I was talking to Kevin yesterday, and the a couple of topics came up — getting some serious progress going on the C&S, and getting some regular get-togethers for the MADmodules group going. We decided that once a week, we’d have some sort of thing happening, either in the basement here to work on the C&S or down at his shop to work on, well, whatever. So, starting next week, we’ll be having weekly gatherings to get things done. My hope through this is to get enough of a railroad running to start regular operating sessions by year’s end. We’ll see how this goes, but for now, I’m really looking forward to Wednesday!
Category Archives: Miscellaneous
Flood Forces Temporary Abandonment Past Milepost 47
Corinna, ME — After two tornado warnings, and a day of torrential rains, during which I had to be off railroad property (at work), I arrived back to find a flood in the area north of Corinna, approaching the Bragg Hill Quarries (no, you haven’t heard about the quarries yet), making the area completely impassible. The flood covered an area approximately 184,000 scale square feet, turning plausible quarries into muddy bogs.
In real terms, the pounding winds and rains today caused the wood basement door to physically warp, allowing gallons of water to run in, flooding a good portion of the back basement, including part of the workshop area. Amazingly, all that was lost were three empty cardboard boxes, an HO boxcar kit, some scrap wood and an already damaged HO “pay car.” With Donna’s help, I got the worst of it cleaned up, and, except for the carpet in the shop (which I had just put down last week!), it should all be dry sometime tomorrow. Of course, if the basement floor had been properly leveled when the house was built, all of the water would have run harmlessly into the sump pump …
More on the Bragg Hill quarry area another time. I need a shower …
On30Guy Shay Pickup Wipers
I continue to receive inquiries about the pickup wiper sets I used to produce for the Bachmann Shay. I had discontinued them due to a marked increase in manufacturing costs — costs that had risen to a point that I thought would drive the selling price well beyond what I would consider to be reasonable for the product. It appears, however, that there is still interest in the product.
Before I commit to another manufacturing run of the wiper sets, I’d like to get a gauge of interest, based on what I believe the new selling price would be.
Model train manufacturer nearly pushed off the tracks by embezzlement | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO
Stocking Up and a Monumental Fail
Last night, I was the hunter/gatherer — Home Depot, Michael’s and WalMart were my destinations and my prey was glue and adhesives, some hardware and … Christmas lights.
I’d seen in the past where people had successfully used Christmas lights for lighting in “shadow box” style layouts. With the advent of bright, warm-white LEDs, I thought that using them for layout lighting could be a “good thing,” given that we have some really neat LED lighting gear at work. Unfortunately, it was a pretty monumental failure — at least my first attempt.
I figure that in order to get the kind of lighting I’m looking for, I’d need to cluster approximately 60 LEDs in a 2′ x 2′ area. At seven bucks for each 60-light strand, Corinna alone would need $42 in lights, plus I’d need to build something to hold the LEDs and reflect any spill towards the layout.
Or, for a whole lot less money, I could use warm-white 14W CFLs in a strip box or some sort of reflector fixture. I tried that on a really small scale (I had one CFL bulb and one small reflector light handy) and that worked really well. At this point, I’m really inclined to go that route, and give all those nifty LED Christmas lights to Donna to decorate with…
Tonight, visits to The Moose Caboose and Lowes are on tap for cork roadbed and a couple other goodies, as well as more lighting “research.” I’ll also see if I can get the Homasote attached to the benchwork.