Good Morning Everyone. 33° and clear today. Spent the morning yesterday on the grocery/beer trek in Denton and after lunch/nap, I moved money around in various retirement accounts. They're making me lots of money on their own, but I am 75% in guaranteed...I moved about 4% into a more aggressive position in anticipation of tax cuts. Wife hates that! She freaks out when the overall accounts go down by $50, so I just don't tell her when they occasionally collectively lose $3K or so in a day. Usually makes it up and then some in a the next few days anyway lately. Gotta be prepared for losses as well as gains when you own mutual funds. Overall I've done remarkably well since the election last year.
Out in the train shed yesterday, well hell, I don't remember what I did besides run a few trains. Did do some cleaning and vacuuming until I got near the power switch!
Johnny - Belated Happy Anniversary to you and your wife. We just celebrated our 45th in September. Re. Shuffling buildings, I kind of like it! Like a jigsaw puzzle sometimes. I never had a full track plan to follow. I sort of knew what I wanted and just started laying track, I have made some rough sketches of areas but the final product was made by fitting and moving stuff. PM sent.
Chet - Those damn deer...why don't they use the "deer crossing" locations to cross the road? Then you would know where to watch. Like you, most of my industries were built or partially built before industrial trackage was positioned. Much of my layout is still bare wood with those industries in place, although I have finished many of the structures themselves. That way I can switch them all without the cardboard stand-ins that I have seen on other layouts. There are still about a dozen switches in place that don't lead to anything. Those I will use for future industries, many already purchased but not yet built. Re Preiser figures - In the 90's I purchased at least eight of the 120 unpainted figure sets and I spent many icy mornings at the dining room table painting them over the years. I have a whole bunch ready to go, but still have ~185 left to start with around 30 in process. Counting animals, there's at least 700 on the layout right now, supplanted with some more recent Woodland Scenics offerings.
Justin - Good to read that you dodged a bullet with the truck. There's such a feeling of helplessness when transportation is an issue. I get really frustrated because I don't know enough or have the right tools to do many repairs myself. Fortunately I have a very good "shade tree" mechanic that I use, I just have to get the vehicle over to him 17 miles away!
Curt - You're overfeeding your cows in the holding pens!
Supposed to process them, not fatten them at the packing plant! Just kidding, of course.
Sherrel - Reusing the plywood is situation-specific. With proper and copious bracing, some types of warpage can be remedied. On a 2' x 4' piece, two 4' pieces and three 2' pieces of 1" x 4" can easily take care of it with 1/2" plywood, not 5/8" though. Although
Justin indicated in a follow-up post that he wouldn't be doing that. On my own layout, I use 1/2" with 1" x 4" box frames underneath and have no measurable expansion/contraction, but I also don't have any major humidity problems.
Ken (D&J) - Been reading your construction thread as well as this one and I think that you're going to do real justice to that intermodal yard. Most folks don't have the right amount of room to make it realistic. I have personally visited the former ATSF (now BNSF) yard at Alliance and it is impressive. Toured it twice, once with the local modeling club and once with a third-party trucking company that our company was going to do business with.
Terry - My mailbox is over a mile away and I don't get any larger packages there, I have to drive 12 miles each way to the PO!. UPS and FedEx can find the road, but since neither me or any of the neighbors have #'s on our houses, anyone other than the regular drivers have issues. That and they never show up until after 6:00pm anyway. We regularly deliver to each other.
Bruce - Hope that you are feeling better soon.
Everybody have a great Friday.
Willie
