Running Bear's January 2024 Coffee Shop


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The snow machine has cranked up again after a several hour lull.

As you can see by all the puppy tracks, the dog has been out enjoying being in her element.

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Afternoon All,

Started out the day with a walk at 68F which was cut short because of rain. Speaking of, I guess we're getting a stormpocalypse here in a couple of hours. The officials and weather guessers are acting like it's the end times. Today I did some chores then opened up the FOS kit called Lucky Seven Tavern. I cut the wood walls out of their sprue and glued the bracing on them.

Thank you for the photo likes yesterday.

Mike- Brrrrrr

Willie- That is a nice haul but expensive.

Joe-I figure that steamer will be in the $400 range.

Bill- Who doesn't like track shots.

Smudge- I did not realize there was a separate Hattons in the US.

David- Great scenes. What do you use for snow, and how do you keep it clean.

Tod- Good luck with the helix.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
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PRR Modeler said:
David- Great scenes. What do you use for snow, and how do you keep it clean.
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Thank you, Curt. The 'snow' is 'cheap' talcum powder spread sparingly around the scene. Sparingly as it is a city scene and snow rarely settles. The use of cheap talc is (apart from cost) the smell is minimal and soon goes away.
Keeping it clean? I have just left it as laid, over two years ago now.
 
It's cold today. While it is 27F now, it was like 15F this morning, and its overcast. Yesterday was actually a couple degrees colder but sunny so it felt warm when outside.

This cold spell has been with us since the weekend. Up until then we'd only had a few really cld days the whole winter, everything else being from around 32F to mid 45F or higher some days, and some days just to high 30sF, but only being mid 20F overnight. Now it is much colder, We also had a few inches of snow the other day (n inch or so Sat night to Sunday and another 3-4" Monday, though all light and powdery) and are supposed to get another couple inches this evening/tonight.

The drywall guys finished the hanging a week ago Tuesday morning. Took them a good amount of time (and a few extra days off in the middle not including holidays). Today the tapes/mudders started with the bede placement. I've not been up there but saw them on the camera plus was told they were coming.

We got the boiler running a week ago and its been running since driving the radiant. We started with a 59F target and went up a few degrees every evening until we got to 72F where it stayed for a couple days. Last night I set it back down to 70F. We only have 1 thermostat driving the whole house for now but eventually each radiant zone will get its own. The boiler is normally the backup to the heat pump but the heat pyump is not yet installed. The driller did finally show up with his truck last Friday but they said it was too muddy to drive to the back and it is parked in front on the street. Though the ground was frozen yesterday no one from the drilling team showed up, I've not been up there today but I am sure the snow on the ground is the excuse now :rolleyes:. They were supposed to be here weeks if not months ago. They got stuck on a job for like 2 months that should have been a week due to the ground not cooperating and drinking drilling fluid like water. They were using like 10x the drilling fluid and were trying to figure it out.

Anyway the boiler is easily heating the house. It feels really nice and even. The warming of the floor has been driving the moisture out and so it felt like Florida or a sauna with high humidity. Saturday we opened all the windows for 35-40 minutes and drove the humidity down. While open the thermostat went from reading 72F to 37-39F but once we closed the windows it went back up by that evening to 72F). The humidty mostly stayed down after we closed the windows. Yesterday the drywall company owner came by to fix a few things and stuff and he opened up a bunch of doors to air it out. That brought the humidity down a little as well and its mostly been staying down. I've been running cheap chinese from Amazon humidifers as well for a few weeks. When it was 50-53F they didn't work well but now that it is warm they're getting more water out. Not a ton but are helping. The drywal guys wanted heat and to get rid of humidity for their mud/taping job.

I've been wiring in light sockets in the garage and will put in some switches to control them. I'll probably put better fixtures in in the future but since they've not mudded and taped the garage and are waiting for spring for better weather for that I am putting in normal light bulb receptacles in the ceiling and I bought a bunch of those "pedal garage lights" on closeout at home depot to flood it with light. Just am trying to figure out how the electrician wired the switches. There are 3 switch locations I've identified so I need my Lutron smart switch and a 4 way switch and a 3 way switch for the "wide garage". I've not figured out the "long garage" switching yet but it is separate from the "wide garage".

I also bought the trims for the can lights under the eaves and porch and want to get those installed so I can light up the fornt of the house. The "coach lights" on the front I also want to install and get working.

The vault door guy came to install the vault door on Friday. The door had been craned down into the basement in November of 2022 when we placed the suspended slabs for the garage on. The doorway was rough drywalled and so I told the guy he could come and install the door. It turns out that with the basement slab being poured a little higher than planned, in the end, that the door doesn't quite fit the opening height wide. I need to remove a minimum of 1/4" (will remove 1/2") of concrete from the opening lintel. Wish me luck.

The solar guys showed up last week on Thursday but it had snowed a little and was all melting and creating a mess. They didn't want to go up on the roof with that but did get the inverter physically installed. They came back yesterday and finished the inverter install and hooked it into the outdoor service panel and all that. They were also up on the roof yesterday planning stuff or something but I didn't see any panels up there. They're suypposed to be back today and I got a text a little while ago that they were on their way and would be there in 75 min. Another 4-50 minutes to go.

Also the siding guys finished a few weeks ago except for the back add-on porch as they need the big glass doors/windows installed to know where the bottom trim needs to end etc. And the roof guys got that add-on felted and are looking for good weather to come and put the roof on.

A few pics of the various stages from the last month. The one with the guy in green in the lift is my son. The electricians put in normal ceiling boxes for disk lights under the eaves but I wanted cans. They messed it up (they forgot what I had discussed way before). I didn't want to deal with them so my son went and swapped out the ones the head on-site electrician told me to buy. Unfortunately when he did he didn't tighten one down in the right place and when the soffit was put in it was put in where the can was positioned so one is out of line under the eaves. I'll get it fixed in the future.

The piping pictures show the work done in the meachnical room to hook up the radiant system to the upstairs boiler and to the holding tank and what will be the heat pump when it is installed. The engineer guy who designed it did the piping and I did the wiring to his plan.

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A few more pics including one of the manifolds. I had to hook the manifolds up to the piping from the floor and it was tough as the pex was cold and you couldn't leave much slack so it was hard to get them into the manifold adapter and tight. I ended up breaking two of the O-rings that keep it from leaking at the interface point, which we discovered when the guy came and charged the system a few weeks ago. Luckily we have not hooked up the basement manifold yet so he could steal some O-rings from the extra adapters and I have since gotten some replacements.

The big tank is not a hot water heater (it is a hot water heater tank without the heater installed) and is used to hold the liquid that is circulated through the floors.

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Today is my son's last full day at home. As I mentioned last Fall, he has been called to do missionary work in the LDS Sapporo Japan mission. Since Jan 1 he has been doing "Home MTC" (MTC = missionary training center) which is a Zoom based system for getting introductory missionary training and some language training under his belt. Tomorrow we drive him down to Provo Utah, where he'll be at the normal MTC until around March 8, when, visa allowing, he'll head to Japan for almost 2 years. If his visa has not come in yet he'll get a temporary assignment somewhere in the US for a month or two until it comes in. He had his visa paperwork turned in by the middle of September so hopefully they get it done.

(The LDS church has MTCs in various parts of the world besides in Provo -- like Mexico City, in Brazil, Preston England, Johannesburg SA, Ghana, New Zealand, Peru, and the Philippines and had them in Tokyo, Seoul, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Spain, and Chile in the past but consolidated elsewhere now -- many of the Spanish speaking missionaries from the US actually go to Mexico for their MTC experience)

He'll be 21 in about 2 1/2 weeks and is our oldest and the first to leave the nest. We're proud of him and his decision to do this, but its also hard to have your "life's project" suddenly leave and be on his own, more or less. (Being a missionary you have a very organized life set up by others but you still run your own day to day life and work). He had been working at UPS as a package handler and also attending classes at Utah Valley University (all remote so he didn't have to drive down there regularly). I took him to Taco Bell for his last TB breakfast this morning, so we could have a final no-pressure chat. We talked about what he'd learned, about how it was different from when I was a missionary and went to the MTC in Provo (I was a missionary in S Germany). It was a good chat. He's up stairs right now re-packing his bags, going over stuff, etc. Today is an off day for most of the day from his Zoom as many of the people in his "district" -- 11 total -- are traveling to Utah or to the Provo area today to be able to report onsite tomorrow. We live in the area and a few of the others do as well but others are from Idaho, Arizona, California, and places like that and even one from the UK, and are all traveling here today. The UK guy has actualy been at a relatives house in Idaho for the online ZOom based week and a half so only has to travel from Idaho today. He did it that way so that the time difference for the week and a half wouldn't be hard to work with and then a long last minute travel to get here.

My daughter, who turns 16 in 2 1/2 weeks (shares her birthday with her brother) will be our only kid at home. She is exceited to inherit her brother's AirPods and Nintendo Switch but is sad he will be away but excited for him. Growing up they were not always so close but as he became an adult and she a teenager they've become good friends.

Anyway, its kind of one of those surreal days where it feels normal but the whole MTC and him going away is there as well. Wife and I will drive him down and do lunch on the way tomorrow. His sister has some tests at school so she won't be coming. Tonight we go to my mom's for dinner so Grandma can wish him well.

I need to get up to the house now and try and saw and chisel outr some concrete for the vault door and see how people are getting along. Wish me luck. It's cold out and I'm feeling it today. (Luckily the basement, while not heated, is not that cold and actually, despite the insulation under the radiant pipes above, draws heat from above and warms up as the main floor warms. But the garage abd otehr outside work is cold!!
 
I forgot to post my 2023 Christmas Gifts!
Department 56 Snow Village "Lionel Train Electric Shop"
Lionel Collector's Club of America 2023 Annual Christmas Boxcar.
Lionel 2023 Annual Christmas Boxcar
Apple 5th Generation iPad Air
Not shown in the photo: two Seagate Portable Hard Drives.
My wife was too generous!
A set of 14 Lionel Christmas Tree Ornaments. A big surprise from my friend the Ironhorseman.
And some other mundane stuff that is not as much fun.
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chadbag said:
Today is my son's last full day at home. As I mentioned last Fall, he has been called to do missionary work in the LDS Sapporo Japan mission. Since Jan 1 he has been doing "Home MTC" (MTC = missionary training center) which is a Zoom based system for getting introductory missionary training and some language training under his belt. Tomorrow we drive him down to Provo Utah, where he'll be at the normal MTC until around March 8, when, visa allowing, he'll head to Japan for almost 2 years. If his visa has not come in yet he'll get a temporary assignment somewhere in the US for a month or two until it comes in. He had his visa paperwork turned in by the middle of September so hopefully they get it done.

(The LDS church has MTCs in various parts of the world besides in Provo -- like Mexico City, in Brazil, Preston England, Johannesburg SA, Ghana, New Zealand, Peru, and the Philippines and had them in Tokyo, Seoul, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Spain, and Chile in the past but consolidated elsewhere now -- many of the Spanish speaking missionaries from the US actually go to Mexico for their MTC experience)

He'll be 21 in about 2 1/2 weeks and is our oldest and the first to leave the nest. We're proud of him and his decision to do this, but its also hard to have your "life's project" suddenly leave and be on his own, more or less. (Being a missionary you have a very organized life set up by others but you still run your own day to day life and work). He had been working at UPS as a package handler and also attending classes at Utah Valley University (all remote so he didn't have to drive down there regularly). I took him to Taco Bell for his last TB breakfast this morning, so we could have a final no-pressure chat. We talked about what he'd learned, about how it was different from when I was a missionary and went to the MTC in Provo (I was a missionary in S Germany). It was a good chat. He's up stairs right now re-packing his bags, going over stuff, etc. Today is an off day for most of the day from his Zoom as many of the people in his "district" -- 11 total -- are traveling to Utah or to the Provo area today to be able to report onsite tomorrow. We live in the area and a few of the others do as well but others are from Idaho, Arizona, California, and places like that and even one from the UK, and are all traveling here today. The UK guy has actualy been at a relatives house in Idaho for the online ZOom based week and a half so only has to travel from Idaho today. He did it that way so that the time difference for the week and a half wouldn't be hard to work with and then a long last minute travel to get here.

My daughter, who turns 16 in 2 1/2 weeks (shares her birthday with her brother) will be our only kid at home. She is exceited to inherit her brother's AirPods and Nintendo Switch but is sad he will be away but excited for him. Growing up they were not always so close but as he became an adult and she a teenager they've become good friends.

Anyway, its kind of one of those surreal days where it feels normal but the whole MTC and him going away is there as well. Wife and I will drive him down and do lunch on the way tomorrow. His sister has some tests at school so she won't be coming. Tonight we go to my mom's for dinner so Grandma can wish him well.

I need to get up to the house now and try and saw and chisel outr some concrete for the vault door and see how people are getting along. Wish me luck. It's cold out and I'm feeling it today. (Luckily the basement, while not heated, is not that cold and actually, despite the insulation under the radiant pipes above, draws heat from above and warms up as the main floor warms. But the garage abd otehr outside work is cold!!
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I wish you well Chad, with everything.

I know what it is like to see our children leave home, one at a time. My wife and I are now "empty nesters" as all three of our children are doing well with homes and families of their own. I miss their laughter most of all. I even miss playing referee occasionally.

May God be with you and your family always.
 
So, now that the 1/87 scale Oxford 1966 GTO is available, will anyone replicate this image on their HO scale layout?

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Quote from the San Antonio Light, Thursday April 6, 1967:
Possibly the latest in locomotive hood ornaments is a new Pontiac GTO. At the Missouri Pacific yards, Medina and W. Commerce, this mishap occurred when the switch engine came in contact with an open-type freight car carrying autos. The top-level row of autos had been readied for unloading when it rolled onto the switch engine. The unloading device, which can be adjusted to various levels on the freight car, simplified the chore of getting the undamaged auto off its perch.

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bnsf971 said:
September-- Hatton's purchased MB Klein.
December-- Hatton's summarily closed MB Klein's store in Maryland, and is moving sales/shipping to another location.
January--Hatton's announces they are closing.
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Seen elsewhere, plausible, but let the buyer beware.

Seems that the bulk of Hatton's walk in customers, are into OO scale. After the deal with Klein closed in September, Bachmann cut them off as a retail dealer for their line of OO, because, their corporate policy is not to deal with competititors... This may have caused a short term cash flow issue, with no inventory to sell. It's a story worth checking out. Supposedly Hattons was manufacturing a competing version of a Brit Motor Bachmann was selling.
Is it true? Who knows? Now Hattons is up a Nebraska creek, without a paddle.
 
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