Train'n'Trestle Stuff

I walked up to the train store this afternoon to get some nuts and bolts, scale-sized, for the trestle.



You see the six bolts there? The three on the right are the old ones I used, the three to the right are the ones (Grandt Line #5066) I purchased today. There is not a WHOLE lot of difference to MY eyes, but they ARE a little larger, and easier to insert.

Those rails certainly need something holding them in. I guess I WILL have to spike them, but it will be tedious! Yikes, is that Goo oozing out out from under the rail? How sloppy!

I also impulsed-purchase a front end loader. It was only three bucks, a savings of nearly twenty-five bucks off a good one. I think it looks pretty good, though. I will have to weather it a bit, some pastel and some Dullcote to kill the shine.



Why does blogger keep sticking the photos at the beginning of the post, eh? Zooomr seems to be down today, so I letting Blogger host the pics.

Here's that garage again. The fellow unpacking one of those legendary WWII surplus Harleys that he bought in its orginal crate is gazing at the new tractor next door.


Every time I go to the train store I feel the need to share with the train store guy some self-deprecating thought regarding my modeling talents. He doesn't buy into that game, ignores it, and so I feel foolish. I need to stop that!

Sunday Morning

I listened to NPR this morning. There was a story about a National Guard unit in Pennsylvania going to Iraq that decided to march through town to the train station as the unit has done since Civil War, even though they were leaving from the airport. The high school band marched with them. I was in tears. I'm in tears now, writing this!

Link to story and audio.

Train Stuff

I am BUILDING a short (52 feet) trestle to replace a plate girder bridge.

I am using the trestle from "Building Yancy's Coal Yard", an article by Ben King in Model Railroader a couple of years ago, as a guide.



The white plastic thing is the jig for building the deck of the trestle. Not shown is the jig for assembling the bents.



You can see the tie pattern from the article stuck in there to help locate the ties in the proper spacing.'

Those ties are supposed to be a scale 8 x 8 inches, that would be .092 in our big world, the stock measures .097 inches on my new Harbor Freight $20 digital calipers. Can I even SEE .005 of an inch? Can YOU?



Notice the second "fence" on the jig, on left? I miss-read the drawing in the article, did not used a magnifying glass, and so glued the fence in the wrong spot. So I had to glue another one in. The funny is, it took me FOREVER to figure out why the ties were not lining up correctly.

The wood is stained with brown shoe polish (from a can) mixed with alcohol. Not good, alcohol doesn't really thin the shoe polish. I should have DRANK the alcohol! (No, no, not really, it was rubbing alcohol, you can't drink THAT!!) Also a bit of black ink thinned with alcohol. THAT works well!

Here's a picture of two cats eating...



... and a Library Raid shirt from the Unshelved Store. Link goes to the jacket, the shirts are not available anymore, I guess.

Sunday Rantings

Ran across this link on Reddit.com. This Is Your Nation On White Privilege, by Tim Wise.

Anyone want to argue his points?

Also from Reddit, If All Women Lived In Sarah Palin's America.

Let the games begin!

Out Of Step

Drove down the Boulevard today to get poked with a needle for a TB test. After that I snuck over to the train store on 4th to get some basswood. Saw a vehicle with the message Damnant quod non intellegunt on the rear, among other things. Had to look that up.

Vampires!

As if YOU didn't know!

I manned up and drove home on the freeway.

Went to Performance after work to pick up a tire. Thought about the Continental, but couldn't bring myself to part with the twenty-eight bucks. So I settled for a Performance Forte GT/K. Hey, that's on sale for ten bucks! Was mine? I admit I wasn't totally paying attention, I just signed the slip! Yikes! [LATER: It was five bucks off] I should go over to Big Ring and see how much the Specialized Armadillo tire retails for. It LISTS for fifty bucks! Double Yikes!

Hey, this is turning into the bike blog! I better quit!

One last thought, a Reminder To Self: Stain ALL the wood for a model railroad project at ONE TIME, else you will different shades of grey, as it were.

Sweatin' Like A

Pig!

And I keep hitting the wrong key and POSTING this! Twice while typing the title!

Music of the day is:

Hoover High School Stage Band 1970's interpetation of Good Times Bad Times.

Don't bother me, I'm orgainizin' my music!

Last Gasp

Note to self: Sunflowers do not dry well in a big green trash can if they are piled on each other. They will get MOLDY!

<Insert image of moldy sunflowers here >

You will be relieved to hear that the sunflowers drying in the pail did not mold.

All Over The Ground

The season is passing, the sunflowers are dying, there are sunflower seeds all over the ground!

Food for the birds and the rats, maybe the possums, too.



These have fallen from the giant sunflowers.



After spending a pleasant afternoon pulling what I persist in calling crabgrass, but was pointed out to me as being actually Bermuda grass, in the front yard area, I went into the back yard and cut off some of the sunflower heads that still had seeds and put them in a garbage can to dry. I don't know what I'm going to do with all that seed! Surreptitiously plant it around the city? Johnny Sunflowerseed? It's a thought.

The plumaria has four big leaves on it. Maybe it's going to flower after all these years of abuse. I think it needs to be potted so it will have better draining soil. It doesn't seem to be in an optimal piece of ground. It's kind of a low spot, although being next to a wall it is higher than the ground on the other side of the wall. Not enough sun, either, I suspect.

More Sunflowers & Model Railroad Stuff

First, the sunflowers!

These pictures just look a lot better in their giant size, but I'm taking pity today on the person who is on dial-up, you KNOW who you are! Click the image to visit my Zooomr page for the BIGGER images.



I chopped off a couple of the sunflowers as they were dried up. I found that the stalks are hollow inside. Who knew?



and lastly, back lit spectacularity! Is that a word?



Now for the trains!

I'm making a "track cleaning" car to keep the rails shiny. It consists of a piece of hardboard mounted on two nails that slides along under a car, scraping the crud off the tracks. Yesterday I ran Attempt I for a half-hour. It kept catching on stuff, as it was too wide.

Attempt I on the right, Attempt II on the left.



Actually, Attempt I should be Attempt .5, because initially it was too narrow, then it was too wide, AND too thick.

I messed up on Attempt II and spaced the nails too far apart. This shows the holes that the nails are SUPPOSED to be aiming at. But see how neatly I counter-sunkted the nails heads?



A fairly pointless pic showing the coupler boxes being fastened back on. Also showing that I forgot to paint the plastic coupler box spacers!



Oh, you probably want to know what it looks like mounted under the car. Here you go!



No, those are not the stock wheel sets! Yes, I will clip the nails and add a load. Patience!

So I decided to drill new holes, probably properly spaced. This would be Attempt 2.5, I guess.



By the way, I used the Harbor Freight el cheapo miniature table saw to cut the sucker nice and square. Very dusty, however, my lung capacity will be diminished for a while!

Yes, I HAVE a cutting mat, I just don't USE it! I need a smaller one for to fit on this, my second-favorite cutting space.

So, where are we? The epoxy is curing, I will test it tomorrow. I hope I've the width right this time, too. It seems fairly critical. Too narrow, falls between the rails on curves. Too wide, catches on stuff like switch machines and other trackside details!

During all this I noticed the black boxcar has a coupler height problem. It was catching on rails on turnouts! Using the trusty Kadee coupler height gauge, I can see that the height is incorrect, and the coupler is DROOPING! Yikes!

This pic, utilizing the flash, shoes us the gauge on the RIGHT, the boxcar is on the LEFT.



I tried to edit out that vertical line in the background, but gave up and left it alone. This pic demonstrates the importance of good lighting technique...

Now THIS pic is without flash, just the natural light. Too bad it it didn't forcus on the foreground!



Also by the way, if you go to the big pics, notice the difference in detail between the silver gondola and the boxcar. The boxcar is too delicate to really handle, but the gondola can be banged around quite a bit, and has been!

I should probably start a new blog, the Compleat Idiot's Guide To Bad Model Railroading!

Of Books And Model Bicycle Stores

I have discovered, in reading (if one can call what I do "reading") Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, that Book Two goes much faster than Book One. It took me two weeks to get to Book Two, around 300+ pages, and last night I knocked off 100 pages of Book Two. Too much of that brainy stuff in Book One! Now, I've heard that Eliza's letters are interminably long, but I haven't got that far, yet.

I put a light in the HO scale bicycle store, and the bicycles are in place.



Ooohh, it's nighttime!



They probably shouldn't leave that bike in the bike rack outside at night! It's not even locked!

Later!

Today's Sunflower Pic

A really tall sunflower!



It's about ten feet tall!

That's all!

A panorama of sunflowers, created with Irfanview and The Gimp.

A larger version is available on my zooomr page, click the image to go there.

Cactus Flower

This cactus flower popped up when I wasn't looking. I've spent a couple of hours trying to identify it, but I find I cannot. Do YOU know what it is?



Some sort of Mammillaria I think, maybe a elongata or a sphacelata, I don't know.

This and That

First, the latest sunflower picture.

How many sunflowers can you find?



Now, some model railroad stuff.

I believe this is a Dyna Models haberdashery or shoe store. Many of the glue joints have let go. It was assembled with Ambroid glue, you can see where it caused the paint or wood to change color. Or something. My grandfather built this in the 50s. The top of one of the end walls is missing. That is one reason the roof is so crooked.



In my attempt to rehabilitate it, I took off the surely-patented Dyna plastic roof and cleaned off MOST of the Walther's Goo, using lacquer thinner and and brass wire brush. It took a long time, and was not entirely successful. This is about halfway through the job.



This is pretty much what it is going to look like, finished. It's now a bicycle shop! Imagine that!
I think the roof is not really crooked, I think (I HOPE) that it just isn't seated completely.



A close up, showing how little I did. I guess grandpa painted it after assembling it. Boy, that Ambroid glue really soaked into the wood and affected the paint! I am hoping that when I hit it with some Dullcote, that sheen from the glue will disappear.



The whole top side of this wall was broken off and disappeared, so I had to replace it. I also got new plastic windows to replace the missing metal ones. The replacement siding is not clapboard, but scribed, but you can't REALLY tell the difference!



Looking through the window we see the poster hanging on the wall, and the door that really needs more frame around it! Poster and all signs are from the telephone book.



Through the other window. That Schwinn sign looked better when not so enlarged!
I intend to get some bicycles to display in the window and inside.



Things I should have done differently:

• Should have disassembled EVERYTHING!
• Should have squared-up the walls a bit more carefully
• Should have replaced warped floor (from being mounted in wet plaster)
• Should have then painted everything properly.

Woulda coulda shoulda!

I decided on a business and made a sign for the container office. That white window glazing is not so effective, I'm thinking. I'm going to get some heavy equipment, like a bulldozer, to display outside the office. The model was inspired by this one, which looks so much nicer, plus it's only half as long. Mine still needs an air conditioner.



This HO scale farmhouse was built by my grandfather, back in the 50s. I believe it was a Revell kit. Looks a bit worse for wear!



That's about it for now!

Tomato

I felt bad after visiting the Tomato Librarian's blog, because I had no tomatoe pictures up, so I took a couple today.

Six bushes in a raised bed. Well, SORT of a raised bed!



Then I took a picture of the tomato hanging thereon. While editing the image, I found there were TWO tomatoes! Sneaky little booger!



And a deformed sunflower. This poor plant was eaten partially through by rats or snails or cats or something, fell over, but kept on growing anyway! And now it is flowering!



Well, that is all from the land of plants!

Later!

Flower Times

A couple of sunflower pics, just for you.

Look, up in the sky! It's...SUPER SUNFLOWER!



And that is not even the "Original" size!

Here's another.

Hey, you looking at ME??



Also, "Large", but not "Original".

One more. I caught this bird pecking at the sunflower leaf. What is up with THAT?



That one IS the "Orignal" size.

I was going to note the sunflower variaties I planted, as there has been some inquiry, but I seem to have thrown the seed packages away. Alas!

I Got Links!

Just for a change, I thought I would post some links I saw on Reddit, because I'm sure YOU don't spend hours checking it.

Why Black Nerds Are Unpopular. I think first you have to get over wanting to BE popular. I'm still working on it.

Human Mirror prank. Cool. I wonder if I would have even noticed?

Essential Life Lesson #1: Over is Right, Under is Wrong. Settles the toilet tissue question once and for all. With illustrations.

And now, back to the garden!

A hummingbird in the garden, getting drink of water.



More pics on my zooomr page, but this is the best one.

Big Feet

I think those darn roofers stomped their big roofer feet on my work desk, because I found several more broken things.



I think the mo'sickle will be without a sidecar in the future, but the rest of the stuff is easily repairable.

Oh, well, my fault for not cleaning off the desk. At least I took the Cutty Sark into the house for the duration!

Later!

In The Yard

I uploaded a passel of pictures (garden) to the zooomr page, all 700k each, so go there if you want to see the BIG PICTURE!

A Pretty Fair Day

Before I get started, Foodopolis has new posts, this one (as of this post) is about The Mad Greek restaurant in Baker, California.

Yesterday we went to the Del Mar Fair, now apparently known as the San Diego County Fair (italics mine). Also, apparently they have a theme every year. This year is something about sports. Whatever.

We headed over to see if the archery demonstration was still on, but it was not. The archery booth wanted five bucks to shoot seven arrows. We declined. We then headed over to see the sunflowers and the horses. We watched a fellow shoeing a horse, some amateur roping. Some lady was a bit freaked because a Shetland pony was out in the sun with no water, even after it was explained to her, by the horse people, that the horsie was only out for an hour, then went back into a stall, with water.

We stopped by the SANDARC booth, having spotted a dipole, but no one was there. M. mentioned that maybe it was Field Day. Turns out, it was! Missed it again! They otter have a Field Day station at the fair, it would be good exposure to the public, I would think.

We next found our way to the woodcrafts exhibit, which had many weird and wonderful things, although I'm not sure why anyone would build a half-scale kayak. Saw this model of the H.M.S. Bounty.



Not sure how one shoots a cannon through a deadeye, but what do I know?

Next we went up to the collections. There were several interesting ones, but this item caught my eye.



It is reminiscent of a Tamiya military model kit box.

Eventually we wandered over to the gardening area, saw a pack of vicious koi.



A lady was feeding them fish food, so that the visitors would not. The little suckers would jump right up on the rock! There are five more pictures of the koi, just click over to my zooomr pages(by clicking an image) and wander about. And remember, even YOU can look at any big version of a picture I didn't use here.

This water feature is one I want to remember, in case I ever get my own house.



Simple, but charming and peaceful.

Next, we was resting in the succulent area, after looking at the bonsai and tray landscapes.



Surely you will want to click over to zoomr and view the Notes I made on the image!

Some fellow said the fair was busting attendance records, but it didn't seem too crowed to me.

Lastly, we parked off-site, as the parking fee is ridiculous, plus, we like to ride the double-decker bus if we luck out. And we did.



The weather was nice and not too warm, but I DID wear long sleeves and the geek sun hat. No pics of THAT!

Later!

Testing Animated GIF 2

Same pic at Googledocs