Good evening. 60*F, cloudy and calm here in central MD.
Johnny - I'm glad I didn't totally scare you off with the prices of the crossing flasher hardware. Actually, the total is about the same as what you'd pay for a decent factory DCC+sound equipped loco. My love of flashing crossbucks goes all the way back to the one I got with my Lionel set at age 5.
Chet - 5 multi-direction grade crossings
does seem like a costly proposition! There aren't anywhere near as many 1:87 automobiles available for my 1969-72 era; few cars, fewer roads - problem solved!
Sherrell - you're just a few miles East of where my wife's sister & family live (Pell City). We used to go down there regularly to visit before the kids all grew up. While there, I got to spend time with Carey (CJCrescent), Rex (rexhea), William (L&N Castle), Mikey (PinkFloyd) and a few other forum members that no longer hang out here.
Louis - good to see you here, glad you're doing ok!
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Since I get off work early on Tuesdays, I figured I'd have a few hours of 'quality time' to spend getting started on running wires for my crossing flasher detection circuit. But it wasn't meant to be...
I was checking my email and left my laptop on while I stepped into the kitchen to grab a beverage. When I got back, the screen resembled an old-time color television that wasn't tuned to a functioning channel. I moved the mouse around, pressed the 'enter' key a few times - no reaction. So I did the Microsoft Solution of Last Resort: powered it down completely and restarted it. That cleared the video/screen problem.
But I started wondering if, at some point in the near future, I would have to bring my laptop to the Geek Squad for hardware repair work. They do NOT guarantee protection of my personal data, it is
my responsibility to make sure I have everything backed-up before I drop it off. The external HD I had been using for my regular backups had gotten full over a year ago and I couldn't figure out how to get at the old backed-up data to erase it, so I just stopped doing backups. I wound up spending a few hours on the phone with a Geek Squad "agent" to address that problem, and a few other minor ones that I had been procrastinating on. Having a functional backup utility seemed a tad more important than working on the layout. At least now I'm running backups once again, don't have to worry about losing all my photos!