Running Bear's March 2019 Coffee Shop


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We're still at 52, but not for much longer. The storms that went through earlier spawned a couple of tornados.
 
Garry, I see there was a tornado that went through McCracken County earlier, is everything intact where you are?
 
I guess our 2 days of Spring was a teaser.
Mike: See Beady's chart. Based on that, I believe you are referring to Fake Spring going into Third Winter :rolleyes:.

We are on target for a quick cool down tomorrow evening, but until then it's Spring. Hit 65 today, with sunshine. I was picking up branches. More 60s tomorrow.

Terry: Lawnmower is still stored, for now. Have to get fertilizer down, next week.

I was able to Dullcote the exterior walls, of the Middlesex Manufacturing building. Now, on to the next phase of the project.

My son sent me a short video of a consist on the play layout he has to keep his 4 year old busy. He coupled an Athearn BB CF7, a Atlas GP40, a Bachmann B-23-7, and a KATO GP35, (all DC), and ran them with train on the steep figure 8 elevation of the inner loop. Surprisingly, all ran well together.

Now, back to the Hockey Game!

Boris
 
Good evening, everybody ..... It's good to see all of the conversations here today. .... I spent some time today with a model train friend who has been fighting cancer for two years. Sadly, he does not have much time remaining.

Phil .... Thanks for the email..... Interesting photos of roundhouse steam switchers.

Beady .... I did see the UP schedule for celebrating the Golden Spike Anniversary. ... Regarding Michigan's notorious pot holes, it has been that way for decades. I lived in MI before moving to KY. When I was there, MI allowed heavier trucks than any other state. I believe that is still the case. The weight limit for trucks was per axle. So, heavy trucks had as many axles as would fit beneath the trucks. That is a major cause of the pot holes, but politicians would not change the rules for the trucks. .... To repair the roads, fuel taxes must be raised to pay for that. Politicians won't raise the taxes enough. So, enjoy your pot holes. The won't go away. ..... Every time we go to MI, I notice the pot holes.

Dave ..... I like your scratch built shack.

Greg ... I am trying to understand what is going on with your Proto 2000 SD9. I have 3 P2K SD9's and 3 P2K SD7's and I don't notice anything like what you described. Two of my SD7's were early production models, and needed to be modified because they derailed if track was not absolutely perfect. The trucks were mounted slightly too snugly, and they would not pivot as freely as they should. .... I like your NP S-1.

Terry .... Yes, there was a tornado in Paducah, KY and later one in Henderson, KY caused by the same storm system in the Ohio River Valley, Here, we had thunderstorms followed by strong winds.

Willie .... That's a good photo of Frisco units. .

Boris .... You were talking to Sherrel about locomotive assignments based on axles. You reminded me I recall the GTW commonly operated GP38's and SD40's in the same consist. They were compatible because the horsepower per axle was the same.
 
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Once again I am the winner of the who posts first Contest! As Jimmy Buffett always says, The weather is here, wish you where Beautful! There is weather here, just not much to talk about.

Flo, I'd like a nice cup of coffee, I'll order B-fast later, Thanks!

P.S. I can see I'm a bit confused as to who was first! I bow my head to the true winner, our own Santafewillie!
 
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Didn't know there was a contest,but it seems Willie has you beat.Might want to check post before claiming victory.

Good morning...Spring mud season is here along with muddy dog paws.Should have the rest of my sound units on Saturday.
 
Good morning. It's cloudy and 57. It rained overnight, and is supposed to rain more later today.
I finally got the handrails painted for the RS1, and I'lll install them tonight. The black part went okay, I was able to use a spray can of black for it. The yellow parts didn't turn out so well, since all I have in that shade was a bottle and brushes. But they're painted...
 
Good morning y'all. Happy Friday! 56 and foggy, with an early sample of April Showers predicted, before it gets colder again.

Garry:
Boris .... You were talking to Sherrel about locomotive assignments based on axles. You reminded me I recall the GTW commonly operated GP38's and SD40's in the same consist. They were compatible because the horsepower per axle was the same.

Conrail adopted the X HP per Ton method to assign system pool power, and we were provided a chart to assist in our assigning Regional power to Coal trains destined for the Popes Creek Secondary. HP per axle was a "secondary" consideration, because 2000 HP power and lower, was Regional, and 3000 HP power and above, was system.

In this scenario, a 10 Axle consists would include a 3000 HP 4 Axle GP40 and a 3000 HP SD40. The GP40 would turn out 750 HP per axle, while the SD40, 500 HP per axle.

There was an ongoing debate as to the validity of the theory. During system pool power shortages, The System power Bureau, would borrow "Regional" power to alleviate the shortage. A 24 Axel consist including GP-10s, GP30s and GP9-B units did not perform the same as 4 SD40s, no matter what the Axle rating projected.

TV24 / TV23 (which was a mixed consist train in spite of the Van Train Symbol, normally was assigned two to four GE 2300 HP B23-7s, which were normally Regional Assigned power, but the HP/Axle ratio was constant. Coal trains originating at Baltimore, normally were assigned a mix of GP30s,GP35s and GP9Bs, which made for an interesting consist especially climbing out of the B&P Tunnel in Baltimore going South. The least little glitch would cause the train to stall or possibly break in two. Conrail had decided that 24 axles was 24 axles and there was no need for a Pusher.

Boris
 
Good Morning All. It's now 37° and still clear. At least the wind has died down considerably. House is a cozy 75° now. Pattern for the coming week is upper-30's at night to mid and upper-60's during the day. Did the weekly grocery/beer trek yesterday with extra stops for the wife to purchase some birthday gifts for a few upcoming celebrations.

Many thanks, Joe, Phil, Chet, Tom, Garry, Johnny, Sherrel, Curt, Dave and anyone else that I may have missed, for the comments and likes yesterday, on the RR scenes. It encourages me to continue in the direction that I am taking, albeit slowly. I am mainly attempting to replicate what I have observed over the years and as someone posted the other day, make it look real as opposed to modeled. Alas, I am presently out of photos, so none today.

Yesterday in the train shed, I only ran trains as I didn't have a lot of time between the supply run, household tasks and helping my neighbor with a few odd jobs at his place. He has slowed down a bit at 76 years and his son who usually helps him was a bit too busy at work this week to come by.

Garry - Thanks for the comment on the track-laying. Glad to read that the tornados avoided your immediate area.
Sherrel - Happy Anniversary.
Everyone around here is trying to figure how they got through Customs!
Maybe you need a wall!
Joe - Thanks again for the axle/HP explanation.

Remember to "Beware the Ides of March" today.
 
Good morning all,

I survived yesterday's pothole but now am thinking there is a hazard on every crappy road I am driving on (there probably is). They filled the bad one yesterday, but ignored a bunch of other ones.

Garry--thanks for the comment on the shack

The temp here this morning is 28 and we are only headed to the mid 30's. By next tuesday they are forecasting 46. Seriously, many people will be running around with shorts and t shirts.

Here is my layout shot of the day. The large building was set up to be iron and steel fabrication, the smaller white building on the right is the back of the grocery store.

a final view 008.JPG


This is part of the town I called Grovemont. The roads were made from sheet rock mud.

more later, Dave
 
Good morning. 25 degrees with clear skies.

Terry - I don't think I'll have to worry about mowing for a few weeks (months). Yesterday I scraped off all I could from the driveway and found this little patch of grass. Does NOT need mowing at this time. We are expecting temps in the upper 30's into the 40's for the next few days and even up into the 50's next week. A thaw????

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Greg - Like the photo of the NP Alco switcher. I have never had any problem with any of my diesels with three axle trucks until I got the BLI SD-9. The do require a bit more care when putting them on the tracks. I don't have many diesels with three axle trucks. An Atlas RSD 4/5, an old Athearn SD-7, a Model Power SD-7 and a Model Power E-7 (actually has sprung axles) and the BLI SD-9. I found the SD-9 would come out of hidden staging tracks with the front axle of the lead truck would jump the rail. After a bit of investigation, I found that it would derail where the hidden track, code 83 transitioned to code 70 rail which is what all of my visible track is. It was an easy fix, using part of a business card to shim up the outer rail. This is the only locomotive that I have that has had a derailment problem. I have accidentally left the train room and forgot that I had trains running and returned the next day and they were still running with all cars on the rails.

Willie - An interesting Frisco photo with the B unit in between the SD-45's. Sort of reminds me of the last days of the Milwaukee Road. In the last day, the Milwaukee Road did little if any maintenance on their locomotives. When they quit running they would just park them and put anything that ran into a consist. You could see a few geeps of F units with SW units and anything else that would run to pull their trains.

Dave - I enjoy seeing the photos of your old layout. Must have hurt to have to dismantle it. It was an excellent looking layout.

Here's a rail photo for today.

infinity-train-tracks.jpg


Think I'll run trains for a while. cleaned some of the sidings yesterday that hadn't been used for a while. Good switching opportunities.

Later.
 
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Good Morning all,

Winds have died down considerably, but there’s a light mist with some snow mixed in. Temps are in the low 30s., but this is as warm as it gets. At least it’s Friday!

Last night I started a Central Valley bridge kit. It’s going to be a fairly challenging build for me. I haven’t put many kits together, and the directions are somewhat vague. There is a series of YouTube videos that’s helpful. We shall see how it turns out.


Have a great day,
 
Good Morning Everyone.....overcast, colder and snow flurries.

Doctor's and medical appointments yesterday and then I took the Mrs. to the downtown Milwaukee Casino. It's huge and rives anything from Las Vegas with a high rise hotel and since another twin tower under construction. At first I lost the farm and then waited awhile and started playing again. I had a streak of good luck and took out a winning ticket for a King's ransom for $90.05. This left me $25.00 in the hole for the afternoon.

Garry and Chet: This six axle diesel needs to be carefully placed on the rails like you noted Chet. Usually the front leading axles is off the rails and causes the problems. I like it more human error in the re-railing of the monster than a mechanical problem with the locomotive. I checked the wheel gauges, truck movements and side play and everything looks fine. I just run it later and see what happens. I've run it for hours and it never caused me any problems.

I'll use the flashlight built in my DT402 throttle to inspect the axles and make sure they are on the rails. This is the only six axle loco to give me problems.

Dave: Nice buildings and scene in the photo.

That's all to report today...need to make my list for my trip to Walthers tomorrow.

I decided to make my own decals with a decal paper from HobbyCal which from what I read is for Ink Jet printers and doesn't require any fixative to be applied after printing. A bit expensive, but I'll try it anyway.

Greg

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CM&NR Logo November 26, 2018.jpg
I plan on making decals like my logo in a size to fix on the sides of ore cars. -Greg
 
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Good morning ....

We still have plans to go to Utah for the Golden Spike anniversary in May. Last I heard, none of you are planning on going .

Boris .... Thanks for the interesting explanation about assigning power on Conrail.... GTW did not have much variety in locomotive models when I was there ('72 - '92) . Mostly GP9's, GP38's, and SD40's.... Upon acquiring the DT&I, other types were added SD38's, GP35's and GP40's. The SD38's were always used at the hump yard in Flat Rock. The GP35's were sold. The GP40's were used on the GTW mostly for intermodal trains which had faster schedules. .... Some of the GTW SD40's were transferred to the DWP (another CN owned railroad). ... GP9's were used for yard switchers and local trains. Some of them were rebuilt with low short hoods. Sometimes they were MU'ed with GP38's for regular freight trains.

Mike ... I hope you enjoy building your bridge.

Dave LASM ... Another nice layout shot.

Chet ... Looks like a lot of snow to melt. ... Nice rail photo of the day.

Here is an older photo of my NP RS3's.

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Back for a minute or two....

Ran a track cleaning track consisting of two CenterLine track cleaning cars with alcohol on the pads. After awhile I thought that these pads were dirty at the start of the track cleaning progress and that I better replace the pads with new Handy-Wipe strips.

Ran the clean pads with alcohol and after two trips around what I believed was clean track, the pads had streaks of black crud around the rollers indicating that the track wasn't as clean as I thought. I guess I better replace the roller strips more often.

Greg

Sherrel: Our tick season doesn't start until the first warm days of Spring. Our ticks are so big that I saw once a tick riding on the back of a small dog.
 
Good morning. 25 degrees with clear skies.

Dave - I enjoy seeing the photos of your old layout. Must have hurt to have to dismantle it. It was an excellent looking layout.

Later.


Hi Chet, believe it or not, it wasn't really that hard. I ran out of room to do anything and I wanted more space to run trains.

I am looking forward to a brand new blank space to create on... Dave
 
Dave: Nice buildings and scene in the photo.

That's all to report today...need to make my list for my trip to Walthers tomorrow.

I decided to make my own decals with a decal paper from HobbyCal which from what I read is for Ink Jet printers and doesn't require any fixative to be applied after printing. A bit expensive, but I'll try it anyway.

Greg

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I plan on making decals like my logo in a size to fix on the sides of ore cars. -Greg

Greg, I am curious how these decals work. Do you simply purchase the special paper and run them through a regular printer?
 
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