I have not posted for a long time. I have not even been following WFF. I have not even been in the train room much.I did get back a little last week and did a promotion at a train show. I hope to get back at the farm diorama this week. I hope I can remember what I ws doing and what all those scribbled sketches meant.
Any one else take the summer off? I hope you did fun things while ignoring the trains.
Actually, summer 2009 was a lot busier for me on the model railroading front than I’ve been for a long time.
First I spent over a month intensely working on scenery on the Operations Road Show layout, then we we took it to the NMRA National Convention in Hartford, Connecticut.
Once we got back, we took a week off, then unloaded the layout and reloaded one of the trailers with Rails on Wheels’ display layout, which we took to Owosso, Michigan and displayed for four days at Train Festival 2009.
I did pretty much take the month of August off, though. April through July had been pretty intense on the hobby front. It gave me a chance to tackle small projects I’d been putting off around the house.
Welcome back, Art! Wondered where you’ve been. I’ve been working off and on with pre-layout animation projects, including slo-mo switch machines based on 35 cent motors acquired from Axman’s many years ago, roundhouse door activators, and a scratchbuilt semi-automated rotary dump. Retired 7/31/09 and have learned there’s no time to get anything done. My wife’s myriad health issues have kept us occupied much of the time. I just had vericose veins worked on yesterday and am currently living on a diet of mostly vicodin. Layout is still in pre-planning stage as I try to find room; the basement is still stuffed with years of accumulation of two pack-rats (my good stuff and her junk[:-^]) after a move two years ago to a handicap-friendly house. Frustration has reared it’s ugly head a time or two[banghead]. Hopefully winter will allow construction time (oops, almost forgot, we have to gut and redo kitchen to Universal Design functionality, and I’ll probably need to build the cabinetry myself). Gary
Sounds like trains are a low priority Gary, but if your anything like me when I get the bug I work on whatever project untill I drop.
It gets very hot in my garage/layout room so in the summer I spend more time on the internet where the AC keeps me comfortable. Not to mention the lack of model RR capital is hard to come by. Thats always my excuse to not knowing what I want to do next. Hopefully it cools off next weekend and I can start moving on the scenery.
Hey, welcome back, Art. And the same to all of the winter warriors who are coming in out of the cold. (An apt metaphor for me. I just got all the mousetraps baited in the basement.)
I’ve been in a holding pattern all summer. My layout is now at that stage where, to the casual observer, it is “complete.” Of course, we all know that there’s no such thing, but I’ve got scenery over the entire layout, and all the track is glued down and ballasted. So what if there are non-functioning signals?
But, greater things are in store. A few weeks back, we dropped our only child, Annie, off at college for her freshman year. The train room has always been called “The Train Room,” but since it got finished it became a “family room,” complete with the big-screen TV, the stereo and the air hockey table. Now, though, I’ve been given permission to return it to its rightful and intended purpose. Last week, I moved furniture around and rotated the whole table (it’s on wheels) 90 degrees in preparation for adding Phase II of my miniature world.
Now, it’s time to measure for lumber. The Circle of Life has begun again.
I did a complete tear dpwn and rebuild this summer. Been slow going but then again it is a hobby. My wife just finished my backdrop, a wonderful job I might add by the way, so now I can get back to work in earnest. Dave
During the summer on the weekends I spend time boating and camping on the Ohio River. The rest of the week I have yard chores, house maintenace, etc. At our place on the river there are a couple of other Model Railroaders and we get together at times and talk about our layouts and such. I still spend time with the hobby but the bulk of the time is planning and working on ideas that will be implemented during the winter months (considered by me to be from late October to May). Also during what I consider my off months I may be building a new structure, working on specific scene, loco maintenace, etc., as time allows. I’m not completely away from the hobby at any time since I’m involved with an occasional design involving CSXT, NS or the I&O.
My Tennessee Central was dismantled several years ago, and has yet to have a single inch of trackage laid for the new version. At the moment, there is a 6 foot long test track with a turnout in the middle leading to a stub which parallels the “main” line.
Currently, T/C equipment being upgraded to new color scheme, (yellow), and serious attention is being paid to flawless running characteristics and sound.
I visit this forum from time to time, and post appropriately.
Real world endeavors trump the T/C, so it’s moving ahead…slowly.
.
I was about to ask Crandell, again, if he had any Idea as to what happened to you. Then, “lo and behold”, you Posted (not “posed”), and it seemed like old times. I still love your picture of the loaded Thanksgiving table surrounded by your layout. Please Post it again! I am one of the lucky ones to have a 24’X24’ around the room garage loft layout, with an inside stairway. Living in Michigan, with an unheated garage, poses quite a problem My harbor on the central 5’x7’ peninsula had just enough space for the 3ft’ (18 bin) ore boat and sufficient room for two Hulett ore unloaders (to be mechanically operated) Four tracks under the movable unloaders will host 30 ore cars, and a fifth parallel track will handle ore for the Ashland Iron & Steel Blast furnace, with adjacent Blower Engine House and Rolling Mill. Slag cars from the Blast Furnace, will “pour slag” into a pit (which just fit in nicely, and is illuminated by a black light, so that the slag glows! The “flow” of molten iron in the troughs of the Blast Furnace, will, also, glow, as the fluorescent ribbon “flows” down the troughs, to the waiting “bottle cars”. When the bottle cars are filled, they will move out of the Blast Furnace, to the adjacent Rolling Mill. The limestone, scrap iron, coke, and iron ore can be staged in proper sequence on two tracks connected by a double-slip switch. Finished products from the Rolling Mill, have a two way exit (on appropriate gondolas and flat cars). All this activity, should be sufficient to keep one operator busy, besides operating the 24 related turn-outs, on his assigned DCC Power District. At present, I am in the process of creating the piles of scrap iron, that will be loaded onto gondolas, for delivery to the ramp of the Blast Furnace, as needed. Will Post photos, (or Video), when it is all complete. [URL=http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w78/ROBTAHahn/?action=view¤t=FootprintofHuelettUnloadersat4tr-1.jpg][IMG]http://i173.photobucket.com/a
Had some operating sessions, but little work on the HO layout. But then, it is a finished layout, so scenery, etc. work is replacement, not first time. However, I did spend a lot of time on the garden railroad this summer. We have had tons of rain in beautiful Kansas City, and the ballast became unstable many times. Spent more time re-ballasting than running.
Bob
I never really think trains in the summer. I am fairly active with scuba diving, bicycling and attending car shows with the 68’ Camaro. I did repaint the layout room floor and added a blue backdrop to my shelf layout. I will most likely start working on my trains beginning in ernest in October or November and continue on until February. Thats when the Camaro parts books come out and I start planning for Spring. I do have to rebuild the 3 speed Turbo in the car to get rid of transmission fluid leak and at the same time replace the clutch packs.
I do look forward to getting back to scratchbuilding structures and getting some track in place. I have my ME code 70 already painted at my workbench and ready to put down.
Being far away from home at university from September to May, I end up getting most of my model-train related stuff done during the summer. Come the new school year, there’s enough work to do, plus the fact that all of my modeling supplies/layout are at home, over a thousand miles away (quite literally).
I’ve been contemplating ways to get more done here, or perhaps even building a small portable n-scale layout to have in my apartment, but that’s still a working thought.
On the upside, my projects end up being incredibly well planned by the time I get to them!
Art:
Wondered where you’d been, I’m glad you’re back!
Summer was pretty hot out here in SunnyCal, so I didn’t get to use my California Basement as much as I wanted to–I’d had some scenery projects but I put them on hold because of the weather (and the fact that the scenery material would dry too fast for me to work it, LOL!). Did some track-work and the usual ‘brass tweaking’, but that was pretty much it.
Oh, yah, I found out that I could use steam pushers for a couple of my longer trains in DC. But I don’t think anyone believe me, LOL [:P]
Weather’s supposed to ‘break’ by Monday, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back out and get to some serious work.
But welcome back!
Tom [:)]
I had been in model railroading over 20 years before I heard of this idea of “taking the summer off”, that many modellers don’t do much in the summer. For me it’s not made a difference, or if anything, I’ve done more in the warm weather months while I can glue and spray paint and such without freezing to death from opening the windows or being outside.
I swore that I wasn’t going to take the summer off but after working non-stop like a whirling dervish on my benchwork and track laying, I finally burned out and had to take a break. Our local operations group takes a traditional break in the summer but I wanted to “play catch up”. ******* Once the nice weather came around and I had an opportunity to take our motorsailer out for a two week vacation and get some scuba diving in, I gave in. Now the problem is overcoming the inertia and getting the gumption up to haul lumber and saw, screw and glue once again 
Once the Pacific N.W. rainy season begins it’ll be easier to get goin’ again. We have a small cottage with no shop. All carpentry is done in the kitchen! I’ve got the world’s greatest wife.
Art,
I was hoping that you would return some day. I thought maybe you had moved on to greener pastures. Welcome back![tup]
I did, but I take every summer off. As I explained in another thread, there is golf season and there is train season and there is not too much overlap between the two. Usually, golf season ends when I get so disgusted with the way I am playing I just put the clubs away, but this season I have played pretty well but am starting to lose interest anyway. I’ll probably be out a few more times, but I’m getting the train bug again.
John
I wish I could say yes, but I found keeping busy working on the railroad was a good distraction from unemployment. Thanks to forced semi retirement I got a lot done and my other hobby building hot rods and restoring old motorcycles has become the income source for the household. Unlike most normal people I work on my trains during the day and go out to the shop and work through the night when I have to . get a lot more done that way on both sides.But when you start charign people for the stuff that you used to do for a hobby it becomes a lot less fun, there ain’t nobody in their right mind who is ever gonna pay me to work on their trains so the fun of this hobby is safe.
I don’t touch the layout in the summer but I still buy the odd thing for the layout during the summer months. To be honest I just don’t have the time during the summer. Besides I would rather be outside doing something then being couped up down stairs.
I’ve taken too much time off from modeling. I hope to get some in real soon though!
