Good Morning All. 28° and cloudy this morning. Highs in the low-40's for the next two days, then back to the 60's on Thursday. Still have rather stiff winds out of the north that should abate somewhat around sunset. No snow here,
Chet,
Mark and
Greg are keeping it all for themselves. Took a day of rest yesterday from
all household and yard projects, instead I worked on updating my model railroading database and listening to music.
Eventually I made the trip out to the train shed with the intent to mostly run trains. All went well until I ran a pair of Kato SD40-2's that I have had since 1999 or so. These are from the run with the infamous "pick-up design flaw" that plagues many of these particular models, although I have used mine for almost 20 years without it affecting me. One of the units was not picking up power from it's rear truck at all, and only intermittently from the front truck. I think that the colder conditions caused the contact strips to contract a bit and lose contact. Messed around with them for a bit and finally got all of them firmed in place enough to run properly. The ultimate solution is to hardwire the trucks to the control board, but I don't have the proper wire or soldering skills to do this, yet! While never admitting to the design flaw, Kato used it for this model only, and abandoned it and went back to the Athearn type design until they started hardwiring everything themselves. The train shed was 62°, tolerable enough for me but maybe not for Kato SD40-2's.
Johnny - Keep your snow up there. Drive safely.
Sherrel -
We have been placed on notice that our power may be shut off during the day due to the high winds and the chance of downed power lines.
I did read that PG&E's role in reducing wildfire's caused by their lines was to simply shut off the electricity, instead of clearing brush and weeds from the utility corridors. State regulations or something like that. Seems like clearing the corridors would have the added advantage of providing fire breaks as well.
Is that you posing in the center of that loco picture?
Louis - Take care of yourself and get well soon. Christmas is coming up (as if you didn't already know), and Amazon will probably come calling for quality delivery persons.
Terry - It's not like you needed any more rain!
Everybody have a great day whatever day it is. OK, Bill Gates tells me it's Tuesday down here in the lower right corner.