I am procrastinating right now, mostly because the arthritis in my hands has made handling anything large painful. To top it off I had a full fall last Thursday stepping off a curb in Broadway plaza in Walnut Creek and am just beginning to recover the use of my legs without pain.
I need to remove all the unbuilt kits from my 9 tray cart. They occupy 7 of the 9 trays. I could do with another 9 tray cart as well and dedicate both to my finished rolling stock. I also need to make major changes to the junk and storage carts that are under the layout now to be able to store 2 of these 9 tray carts under the tiny storage yard on the extension of my tiny layout. A major layout project that probably should be done before I try any rewiring
I also need to clear off everything on my layout and finish the mainline trackage and wire everything with track feeders to connect to the simple single buss running about 12 feet under the layout. After that I can ballast the rest of the trackage.
I keep putting off final full external detail versions of the section house, station building, roundhouse and a 5 smaller buildings that are currently still illustration boarf mockups Another procrastination. I only have internal detail information for the station and roundhouse buildings so more research is required.
It is taking me weeks just to add the Archer rivets to the Milwaukee 50 foot flat car. This is the last currently planned car for the Tanks for the Memories exhibit. After the rivets are completely applied, I can spray with either a Tamiya rattle can red-brown and then gloss again for the K4 Milwaukee decals. It's been 6 months since I started this particular car. The wood 4x8's cut from the stripwood Eric Burgh cut for me are are certainly aging...I finally got the Universal drop shaft brake from #D Central. I had to get some .015 piano wire from KS but the parts are so small they are hard to drill with #79 bit for the .015 wire. The piano wire is stronger than the Tichy .015 phosphor bronze wire. I keep having parts fly to places unknown on my workbench or floor. I need to find a miniature broom and tiny dustpan to sweep the floor for missing parts. I also need a floodlight for the floor to see the lost parts. My train room is in floored with 27 year old Pergo imitation oak that seems to make finding small parts hard.
I still have some to experiment with alternate gloss and ultra dull overcoats for decals since the loss of Future. We in the SF Bay area are plagued by the lose of train stores. I put a query for places that have modeling supplies in the bay area now we are down to just the Train Shop in Santa Clara (100 mile roundtrip from the great WC) for a full service train store. On the PCR NMRA groups.io group I started at topic about this situation. One reply I got showed a game and RC store in Pittsburg (California) that looks very promising. Pictures of full racks of Vallejo and AK paints...I need to drive over Kirker Pass from Walnut Creel and visit this store.
A friend has recommended I try Quick Shine Gloss Finish and Vallejo Matt Varnish Spray. I have also heard very good things about AK Matt Varnish.
About 2 weeks ago I was in Just Trains in Concord (again in California) which is currently specializing in used trains and collections and spotted something interesting in the Brass Cabinet. A Sunset C-9 2-8-0 priced at $200. I could not resist. The critical cylinder parts for the Bachmann stand ins which I have supported may never come. There was no tender as Sunset sold tenders separately to allow choosing which type you needed. However, I have alternatives including an old Sunset Vanderbilt that Brian Moore sent me from England about 5 years ago. I also have 2 good 3D prints of 73-SC-1 whaleback tenders that need brass handrails and completion of working underframes along with either LocoFi or DCC decoders or receivers. I bashed/rebuilt a Bachmann Baldwin 2-8-0 rectangular tender into a good two foot viewing distance SP 90-R-7 tender which shows up in many pictures of the Port Costa roundhouse.
The 2-8-0 pony truck had been removed when I was checking the internals when I took this photo. The 73-SC-1 tender shows much of what I need to redo. The loco has been painted the dark smoky gray that was in vogue for SP modelers for many years. Looking at many pictures of C class SP locomotives, today I would use a color called Rubber Black for repainting but have no inclination to do more than renumber. 2800 had a massive feedwater heater on the engineer side and this model thankfully does not.
I upgraded the WiFi in my house with a new uptodate router that allows multiple 2.4 and 5 GHZ channels so I am going to dedicate one of the 2.4 channels to LocoFi instances. I am thinking that the SC tender would be better for receiving the WiFi signal than the brass Vanderbilt 90-C-??.
So much for this painful tome from me. My typing key error rate is getting so bad that it is doubling my typing rate. That and I am still not adjusted to the keyboard on my laptop on which I am typing this missive.
