Elliot´s Trackside Diner - September 2012

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Evening Dinners

Flo [B] pleases.

Daughters brakes are done. Rotor’s where wrapped but she still had 25 % of her pads left. Tells you about how she drives! [:-^] Far as her oil, only 10,000 miles over due! [banghead] While I was at the bank she works at one of her female coworkers tried to defender her by saying (Woman need a man or a father to remind them of theses things) I pointed out to her Gender has nothing to do with Intelligences! Plus she grew up in a Car Family. She use to hand me tools when I was working on my cars. Heck, she took her driving test in my 70 Big Block Cuda! [:-^]

Should have seen the look on the faces of the guy that was going to go with her! [(-D] He looked [+o(]

That her sitting next to the Cuda, my Charger is on the right.

Ah, Dennis I must be taking this the wrong way.

Must be the [B] in me.

Later. Ken

622

Evenin’ Folks!

Just a decaf, Janie. So why is Galaxy crying in the back booth. Furnace Repairs?!? I thought he had a brand new furnace just last year? Don’t that beat all! Something doesn’t sound right with all of that!

Tom, according to one of the pharmacists at the Big Chain Pharmacy, they got audited a few months back, and certain chains are being made to account for where all the supplies paid for by medicare have gone… Therefore the patient has to show he/she did the blood tests… The place I am transferring my accounts to has told me he hasn’t heard a thing about it and none of his customers have to do that. Interesting, Huh?

Jeffrey, yes the color of the standard fluorescent is usually around 2700°K and most have terrible color rendering. Just look at the difference in the color of your photo from outside in comparison to the one taken inside. Yes I know you have also used a Matte Finish on them. 2700°K is the color of the light at sunup and at sunset and generally has a lot of Yellow in it. The color of midday is usually more blueish. I use 5000° to 5500° Daylight CFLs that also have a very high CRI. The ones I am get these days have a CRI of 91+ which is exceptional. Colors run very true with them. Here is a comparison of 2 photos on my layout. The first was taken with dollar store CFL bulbs at 2700°K using the auto white setting on my Digital Rebel:

Here is basically the same area after changing to the 5000°K daylight with a high CRI index:

Hopefully you can see the difference!&nb

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The lights I’m using are Lowe’s Bright Effects 123tm/65k CFL’s, four to be exact. They’re quite bright.

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Silos are done for now. The next step will be to start designing the accompanying structures. These will be made of card stock for the most part.

625

Evening guys

Been away busy sleeping. Went to bed around 10pm on tuesday, woke up at 11am, at, then took a nap from about noon to 3pm. This isn’t the first time where I’ve had no energy, but drinking some gatorade always seems to help.

Had a minor mishap at work today. I was using one of those box-cutters with the breakable blades, and it broke when I was using it. Guess where the broke piece went? Into the knuckle of my left index finger. It doesn’t hurt much, I must have gotten lucky with the angle. It didn’t go straight in, but rather it skimmed the knuckle. So it’s more of a scrape than a cut.

My father wants to experiment with my car again. He wants to try a breadbox intake with an 80mm thottle body (IIRC, I have a 70 on an explorer intake). He says I might get an 8.1 with the change. I’m skeptical it’ll knock off half a second in the 1/8th. I know I have an 8.5 capable car now (had an 8.60 slow shifting)

Haven’t done a whole lot with the trains lately. Ran around at the MR club on tuesday, and have been painting wheelsets. Out of the 100 36" wheelsets I bought, I only used about half of them. Still need more 33" wheelsets.

Ken, your daughter sounds like my brother. He always washes and vacuums his car, but rarely checks fluids, levels, etc. I’m the opposite, clean every other week, but check levels weekly.

Ulrich, $3,800 a loco? Is scale 1 1"=1’? If so, where will you find the space?

Jeff, I love how you post your pics of your elevator, right when I’m considering selling my Walther’s ADM one. Reason being is it takes up storage space.

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Hi Jeffrey, I did a search on the Bright Effects Light bulbs and found a lot of complaints about them. They are evidently a store brand sold at Lowes and Wal Mart and some other places. Lowes doesn’t sell them anymore. Most of the complaints were about them burning for a few hours and dieing. Some spoke about a brown goo leaking out of them as well and that it was almost impossible to get the stores to honor the Guarantee on them. If yours are working well, I guess you got lucky… Brightness has nothing to do with it…

My guess is that because they are a cheap brand, the CRI (Color Rendering Index) is probably below 80 and possibly down in the 60 range of a shoplight no matter what the Kelvin temperature of the bulb. On the photos I showed earlier of my layout the CRI is the biggest factor in the difference in color quality.

I’m not saying you should run out and buy better lights… They work well for you, don’t worry about it! Poor CRI generally means there i

627

Thanks for the heads up on light bulbs. I’ll be looking for replacements when these start going bad. I’ve never had any problems with them at all and never had any burn out. Just after a few years they start getting dim and need to be replaced. My nephew uses my old CFL’s as his outside porch lights.

Well I was looking at getting the Walthers ADM elevator but that fell through, so I decided to make one from scratch. Been a long time since I’ve done ant scratch building and I’m a bit out of practice.

628

Evening Chloe, how about a nice glass of a fine Finger Lakes wine, please. Think I’ll go join Ken tonight. [banghead] [banghead] Been one of THOSE days… busy, hectic, and one of my least favorites about 10 minutes before leaving time. [sigh]

OzJim, I tried to read that article about your CAPE, but my eyes started to glaze over. Way over my head! (Yeah, I was thinking of one of those other Capes you mentioned).

Todd, maybe those little wood chips could be used for HO scale scrap wood around the local lumber yard or sawmill? (Hey, just a thought - didn’t say it was a good one…).[swg] Should I guess that your son might’ve had some expensive repair bills before he got all that wisdom? [;)]

Dennis and Mobilman44 - Todd mentioned the server staff here, which is:

Zoe and Chloe (the twins - Bill T. previously had posted some sketches of them, I think…[;)])

Zoe usually covers weekdays in here and sister Chloe covers the weeknights, then there’s

Flo, Janie, and a couple others who help out on weekends and holidays so the twins can be off a little more. And cousin Vinnie (who was mentioned earlier by myself), who ‘handles’ things, like if somebody fails to tip the servers properly or gets a bit too feisty in here. If somebody has too big of a tab for getting TOP (Top of Page), Vinnie will (ahem…) “have a little chat” with the person who’s taking too long on getting the (virtual) tab paid down. It also is possible to wash dishes to help cover your tab. Vinnie smiles if you bring in some thing ni

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Well really I have a big problem with grays. I can see light gray and dark gray. The other shades of gray show up as white and silver and black. That’s why I don’t use gray all that much. In this case the majority liked it so that’s what I used.

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Time for me to call it a night. You know what I’ve been up to so I won’t bore you with details. See y’all tomorrow.

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Good Morning! from Tipton IN.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Former NKP Depot, Lafayette IN

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grumble grumble groan groan creak Crud *Arrggghh*

I slept late this morning, but my one eye that is open tells me its time for:

GOOD MORNING!!!

I was being a smart aleck above. Since I mentioned “eye”, I figure the apple of my eye and smart aleck are my tidbits today, SO:

smart alec/smart aleck/smart alick - someone who is very or ‘too’ clever (esp. in a cocky manner) According to etymologist David Wilton the most likely origin was suggested by Gerald Cohen in a 1985 article which appeared in the publication Studies In Slang. Cohen suggests the origin dates back to 1840s New York City fraudster Aleck Hoag, who, with his wife posing as a prostitute, would rob the customers. Hoag bribed the police to escape prosecution, but ultimately paid the price for being too clever when he tried to cut the police out of the deal, leading to the pair’s arrest. In describing Hoag at the time, the police were supposedly the first to use the ‘smart aleck’ expression.

apple of his eye/apple of your eye/apple of my eye - a person much adored or doted on, loved, held dearly, and central to the admirer’s affections and sensitivities - the ‘apple of his eye’ expression first appeared in the Bible, Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 10, in which Moses speaks of God’s carin

632

Good morning. It’s 67°F with 99% humidity. Yeah, dry but wet at the same time. It’ll be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain. The high will be 88°F and feel like 98°.

Today I’ll try and get started on designing the structural elements for the grain elevator project. First I’ll need to scan in the image of my scale rule. That way I’ll be able to draw out the pieces right next to the rule. The structure walls will be printed on card stock. For the mass of the main structure I can use a box and glue the card stock elements to it. That’ll save me the trouble of building a framework to mount the elements on. So far it sounds easy but I’m sure Murphy is waiting to pounce at the most inopportune time. Anybody got a sure-fire Murphy trap I can use?

As for the rest of the day we’ll see what happens.

633

Good Morning all,

Fall has fell on my street. The leaves are starting to turn.

I don’t know anything about the color rendering index but I do know those LED bulbs I bought for the bathroom and my desk light are the closest thing to outdoor natural light I’ve ever seen. They are a little expensive until you factor in the low energy usage and the 20 to 50 year life span. Don’t even price them at LOWES or HomeDepot since both are selling them for around $40 each. The local computer store sells them for $7 to $20 each.

Ok, I’m going to try and read the past week’s worth of posts and see what happened…

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Good morning, Diners. Coffee, please, Chloe.

Jeffrey, I am glad you went with a light color. Can’t wait to see your finished elevator. Oh yeah, I like your lights on in the house when you sign off for the night. Great touch.

I am meeting some friends for coffee at 8:00, and I plan to swim first so I will check in later.

Sue

635

'Morning everyone!

I’ll have a coffee and short stack of pancakes this morning … oh, and bacon – just keep that coming with the coffee [:)].

Pretty dreary here today. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen the fog in the Cuyahoga Valley as thick as it was this morning … going to have to plan on taking a drive through the park once things start changing colour. It’s always a beautiful drive … maybe I’ll just hop on the railway and enjoy the scenery that way… (too bad the locomotives are diesels – we really need to get 4070 running again).

Looking forward to this weekend … it’s the open house for the museum/roundhouse (where we store/work on the 4070, and our other stuff). So it’s always fun taking people around and showing off our work (though I absolutely hate it when they get uppity when I’m telling them to not walk between the cars).

636

Good Morning!!!

Coffee and fried bologna and eggs please with some hashbrowns and whole grain wheat toast with apple jelly thank you.

Mostly sunny, with a high near 71.

If I had the space and the money…[^o)]…say, why didn’t the U.S. put those bumper things on our trains like the Europeans do? Or should I say why do they. Anyway, I’d change to a steam era. Not nitpicking, but the smoke doesn’t make for a good representation of steam to me, but it still looks cool.

Well Jeff, you know me and colors[:-^], I think we’ve had that discussion before, so take this for what it’s worth. I prefer the stone gray, but a bit paler. Mainly because it says “Gray” in the name. I kinda like the test one, but don’t know if it has silver or some such. Name says silver you see, but I can’t tell if it does. Like I said, me and colors don’t get along especially in pictures. Hard to explain how I see all the colors others do, but can’t tell what some are. I can see the difference, but can’t tell why. Don’t know. Anyway, most concrete silos around here are flat white. But a rather dirty and dingy white after a while of course. Maybe a mixing of some colors would work. Something to fade out the gray a bit. Just my opinion of course. Aaaaaand I see the polls have closed anyway so….why I didn’t erase this is anybody’s guess[(-D].

Ray- Hopewell is and has been, my favorite MR town to look at. You really captured a feeling with that one. Many have very nice towns and look very realistic, but with Hopewell when I look at it, it gives me a “feeling”. Like……oh I don’t know warm, relaxed, homey. Like you can just picture yourself sitting in the park, hear the dog bark…smell the fresh cut park grass, hear the sounds of a small town, lean back on the bench and put your arm up on the back and realize you put it

637

Negative on the warrantee…the new furnace was installed Augst 31st, 2011. It is now past the one year warrantee on parts and one year warrantee on labor. Miller furnaces used to be known as good furnaces…and are specifically designed for mobile homes as well. But now, I have my doubts! The Old MIller furnace was installed when the trailer was built in 1983. It lasted 28 years and was even converted from oil to nat gas! But alas, when the parts started to fail, they were no longer avaiable! I am also supposing we will have to replace the whole thing in about 9 years as funraces today have a “life expectancy” of 10 years…I hope we are not in here in 10 years! If nothing else, I think we buy a new trailer to grow old in…I’d rather have a house, but they too have their maitenance issues!

Oh, and we need a new roof-over as the existing roof is needing help too…we will se about at next year…another $3600.00 which will probably go UP to $4k you watch and see!

Our budget is tight already and we want to save save save what we can for the roof but who knows…[:(]

[sigh]

[8-|]

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Galaxy: Our furnace gave out on us last year also, pretty much around this time. We had to get a new one also so I feel your pain. We also had to get a new roof put on last November also.

They only warrantied the parts and labor for a year? With ours we got 10 years parts on the furnace and 5 years labor.

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because we did away with Link and Pin couplers and hand brakes on the cars in favour of automatic knuckle couplers and the Westinghouse air brakes.

If you look at mid-late 19th century equipment, you’ll see the buffers on those cars. Though the Euro (well, UK) version was a little different than the US. Instead of a single link with pins, cars would be coupled with a short length of chain; then effectively a come along was used to pull the cars together until the buffers touched (or nearly touched). Chain was to keep them coupled when pulling, and the buffers are there to keep everything from crashing together.

Note that (for the most part), the only brakes on a UK train were the locomotive and the caboose (aka “Brake Van”), rather than on every car as with in the states (well, every car has them, though in operation it’d be the locomotive/caboose where they were set, rather than on all cars as with the states). Suppose it helps that UK trains are a lot shorter (lighter) than here…

*disclaimer – this is from memory, and I’m probably glossing over bits or leaving other bits out… as I’m not home with my reference books atm (ugh, w**k).

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Here’s a fast and sure trick I use for making a straight line around a piece of pipe.

Here I have a piece of two inch PVC pipe and a two and a quarter inch hose clamp.

I put the clamp on the pipe and tighten it until the clamp can just be pushed up or down without tilting to either side.

By placing my thumbs under both sides of the clamp I push it to the location I want to mark and use my marking pen to carefully trace a line around it.

When I remove the clamp there’s a nice straight line all the way around. If you tightened the clamp enough that it couldn’t tilt to either side the line will be at ninety degrees in relation the edge of the pipe.