Running Bear's October 2019 Coffee Shop


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It's "raining"--if you can call it that. I've been watching the rain fall on the lid of our trash can, and it's evaporating before the lid has a chance to get completely wet.
 
Bruette said:
Don't worry to much about the Kirwan Commission, their total recommendation is $3.8 billion, that's less than $650 per person. Don't forget about Larry Hogan. He rejected $325 million is spending increases, what do you think he will do about $3.8 billion?

Personally speaking, I'd give them a thousand dollar check right now if they can guarantee an improved education for all of Maryland's kids. It's much cheaper than the 6-18 thousand/year on each child, I spent on privates schools, I didn't even get a tax deduction! I don't even want to think how much I spent on colleges and universities. In my case it was money well spent. All of my kids are doing great. Hmmm, I should hit them up for a few bucks ;)
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I think that this commission is full of good intentions. However $3.8 billion is an imaginary number. We all know that these estimates are always well below the actual costs. Look at the commission itself; they were supposed to issue a final report in December 2018, but requested another $125 million to continue their study into 2019 and they aren't finished yet! And there are no guarantees as Joe pointed out in the Abbott ruling in Jersey. He is absolutely correct when posting "Funding isn't the cure all, just a boon for the politically connected. To have a successful school system, you need three components, students who want to learn, and teachers who want to teach, and parents who care enough to insist that the kids put forth the appropriate effort. "
I don't have all of the answers but I do believe the three points Joe made are the key. Many parents today have no clue what real parenting is all about. They need to be leaning on their own kids, the local school and the competancy of the teachers. You should be commended for raising your children the right way. A good first step for the education system would be to overhaul teacher union processes and allow schools to fire incompetent teachers rather than keep them on the payroll. That money would be better spent elsewhere and might strongly improve morale of the remaining competent teachers.
Your estimate of $650 per person is accurate in so far as overall Maryland population is concerned. But that includes all residents, regardless of age. If it was spread out on all taxpayers, the total would be as Karl estimated to be $6000/family, most likely more than that. Since a recent post by you indicated how affluent Maryland is, maybe the taxpayers there could afford that.;)
Do not take this post as negative. The entire education system in the US needs overhauling, not just Maryland or Jersey. We need to remove politics from the system, especially at the higher education end of things. I think that many older Americans like myself are real disappointed in what we have seen as deterioration of the educational system as we knew it in the 50's and 60's.
 
41* and overcast. Yesterday there was evidence of water in its solid state in the air....

Scrambled egss with biscuits anf gravy and a black coffee for me Flo.

On my way to warmer climate in Phoenix, again for work. However, I will get to make a side trip to Tucson to see 4014 in the iron. Yay me!

Well, time to get on the plane. Take care all.

-Z
 
Good morning. 29 degrees to start off the day with an expected high in the upper 50's. This has been a strange year for us up here. A very late spring and a slow start for trees and shrubs and almost no fall colors at all. We had one tree at the end of the driveway start to turn colors, but then we had the snow come and the leaves on all of the trees with the exception of the aspens just dried up and fell to the ground.

Clint - Thanks for posting the videos. I had seen the first one, but the second gave a lot of insight into Busters acting.

Sherrel - That is one interesting train.

Chad - Those trains look more like submarines. Interesting photo.

Dave - Nice to see a photo of your layout. Looks like some good construction. I don't know how you guys in the land of fruit and nuts put up with the high cost of living and taxes out there. In recent years I have had a few old friends move out of the state that they once loved. A few were basically taxed out of their homes.

Willie - Those were some awesome photos of the city scenes. Sure wish i had any more real estate available.

It was an interesting night at the club last night. I was not off to a good start as when I put the additional A unit on the track, it ran in the opposite direction as the other units. As I have mentioned many times, I am a DCC dummy' I have enough knowledge to put a locomotive on the tracks and enter the locomotive into the hand set and get it to move. One of the guys went and reprogrammed the additional A unit to a different number I had entered my original A and B units on the right throttle. He went and entered the new reprogrammed A unit on the left throttle and MUed it to the other 2. I need HELP from someone familiar with DCC to work me through this process. I got distracted for a second by a visitor and missed how he MUed the units together.

We had six trains running plus one operator switching in the yard in our east subdivision. Here is an interesting photo of a helper on a grade.

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It was pulling around a 60 car ore train. The cars are loaded with real ore so they are a bit heavy and needed help on the grade. Took a photo of it but it was too blurred to bother posting.

After putting the A-B-A units on the tracks with the 20 or so freight cars I brought, I headed over to the east subdivision to hook onto a dozen tank cars that the switcher had set out for me. All of the clubs tank cars have had additional weight added to them as tankers are usually a bit light. After picking up the tank cars the train headed back into the main room and and pulled the grade with no problem at all. Here is the power descending the grade. .

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Backing off a bit I tried to get the entire train in the photo. Couldn't fit it all in.

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It looks like the Gardiner loop is the best place to photograph long trains.

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We do have a G scale loop suspended from the ceiling above the town of Gardiner. I tried a number of times to get back to the yard in the east subdivision to pick up a few more cars but with all of the trains running, my timing was off. A couple of times a train was parked on the yard lead while the track cleaning car was having the pad cleaned or had to detour because a couple of guys decided to run in the opposite direction. It was an interesting night and I am sure that the A-B-A trio can easily handle more cars

Again, if someone can help me figure out how to get these units MUed together using Digitrax please let me know.
 
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Howdy ..

Louis ... Thanks for commenting on the Lionel. .... My Christmas tree Lionel has a small locomotive fleet. An Alaska SD9 and a Pair of Grand Trunk GP7's (one is a dummy). There are several freight cars and cabooses, too.

Willie ..... Your layout looks fantastic.

Chet .... Amazing layout photos. The F7 trio is getting a workout. The DM&IR Yellowstone locomotives are impressive.
 
Afternoon All,

Did some chores today. Had lunch then painted the second platform base MM aged concrete and dyed the remaining 1x6's. I counted what I currently have (75 of 138). The third platform is wider (between 2 tracks) so I need to figure out what I need for that one.

Toot- That was a really funny movie, I remember it as a kid.

Chet- Thank you. Very nice RDC and layout shots.

TruckDad- That area should be a focal point when complete.

Garry- Thank you.

Joe- Thank you.

Willie- WOW, those are great looking cities. I had no idea that they were that large.

Chad- That photo is painful to look at.

Karl- Safe travels and have fun.

Louis- Great meme.

I hope everyone has a good night.
 
Work has been progressing on the small-ish N scale layout. We go until we reach a stopping point, then we have to wait until I have time to continue. We put down some plaster cloth under where the track will go on the subroadbed today, now we have to wait for it to dry for the next step.
Just for S&Gs, I tried running a DPU train on the larger layout this afternoon. The result was deemed not successful.

 
Thank You GARRY
CHET My kids & grand kids are here in N Cal and if it wasn't for them I would be somewhere else. Idaho maybe. N Cal is full of folks like me trying to escape the whackos in the cities but its getting harder. Also, that 60 Impala had to be hard to let go of.
CURT I have a lot of ideas for this small area but I'm still new at this and I have drank several beers just staring at it trying to visualize different scenes. It will come to me eventually......

Dave
 
Terry - Nice video. N scale sure didn't operate that well back in the 70's.

Dave - I can understand your situation. The northern part of the state is so different than the areas around the big cities. One of my friends was in the same situation, but even with a pension for both him and his wife and SS, the rising property taxes, gas prices and just the cost of living (and politics) drove them out of the state. They're not too far from family as they moved to the Reno area. He is close enough to visit his kids and grand kids from there. Now his kids are looking at doing the same thing. His son can work remotely and with the housing prices, he should be able to get a decent place when he leaves. It wasn't hard at all to part with the '60 Impala. I have a '59 that is now a resto-mod. Looks completely stock but has had everything changer top modern specs. the 6 banger was replaced with and LS-3 engine and the power glide was replaced with a 6 speed over drive transmission. Steering was improved to rack and pinion and after a lot of suspension modifications, it now had 4 wheel disc brakes, a complete frame off restoration.

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Today we headed up to Wyoming (just Evanston, which is more like extended Utah) to visit my sister for her granddaughters "Blessing" at church (born a month ago). On the way up the canyons, along which a UP line also runs, we saw a stopped intermodal container train. My wife was astounded at how long it was. It was very long. She was more used to the Japanese freight container trains, which are not stacked and maybe 10-25 or so wagons (most of these UP ones were stacked), and this probably had over 100 cars. We did not count but it was very long, stretching out along the side of the road. 3 large locomotives were at one end. I did not see what type (and would not have know what they were by looks anyway). It was very impressive. She was impressed that 3 diesel locomotives could pull such a long train -- especially up into the mountains.

On the way back home, as we were driving down from Evanston, we saw another UP train, this time with what looked like some autorack cars (I am not the expert but the looks were the same), tank cars, and covered hoppers was going up the canyon. Also very long.

Got up into the 60s today and was quite a nice day. The week should be quite nice, and hopefully no ore freezing at night until next weekend.
 
chadbag said:
Today we headed up to Wyoming (just Evanston, which is more like extended Utah) to visit my sister for her granddaughters "Blessing" at church (born a month ago). On the way up the canyons, along which a UP line also runs, we saw a stopped intermodal container train. My wife was astounded at how long it was. It was very long. She was more used to the Japanese freight container trains, which are not stacked and maybe 10-25 or so wagons (most of these UP ones were stacked), and this probably had over 100 cars. We did not count but it was very long, stretching out along the side of the road. 3 large locomotives were at one end. I did not see what type (and would not have know what they were by looks anyway). It was very impressive. She was impressed that 3 diesel locomotives could pull such a long train -- especially up into the mountains.

On the way back home, as we were driving down from Evanston, we saw another UP train, this time with what looked like some autorack cars (I am not the expert but the looks were the same), tank cars, and covered hoppers was going up the canyon. Also very long.

Got up into the 60s today and was quite a nice day. The week should be quite nice, and hopefully no ore freezing at night until next weekend.
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Just don't get caught, waiting for one, at a grade crossing then. Will definitely put you to sleep counting the cars.
 
tootnkumin said:
Just don't get caught, waiting for one, at a grade crossing then. Will definitely put you to sleep counting the cars.
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Yeah, I can see that. After the concert we were at a few Saturdays ago one passed as we were walking to the car and it was literally like 5 minutes or more of train cars passing. (The venue was right next to the major north-south track complex in Salt Lake City -- I posted a blurry pic from that night in last month's coffee shop). Pretty impressive though.
 
santafewillie said:
Since a recent post by you indicated how affluent Maryland is, maybe the taxpayers there could afford that.;)
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Willie: When I was relocated to New Jersey, the cost of living in Jersey, made Maryland look like Cheap Living. I'm sure they have put forth a lot of effort to catch up. :eek: Seriously, cost of living rises in proportion to incomes, so do taxes, (which inexplicably, are not counted as a cost of living).
While Maryland, (at least when i lived there), has a single public school district for each county, (and Baltimore City).

Jersey has something like 529 school districts to cover 21 counties. There is a considerable amount of inefficiency built in, and no likelihood that this will ever change. Too many well paid positions are at stake. Pretty much, the taxpayers can afford it, even though they would rather spend the money on something else. Those who cannot afford the cost of living, move further away from the central cities, which explains our notoriously long commutes. It also explains why population outflow is greater than population inflow. If I would have understood all the ramifications thirty four years ago, I would never have accepted the position and come up here.

Everyone's situation is different. Our family income would go a lot further in Maryland, Virginia (outside of Metro DC), or in the Carolinas, for instance.
But it has become more difficult to just pick up and relocate. I sympathize with Karl, and others who share his concern. The bottom line is that the Grass is always greener on the other side of the state line.

When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, neighboring Delaware was regarded as more desirable, as they had lower property taxes and no sales tax. Pennsylvania had all sorts of nickel and dime nuisance taxes, and a sales tax. What I didn't realize until I started working in Delaware was they had a State Income Tax, (as did Maryland), long before either Pennsylvania or New Jersey even thought of one. Because they took more of your money up front, everything was cheaper. I also discovered that retailers in Delaware had a higher mark-up to cover other business taxes, which nullified the no sales tax advantage. I quickly learned that the good folks in Delaware were just as pissed at their government and tax structure as we were in PA.

Boris
 
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