Scattered Thoughts . . .

M y large scale 4-6-0 steam locomotive has been disassembled into numerous piles of parts for more than a week, I think...  maybe it has been two weeks at this point.  I've completely lost track of time.  Today was the first day that provided the opportunity to assemble some of these parts again so I could see how things are coming along after repainting most parts and adding some detail parts.  The paint is dry enough now to assemble and disassemble the locomotive as necessary without the risk of ruining the paint job. In this first image, at right, there are some changes here other than the major change in color.  I've added marker lights to the front end of the locomotive (on each side of the headlight) and, for me, this is a big change to the appearance of the locomotive which will be even more noticeable when they are illuminated.  I've also replaced the standard tall cow catcher with a large timber bumper which, in my opinion, not only looks better but it's more a

I 've stayed indoors for the most part today.  We've had passing thunderstorms throughout the day today and the heat and humidity is high.  It is still bearable out there but I have no desire to be struck by lightning so I've stayed indoors and done some detail painting. (NOTE:  Later in the day, some severe thunderstorms passed through and the temperature dropped more than 20 degrees and stayed down around 70 degrees for the rest of the day!) For this model railroading project, I am really wanting a nice looking cab so I'm spending a little extra time on various parts of the cab.  Today, I worked a bit on detailing the backhead in the cab with paints and some extra parts.  Now that I see this photo, I can see that I still have a bit more work to do with detail brushes but this is looking great so far... I'm installing a new bell and a new whistle on this locomotive.  Here is the bell, below.  This bell came to me as an unpainted kit so I needed to paint each part a

E veryone seemed to have been complaining about the heat yesterday and television pseudo-weather forecasters clamoring about "record heat like we've never seen before".  Honestly, I'm very vulnerable to any heat above 80 degrees and I had few problems yesterday.  Actually, that record heat and relatively low humidity (in the 50s) was rather comfortable for the most part.  All the thunderstorms (some quite severe) bypassed Waterbury too.   Yesterday, the temperature was at a high of around 97 degrees (which was only for an hour or two late in the afternoon) but the humidity was only in the 53-60% range which made the heat quite tolerable.  That may be a record for mid-June, I suppose, but we regularly get into the triple digits in July so being in the 90s in June doesn't really seem so far-fetched nor highly unlikely.    In fact, my birthday barbeques which are always the last weekend in June or first weekend in July are often brutally and uncomfortably hot and hum

I 've spent the past few days adding more coats of paint to my locomotive project.  This is a large scale steam locomotive so it is a very large model and it is requiring a lot more paint than I expected.  I've been delayed while waiting on paint to arrive (the USPS is dog-slow lately).  Regardless of a few little problems, this project is slowly coming along. A couple of days ago, I painted everything using Krylon Anvil Gray.  I was hoping for a charcoal neutral color but this Anvil Gray turned out to be more closely resembling something I would call Midnight Blue.  Midnight Blue was definitely not in my plan for this project so I had to order a different color (and wait a bit longer for it to finally arrive).  I couldn't find a gray tone that I liked because they were all too light in tone so I settled for a flat black.  I plan to weather this locomotive so starting with a neutral black will work even though my preference was for a neutral dark gray/charcoal.  I was just