Running Bear's December 2018 Coffee Shop


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Edmondson Avenue, Baltimore, 1954.
 
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When what would become known as "The Great Baltimore Fire" got started in the Hurst Building during the pre-dawn hours of 7th February 1904, few firemen or residents had any inkling just how massive the conflagration would become or how quickly it would spread. Telegraphed pleas for help went out to cities and towns far and wide and out-of-town steam fire engines were credited with making a major stand along the Jones Falls that stopped the blaze from continuing into the city's east side.

Several fire companies from Washington DC were dispatched to B&O's downtown station where they were loaded aboard a special train. That special, led by 4-6-0 Ten-Wheeler No. 1329, made a non-stop run from Washington to Camden Station in Baltimore in 31 minutes flat, a speed record for the Baltimore-Washington main line that's never been equaled or broken since. Here's a picture of he Flyer's loco following arrival in Baltimore. (U.S. Library of Congress collection, Royal Blue Ltd. archives)
Dave Goldsmith‎ - Railroads of Washington, D.C.
 
Good Morning All. 39° and cloudy. The rain has just ended, .7" in the gauge overnight. Expected to reach 60° today before the wind shifts and drops to 30° tonight. Then crappy weather for a few days with a high Wednesday of 33° and freezing rain/snow mixed in for two days. Back to 60° on Friday. Was a bit amused yesterday, when three of my neighbors drove into the driveway or stopped on the easement road, one after the other, and got out to have a "gabfest". I looked around and noticed that every one of them had left their pickup truck door open and two had left their engines idling. Reminded me of the "redneck Christmas" posting of last week. Ground where we were standing got stained brown from all of the chewing tobacco!
Out in the train shed yesterday, I resumed painting little people. Ran out of Kadee #22 couplers while inspecting freight cars. Good opportunity to start using the #142 whisker ones now. Years ago, I just used 28" wheels to lower a few cars/couplers, but I am now trying to correct that. I have tried to use the Kadee #158 et al. scale couplers, but for some reason they don't work well with my extensive fleet of #5's and #148's; even when I polish the faces like someone here had suggested. Good enough works for me in this situation. The #5's/#148's work flawlessly for me. Functionality is the key here. Ran trains a lot yesterday including a single switching turn at a large ADM grain elevator involving 16 empties for 16 loads. No need to think about "blocking" on that run.

Curt -
PRR Modeler said:
Willie- Interesting photo. Is that a current shot or an older one.
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That is an old shot. Area has since been landscaped but I couldn't locate the picture at the time. Here is a more recent partial shot.
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Louis - Get well soon. Although at the rate that you are posting this morning, you may already be feeling better.
David - I used to wonder about those braces/rods when those grain elevators were more plentiful around here. I finally stopped by one and asked sometime in the early 70's and I was given a tour of the place. The horizontal boards keep the walls from bowing outward. The rods run from one side to the other and are threaded on each end for large nuts. Theoretically they can be adjusted, that is before they eventually rust in place. The operator said that occasionally they had to replace one of the rods and it was slightly safer to use a grinder rather than a cutting torch to remove the nuts. The other feature of older wooden grain elevators was the abundance of cats used for rodent control.

Well, it's New Years Eve. Wife and I have a 12 oz bottle of champagne to share around 6:30 or so! I don't stay up until midnight, haven't in over 25 years. I may be awakened around then since my retired policeman neighbor about 1/4 mile north has a real penchant about fireworks. Kinda coincides with the first whiz break of the night anyway. I can't really hear them without the hearing aids, but the light flashes come through the window. It's been over 40 years since I ventured on the roads on New Years Eve. That's probably why I am still alive!:cool:

Everybody have a great day and a safe New Years Eve. Johnny, this rain is headed your way, may already be there.
 
santafewillie said:
I have tried to use the Kadee #158 et al. scale couplers, but for some reason they don't work well with my extensive fleet of #5's and #148's; even when I polish the faces
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I have the #158's as well on many cars, and as you say, they don't mate up quite as easily to the #5's, or Walthers copy of them. I don't think they are even that good with each other. Differently shaped faces is the problem I think, the #158 is rounder, making the end that hooks into the other coupler, not slide in so well. When I was at the other club, one of the members there ran ops sessions, and had changed out his whole fleet for the "scale" heads. His operators complained they were harder and slower to work with, so he had to change them all back again.
 
I get notifications from ebay on MRL stuff for sale. Athearn and Atlas both make versions of their Caboose. An Atlas fully assembled one came up tonight of a standard caboose #1007. The other one made by both makers are of the wide vision type, which I was under the impression was the most common ones MRL had. They do also have a couple of the NP smooth sided, no roof side overhang/streamlined cupola types too. So I checked both rrpicturearchives and a Robert Forstrums MRL photo site. Sure enough, no standard cabooses and #1007 was an ex NP type.

Just goes to show, you can't trust nobody.
 
Good morning, y'all. 30° and cloudy with rain later. Not a good beach day either.

Ray: That 4-8-4 is awesome. You and Willie are right about the disparity between the standard Kadee #5/#148 coupler and the #58/#158 scale coupler. They are a frequently difficult to couple and uncouple. About two years ago, I began installing #148s on unfinished kits, as well as cars equipped with McHenry and accumate couplers. Lately, I have been using Scale #153 short shank couplers, on new kits and retrofitted BB and 60s era Roundhouse cars. They look better, but operations suffer somewhat.

Louis: Looks like the Ravens squeaked past the Browns. Does that get them into the Post Season? Edmundson Ave looks very busy back in 1934. Alighting from the street car appears to be hazardous to the health of the ladies in the picture. Again, there are numerous hidden in sight details, including the Hydrant and Gamewell Alarm Box. The appearance of the row houses built on the hill is also interesting. Great photo.
My old department sent two Steam Engine Companies with horse teams to Baltimore to assist in fighting the fire. The B&O ran a special from the North also.
There was a time when I participated in the countdown to Spring Training. I miss those days.

I have some early errands to close out the year. Afterward, I'll find something to occupy my time. I am having a problem with a spreadsheet formula that is driving me crazy. Quatro Pro keeps telling me its a incorrect syntax, but I can't find the error. o_Oo_Oo_O

Happy New Year!

Boris
 
Good morning all,

The temps rose over night more than was expected. The snow we were supposed to of gotten is falling as rain. Been a weird weather year so far. My last light fixture is supposed to show up today, so I can finish lighting and organizing my workbench. Got to make the push to get it done, and organized, since vacation is running out. That 11 days didn't last long! Oh well, I still enjoy working full time, most days.

Happy New Years Eve everyone!
 
Good morning y'all. Cool and wet this morning. This has become the norm round here. Hopefully the rain will clear out soon. It's been nice to have the last two weeks off, but I'm going to have to get back to work this week. And after being off for the last two weeks, I'm going to get my butt kicked when I start back up. Lol. Hope all have a safe and happy new year.
 
Boris said:
Good morning, y'all. 30° and cloudy with rain later. Not a good beach day either.

Ray: That 4-8-4 is awesome. You and Willie are right about the disparity between the standard Kadee #5/#148 coupler and the #58/#158 scale coupler. They are a frequently difficult to couple and uncouple. About two years ago, I began installing #148s on unfinished kits, as well as cars equipped with McHenry and accumate couplers. Lately, I have been using Scale #153 short shank couplers, on new kits and retrofitted BB and 60s era Roundhouse cars. They look better, but operations suffer somewhat.

Louis: Looks like the Ravens squeaked past the Browns. Does that get them into the Post Season? Edmundson Ave looks very busy back in 1934. Alighting from the street car appears to be hazardous to the health of the ladies in the picture. Again, there are numerous hidden in sight details, including the Hydrant and Gamewell Alarm Box. The appearance of the row houses built on the hill is also interesting. Great photo.
My old department sent two Steam Engine Companies with horse teams to Baltimore to assist in fighting the fire. The B&O ran a special from the North also.
There was a time when I participated in the countdown to Spring Training. I miss those days.

I have some early errands to close out the year. Afterward, I'll find something to occupy my time. I am having a problem with a spreadsheet formula that is driving me crazy. Quatro Pro keeps telling me its a incorrect syntax, but I can't find the error. o_Oo_Oo_O

Happy New Year!

Boris
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Joe, isn't a Syntax what you have to pay at a casino?
 
Boris said:
This background building was assembled using DPM modular sections. The structure will blend into the scene, rather than standing out.
Boris
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Boris, I'm liking that. I've had a DPM modular set like that sitting around and toying with how to use it. I like your execution and might consider using that as a starting off point for working with mine. In my case, my specific goal would be to build a brewery flat. There's no urgency yet on that because its location needs some further infrastructure work before I'm ready to put anything in. But thanks for sharing the image.

Also, Boris... With your knowledge of firefighting practices and history... I might want to pick your brain down the road [No urgency] for a future project... and I ended up putting up a separate post about it in the Vehicles and Misc. Models section. Obviously I will be interested in pointers from any others here on this!
~~~
A general hello and late good morning! ... I didn't get those papers graded all finished before Christmas, so that's my agenda for today. We had a good, low key holiday, complicated by my recovering from a planned, routine, but nevertheless long-recovery-period surgery that I had about two weeks ago. (I hadn't mentioned it before because I honestly didn't plan on it being such a long recovery... but that was my fault for not asking more questions. The procedure itself went fine.)

Rainy weather here in SE WI today, temps edging into the mid 30s. Colder for NYDay, then a sunnier and warmer rest of the week.

Congrats on your Ravens, Louis! I'm admittedly a fair-weather football fan, keeping an eye on the Packers but not the hardcore watcher my older son is (and never have been). As I've followed the debates over NFL here the last few days, my own 2 cents is that my bigger concern has been the emerging evidence of serious -- I don't think epidemic is too strong a word -- brain damage to too many players that has become widely documented. I know some folks who have given up watching NFL for that reason as matter of conscience. I'm such a sporadic spectator I can't pretend to have taken such a principled stance, and if the Pack had had a better season this year I'm sure I would have caught the same fair-weather fan enthusiasm that others are inclined to do in those circumstances.

Have a great day, everyone!
 
Afternoon All,

Got back home about 30 minutes ago. The procedure went well but will be waiting on the results of a couple of biopsy's that were done. I most likely won't be in here tomorrow so I wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR and all the best in 2019.

Terry- Ouch...that's quite the price tag.

Louis- Neat historical train facts, but I wonder what the speed was?

Willie- Nice layout shot.

Toot- Nice looking steamer.

I hope everyone has a good and safe night.
 
So whats everyone doing for New Years Eve? Got any big plans?

We are staying in. We haven't gone out on New Years Eve for more than a decade, seems safer this way.
 
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