Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[C855B]

I have a Silhouette cutter, Marc, and am still in the mood to take a whack at it with Shapeways output. At the moment I think the Spanish tile roof, the collars on the columns and a few other details in the stucco make hand-fabrication a fairly large chore. I'm already figuring on the windows and doors with the Silhouette. I'm also a lot less concerned about fails with this than with the C855B shell since the structure has the roughness structures have, and can certainly better tolerate my ham-fisted moments with a paintbrush and the associated re-dos.

But thanks for the input, I'm in no rush to press the button given other projects in the mill, so there's plenty of time to sleep on it.

[C855B]

... in no rush to press the button given other projects in the mill, so there's plenty of time to sleep on it. ...

Three metaphors in the same sentence. Poor grammatical habits die hard sometimes.

[3DTrains]

Three metaphors in the same sentence. Poor grammatical habits die hard sometimes.

That, or you've been binge-watching CNN.

Cheers!
Marc - Riverside

[sirenwerks]

That, or you've been binge-watching CNN.

Cheers!
Marc - Riverside

Fox would be calling to have that 'Mexican' architecture torn down.

[C855B]

Over a month since an update. Not like things haven't been busy around the layout, just not on the layout...



I think about 15 feet of roadbed have gone down since the last progress report and that's about it.

Things have gone crazy with my music, my other passion. On tuba, I've been picked-up by two new groups in the past few weeks, one with a concert schedule that is slightly overwhelming (...every weekend!...), the other a paying brass quintet gig with frequent rehearsals for a performance tomorrow. Adding insult, the director of my main group requested that I fill a vacant French horn spot for at least this semester, which also makes room for a young oboe player he's trying to mentor (I normally play oboe with this particular group). All of this means lots of time honing skills, two to three hours a day, not including ensemble rehearsals. Then now that school's back in session, there's my bassoon student, which takes another 2-3 hours a week.

[...sigh...]

The quintet performance tomorrow should discharge that obligation, and the weekend group's last concert for the season is October 1, so that'll clear my calendar as well. Then things will mostly be back to normal, depending on whether I'm playing horn or bassoon for the second half of the semester with the college symphony. Busy busy busy.

Haven't been completely out of my trains, however. I'll post the progress report on the C855B 2.0 over in Weekend Update later this evening.

[MichaelWinicki]

Well I think it's cool you have other hobbies Mike and it's not trains all the time. 

[GaryHinshaw]

Cool!  Good thing you're retired.

And nice pic.  Hard to tell which is shinier - the brass or the floor.

[C855B]

Thank, guys. Good thing I'm retired is exactly right. Yesterday's concert went well - good crowd, the largest audience this venue has ever had. We managed to not embarrass ourselves, although the 1st trumpet managed to forget his music - for the second time in a month - and had to make the 45 minute round trip to his home, fortunately returning only two minutes late. Even better, the concert sponsor treated us and our spouses to a prime rib dinner at the fanciest place in town. Nice!

Meanwhile, back at the layout, I took another whack at the C855B, cleaning up the surface problems and did one more coat of Tamiya filler. Then the first coat of color. So far so good... still wet, so no pics yet, it's Scalecoat II... but the change in paint is creating a problem with the two A units. I had painted them with TruColor with the "final" yellow, so my solution to solve any color discrepancy was a coat of Scalecoat. *&^#@!!!!! Not even in the ballpark. The first coat is obviously transparent and is pulling TruColor's slightly green-ish interpretation of Armour yellow through.

First solution is now to spray the As with Scalecoat white. Maybe one coat will do it, then do the Scalecoat yellow again. These shells have so many coats of something-or-another on them that I'm really starting to get concerned about details filling-in relative to the fresh B "done correctly". But I have to try, as the next solution will be new shells. I'm going to get my A-B-A C855s, dammitall, but it is getting frustrating and expensive.

[mcjaco]

My little three piece rock band, hasn't played since last January.  Life got in the way....then suddenly we have four shows in five weeks (three of them in seven days).  This, of course, coincided with Skibbe dropping of our Wausau modules at my house for me to give them some TLC. 

Basically...when it rains, it pours!  And, it's always best to have many hobbies.  They keep you sane. 

[C855B]

The gauntlet has been thrown, guys.

Our N club had their annual meeting today within the confines of a regional NMRA meet. As we were breaking up, the president of the club pulled me aside, "You know, Mike, the NMRA national convention is going to be in St. Louis in 2020. It is your sworn duty to have your layout fully scenicked and operational by that date." Said with a smile of course, but you get the gist. He did go on to say "You can't do it all by yourself, of course," inferring that I may benefit from his ample arm-twisting talents to roust the troops to get some of this stuff done. We shall see!

[GaryHinshaw]

Accept the challenge! (with or without the help).  You can sleep in 2021. 

[MVW]

Wow! That could be a huge boost for you, Mike. Probably not without its headaches, though. (Up til now, you've obviously had nothing but smooth sailing.  )

But this sounds like a very promising development.

Jim

[C855B]

Two challenges here. First is don't forget the other club members are mostly >80 miles away. That's going to be tough to work with.

Second... well, the second is you know how it is when you set aside plenty of space for something, and that something takes a while to fill that space, and then something else comes along needing space? You guessed it. We now have a bunch of crap (NOT my musical instruments! ) taking up space in the layout room and workshop. I still have the near-new furnaces and water heaters from the apartments in the workshop. They gotta go and I already tried giving them away ("80% AFUE? No thanks!"). Habitat for Humanity even refused them. So outside of shoving 'em off a cliff I'm not having much luck getting rid of them. Latest addition to the space problem is 13 car seats from a 15-passenger van that replaced the box truck. Where did we put them? Right in front of the next section of benchwork to be built. Plus there's the leftover metal from the remodel from four years ago, and the scissor lift, and so on, and so on.

So it looks like the next installment of the continuing GC&W construction saga is going to be a garage on the former apartment property as cover for the new van and a place for junk stuff with too much value to simply pitch. Oh, swell.

On an up note, track construction has resumed. I prepped a couple of turnouts this evening, and this past week was laying thin cork for the yard at Leon, the "Victorville Cement" location. With luck I can get a bit of momentum going this week, especially getting enough of a supply of turnouts with servos, joiners and frog wiring ready to lay.

[basementcalling]

The gauntlet has been thrown, guys.

Our N club had their annual meeting today within the confines of a regional NMRA meet. As we were breaking up, the president of the club pulled me aside, "You know, Mike, the NMRA national convention is going to be in St. Louis in 2020. It is your sworn duty to have your layout fully scenicked and operational by that date." Said with a smile of course, but you get the gist. He did go on to say "You can't do it all by yourself, of course," inferring that I may benefit from his ample arm-twisting talents to roust the troops to get some of this stuff done. We shall see!

Pay em with whiskey like the UP did when they came through in 1866. Who knows they might help you lay 8 and 1/2 miles of track in a day.

[C855B]

Pay em with whiskey like the UP did when they came through in 1866. Who knows they might help you lay 8 and 1/2 miles of track in a day.

Have you seen a picture of that 8-1/2 miles of track?   The guys laying the ties weren't puttin' up with the slackers driving the materials wagons. Maybe every fifth tie was actually a tie - the rest were found wood. While the construction trains tippie-toed through there, that section was redone before it was put into service.

I would expect roughly the same result.