SO my grand plan, Friday night prepare everything so today I could finish my yard. Right…not so fast. To finish the yard and also finish the main all the way around, I need 5 more turnouts installed. Plus a little benchwork yet. Well wouldn’t you know it, the location for the throwbar of the first yard turnout ends up right over a support. No way to move it. So I ended up spending most of my night making an upside-down J type linkage which will work fine but getting all the bends in place is not fun. And naturally I already chopped up all my .032 piano wire into individual pieces sized for a ‘normal’ install, so I was doing all experimenting with some .047. I’m going to have to get another piece of .032 to do the actual install, the .047 sticks up too much between the rails and the gear covers on some locos rub on it. Plus the .032 will be easier to do the bencs underneath - basically another J to fit in the servo horn and then the short end has to get somewhat crimped over so it doesn;t fall off. That’s easy to do at the workbench, when the turnout end stays straight to poke up through the throwbar hole, but to get all that from underneath with no working room and working upside down - I am not looking forward to this. The nice thing is that the standard attachment to the servo horn not only wiggles the wire back and forth, it rotates it - so that takes care of the rotation neede to move the throwbar with this kind of linkage.
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to get the yard tracks in.
The other day I planned to make my first (ever) Envirotex water pour. Decided I wanted to color it a bit, searched, found the information I needed. Thought I’d better get some better mixing cups and sticks. Got them yesterday, but had other things to do last night.
Went to work tonight, should have gotten smaller cups, these are a bit too deep to easily mix with the sticks. Cut the cup down, poured in the Envirotex, added a touch of color. Mixed, poured, decided I was a little short on the color, but otherwize looks good. Will do a thin second pour tomorrow with some more color. Had only planned to do two pours, but will probably do a third, clear one on top, I think it is deep enough to hold it. We’ll see.
My other life also has such wonderful occurances. They aren’t limited to our “fun” parts of life.
That’s why I have a rule about plumbing: Never start a plumbing project unless the hardware store will be open for at least another 4 hours.
I was doing a routine shower washer replacement. I shut off the water at the main, since there was no individual shutoff on the shower line, being entirely inside the walls. I replaced the washers without a hitch, and then, when I turned the main back on — nothing. The main valve stem broke off. Fortunately, they had installed two valves in series for the main, so I shut off the other one, went to the hardware store and got a new valve. It took longer than planned, but I didn’t end up with no water for the night.
I hate it when that happens. Happened to me about 2 years ago when installing a pier yard. It’s “frustrating” Seemed it was like every other rotary switch that was blocked.
Some days it takes all day to just 1 little thing. But in the end, it’s worth it.
That is a good reason for buying more than you need. If you want two of something, buy 5 or 6. The surplus ones won’t eat anything and avoid frustration because the shop is closed, or “damn” - you just broke one.
It’s been one of those weekends. I got the yard tracks all in place - only to cut right through the track bus when soldering the feeders on. There was plenty of slack though to twist it back together and solder it up. Web page has updated pictures.
Sometimes your the bug other times the windshield. Right when things are going along real good that guy Murphy pokes his head in and says - Hey what you doin?
Yep. Good to know that Mr. Murphy is staying at your place this weekend. Maybe I’ll hop down and work on my layout for a few hours without his interference!
Yeah I quite trying to build anything new after that. I was gonna take a break and work on my tank car a little but figured I’d probably snp every part I tried to take off the sprue the way things were going. I took a chance and ran a train downt eh new yard tracks and while I wasn;t brave enough to try warp speed, ad a speed faster thn I would normally switch everything ran through both tracks without trouble. I took the two short trains I had ont he tracks and combined them into one using the yard tracks and lead, although there is no place to go other then the end of the lead on the east (left) side - the track ends there. Forward and backwards through the turnouts, no problems. I did try a warp speed run from one end of the main to the other - I haven’t yet programmed my one Geep for a realistic top speed to it flies on step 128. No trouble.
And just like that - things turn around. Took a trip to about the only LHS in driving distance in an evening, which is a Hobbytown USA. The web inventory said they had Atlas Code 83 #4’s in stock and only $1 more than Klein, so I figured I’d pick up the last two I needed, plus some extra music wire to solve the turnout problem and some small styrene strips to make Reading-style drip rails on all my locos (pretty distinctive - and where you see old locos still runnign on successor roads, those drip rails are a dead giveaway to a Reading heritage). And possibly some paint - sprays for the colors I need for a couple of structures and something to paint the black handrails on my Stewart locos - as well as the drip rails. Armed with a list in my trusty iPhone, I headed out. First stop, strip styrene - 2 packs in stock, 1 is enough for a few dozen locos. Stop 2 - track - coupel of #6’s but no #4’s, bummer. Next - music wire - oh no, out of .032. Then I looked a little closer., Mixed in with the .039 and .025 were 4 or 5 pieces of .032! Score!. Paint - hmm, the Radome Tan oesn;t come in spray. Oh well, I’ll skip the structures for now. Did get a jar of Pollyscale Pullman Green.
Get home, take my haul to the train room, first thing is try out the music wire. First piece I try, bent PERFECTLY at the exact right spot. Drop it down the hole, the end hook the hole in the throwbar - perfect fit! The hard part will be mounting the servo under the table and making THOSE bends at just the right spot without popping it loose up top. Probably a two-man job, I’ll save that for the next Tuesday work session (skipped tonight).
Then it’s over to the bench to paint the end of one of the styrene strips and then compare to a P2K loco and a Stewart. Perfect match for the P2K Geep. The Stewart is brighter and also glossier, but it’s not really that far off, so I took one of the handrail sections and painted it - worst case I can paint over it with a different shade. On the shiny black plastic used for
This goes back many years, I had recently rewired a section of my layout after making some track changes, I then ballasted all the track only to discover that I had errently forgotten to add the power feeds to a section of track, so out came the small screwdriver and drill to dig thru the ballast and add the feeder wires then I discovered that in my haste I had soldered the wires on the wrong polarity, AKK!, so after a about an hour of reworking, resoldering and double checking the double checking I was finally able to patch the ballast and move on. sheesh!
