some trouble with my service last year and they sent out a tech. He did a great job of mounting my outside equipment. He failed to properly configure my complex hi-tech Xfinity X-1 service.

I have the highest possible internet speed and bandwidth to support my on demand service and internet. We often have 3 on demand shows on in 3 different rooms, all in high definition. Add to that my son and grandson playing games over the internet along with all the smart phones, tablets and laptops. it works flawlessly when it's configured properly.

The next Comcast tech did a great job of configuring the 2 routers, three boosters two inside and one outside. My boys tell me we have the best service according to the game servers. I don't know, I read the news online, check the forum, shop, I use excel and word. On TV I watch sports and old westerns on the DVR mostly.

I noticed the day after the tech left he did not do a good job of shielding the outside equipment from the weather. I thought to myself "I'll fix it later". A week or two later I see the dogs playing with the equipment door. The wind must have blown it off. Again. "I'll fix it later".

You can guess the rest. This morning I was outside in this beautiful and ideal weather fixing the door and shielding the numerous wires, booster and power supply from the weather. Actually my hands started "talking" to me so I just rigged it up temporarily, it's working and the test shows it's at full capacity. Thank God for zip ties, duck tape and outdoor electrical extension cords.

I'm just glad nobody noticed except my wife and she won't give me a hard time. I am always quoting Thomas Jefferson to my son and grandsons "Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today" I need to follow my advice.

Guess what I will be doing later today?

"Do it right or do it twice"
 
kbkchooch said:
What a difference a few miles make. Only 2 tracks in the snow in front of the house,,,, mine. Development and the 1st main road were unplowed, remaining commute was on hard packed snow, near work it turned to slush. Just me, my boss and 2 techs made it today, gosh I'm bored!
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I'm glad you made it to work safely, well done!!!

The number 1 quality I admire in a professional is reliability.

Of course competence as well, but that goes without saying.
 
Chet .... Similar rebuilding shops include the former Illinois Central shop in Paducah which built many "GP10's' from early model IC Geeps. The company sold the shops to a new company (VMV) which has been rebuilding many locomotives of various models for many years. It is now owned by NREC.
 
Well .. Howdy! New paint looks nice. Francine ... I'll have eggs up, bacon, sourdough toast, and hash browns this morning. I'm a hungry hombre. We hit 92.3 yesterday - they say cooler today with 89 for a high. Loving the clear sky which gives me a chance to catch up on the electricity production which suffered during all the cloudy/rain days we had a while back.

Chet - That's pert near a mile high .. lol.

Willie- I'm kind of "thick" at times. What is your avatar? You know, before my bout with the big C - I used to get a lot of work done such as you do, but now I just find it hard to get the ambition too!

Terry - Having to trail a diesel along seems to happen all the time anyway? 4-8-4 or otherwise. (well, I have seen a few without a helper, and then I have seen the helper trailing behind too! Saw a program about a small town in Kansas that restored a former SF steamer. WOW, what a chore! But a beautiful work when finished - it was a Pacific I believe.

Garry - I bet that B-36 power made some noise! Probably stunk too!
 
DANG IT ... Can't forget Louis.
Pretty good story there my friend. Glad you didn't slip and injure yourself again. Did you learn from your mistake?
 
GarryCBQ said:
Chet .... Similar rebuilding shops include the former Illinois Central shop in Paducah which built many "GP10's' from early model IC Geeps. The company sold the shops to a new company (VMV) which has been rebuilding many locomotives of various models for many years. It is now owned by NREC.
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I can remember reading a few articles about the IC GP10's years ago in model railroad magazines and building models of them.
 
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Good Morning:

13.5 inches of snow yesterday and sunny today, but cold. Picked up my carpet tiles for the walk way areas of the layout. Going to move a bunch of stuff out of the room and vacuum the concrete floor real well.

That's all for now.

Greg
 
bnsf971 said:
One of the primary reasons for using 4-8-4's for excursion service is they are the most capable of handling longer trains unassisted. A 4-6-2 looks great, and would pull a 7-8 car train. More than that, and it would require a diesel helper, which spoils the effect. A 4-8-4 looks impressive, and most of them can pull a 20 car train. Add to that the fact most 4-6-2 engines were built circa 1920, and most 4-8-4 engines were built in the late 1930's-late 1940's, as Joe mentioned, and have the latest technology of the day.
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Wow very cool info Terry! Thx 4 posting.

Well 10 inches removed from my drive way. The Power jet pack did not work and for some reason there are no tracks nearby for the flatcar to hold it..lol
No problem Ill just use a shovel. I hope my wife's back will be able to handle the pain.......

Mid 20s here in Mass and were expecting another 10 inches or so... yea there were very accurate with this snow... Flo, another coffee please!

see ya later train dudes.

(Ok after your discussed with my post from above.. I had the snow blower and my wife just used a shovel near the sidewalk and steps..hehe!)
 
WJLI26 said:
Good morning y'all. 34°, East wind, and rain.
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Jesus Christ, they're Japs! That's a meatball! Take cover!

Oops, sorry. Had a change of meds.

5 points if you get the reference.



This signature is intended to irritate people.
 
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Okay, friends - Here's a real rookie question:
 I've got several Peco turnouts and a few Atlas turnouts on the layout so far. When I was running the engine the other day and found that curve that I had to redo that I mentioned yesterday, I also found that when the engine got to one of the Atlas turnouts, it would stop as soon as two of the wheels got onto the plastic frog (I hope I'm using the right terminology). The Peco turnouts are all "electrofrogs" and don't have that problem. So, my question is - - is this happening because Atlas turnouts suck (oops, sorry - didn't mean to offend any Atlas fans) - is that because Atlas turnouts are just built that way and will never let my engine cross, or is it because I haven't run a power wire from the main bus to the other side of that particular turnout yet? I've got power coming up to it but haven't connected anything beyond that yet.

Before I go out and buy more Peco turnouts to replace the Atlas ones, I need an answer to this question.

Thanks for your help, as always.
 
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