Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e awoke to some snow again this morning.  There was only about six inches out there but it is supposed to warm up today with some mixed precipitation so I needed to clear the driveway and rake the roof before it got wet and heavy.  Wet and heavy isn't good for the roof nor is it good for my extensive spinal injuries.  Then it would all freeze again tonight and that would make it impossible to move so it needed to be done this morning.  While I was on the roof looking down on our little garden railroad in the backyard, I was reminded that I never did get a photo of this garden layout from the roof.   Lukey and I talked about capturing a few photos from the roof one day this summer but that day was far too hot to climb up on an asphalt roof!  As it was, we were chasing the shade with lawn chairs while we ran trains so we could stay as cool as possible.  At one point, I think our chairs were on the other side of the yard from the garden railroad si...

I put together a few comparison "before and after" photos of my large scale trolley and my large scale steam locomotive.  I've been wanting to do this for awhile but never got around to it.  Having just working on the trolley again, I figured it was a good time to capture some "after" photos and then compose "before and after" comparisons. In each comparison photo, the top photo is the train in its stock condition from the factory before I did any work on it while the bottom photo shows the same train after I rebuilt it, repainted it and added details. So, this first comparison photo below is of the trolley.  I purchased the trolley a little over a year ago and immediately started planning for an upgrade and rebuild.  It was not running well when it arrived at my door because the motor had a split gear.  I immediately replaced the motor with Bachmann's replacement drive but, disappointingly and unexpectedly, the brand new assembly still ran quite ...

I did some more work on my large scale trolley yesterday and today.  This is the same trolley we have on our mantle for Christmas.  I've never really been happy with the rounded front and rear bumpers that this trolley ships with and I felt the trolley was missing a step for passengers stepping up from the street so I went about trying to resolve those problems today.   First, I started making the front and rear bumpers to replace the rather toy-like bumpers.  Well, actually, I started by cutting off the front and rear rounded bumpers.  The original front bumper can be seen in the first photo below.  Then I designed a new bumper to be made using wood.  I wanted a chunkier narrow gauge look so I used wood for this.  Anyway, the photo below shows the front rounded, hollow bumper that I cut off... Below, is a photo of the new bumpers being glued up... Below is a photo of the front end after I cut off the manufactured front bumper.  I could...

A fter our visit to the hospital yesterday morning for more testing requested by my oncologist, I did a bit of painting in the afternoon.  I managed to paint the newly constructed top truss of the truss bridge for our little garden railroad.  Painting this bridge is actually quite tedious especially those thinner diagonal supports on this top truss.  It is like painting a wrought iron railing or balustrade...  tedious and time consuming. There is a lot of brushwork...  back side, front side, left side, right side...  of each piece so it always ends up being more time consuming than I thought it would be.  This does no favors for my spinal injuries.  This sort of tedious activity with my hands out in front of me puts so much pressure on my spinal injuries that it takes my breath away and makes it hurt to breathe after just a few short minutes.   I hope to do some additional painting today too.  I think I'll just add more photos to th...

A s I had mentioned in previous blog entries, although adding the truss plates and bolt detail made a significant difference in bridge detail, this morning I worked on the top truss to add even more detail.  More detail is always better! Oh yeah...  and yesterday, I managed to mix more paint and repaint the entire bridge.  Well...  I still need to paint the wood I added for the top truss but I have the rest of the bridge painted in the new color. This color is difficult to see indoors but it is a medium to dark charcoal with a slight green tint.  Under indoor light, this color appears rather bluish but it does appear green under sunlight.   Below, you can see the new parts of the top truss system that I added today... In order to keep the new top truss square as the glue dries, I clamped it in place on top of the side trusses... There is no bottom to this bridge because that is already in place on the garden railroad.  All I need to do is place th...

I sanded down the trusses of the truss bridge this morning, cleaned off all the remaining dust and then primed all the new brass truss plates.  I had only a small amount of red oxide spray primer left at this point so I decided to use up the rest of the can on the rest of the bridge trusses.   You know...  some bridges are even painted in this  red oxide color and left that way...  I don't think I'm going to leave it this color though.  I'm still leaning toward a medium to dark gray with it tinted slightly toward green or a light gray tinted more obviously toward green.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward the medium-to-dark gray tinted slightly green.   I just remembered that I didn't do anything with the top cross-bars...  I really should sand them to get them ready for more paint.  Actually, I should sand them to get them ready to be glued to some stringers and diagonal cross pieces.  Then I can focus on paint for that t...

B efore it rained again today, I managed to get the truss plates drilled and installed on my garden railroad homebuilt truss bridge.  Now that I see these plates installed with the bolt details, this is definitely one of the things I felt the bridge had been lacking.  What a tremendous difference these relatively small details make!  Well, maybe I shouldn't call these truss plates a "small detail"...  it was a bit tedious making them and installing them. I had originally intended to glue these truss plates in place but, after I drilled all the holes in every plate using a drill press, I felt I could easily drill tiny partial holes into the bridge through each hole in the truss plates and then hammer in a nail.  I drilled the holes only halfway into the bridge trusses so that the nails still had a bit of bite.  Plus, the diameter of the holes was smaller than the diameter of the nails so that also helped to keep the nails in place.  The holes were only ...

I 'm still feeling rather lousy so I stayed indoors again today.  I happened to find a small project to keep me busy for a short while so that was good. Since the time that I felt I had finished painting the new truss bridge for my little garden railroad, I've been thinking something isn't right.  I couldn't put my finger on it but I was left feeling the something wasn't right.  Part of me thinks the color isn't exactly right even though I've painted it and repainted it about a half dozen times.  I don't know if I should go lighter with the green or go darker toward a greenish charcoal.  I also realized that maybe I'm just feeling as though it is not "complete" yet and needs more detail.   In an attempt to add more detail to this truss bridge, this morning I decided to order some brass stock and tiny round head brass nails to add some detail to this bridge.  I plan to cut the brass stock into shapes depicted by the white paper in the photo ...

I n my previous blog entry, I wrote about my custom designed, homebuilt truss bridge that I have been working on lately for my little garden railroad.  I had applied far too many coats of paint in varying colors and shades in an attempt to get the color I had envisioned.  I eventually landed on a pale olive color for this bridge like many truss bridges in real life. After writing that previous blog entry, I also applied additional shades of green to this bridge to add some tonal depth to this paint job.  The single shade of green was a bit "flat".  I'm not referring to the finish of the paint...  ie, gloss, satin, matte, flat...  but referring to the tonal depth of the paint job.  I had applied one or two more shades of green lightly with a dry brushing technique to add some tonal depth.  Today, I applied some reddish washes very lightly to give the impression of rust developing on the bridge. In this photo, below, my locomotive is just departing ...

A s with most of my projects, I had thought that painting my homebuilt truss bridge would be a quick and easy job.  It hasn't been difficult but it has not be the least bit quick. This paint job is becoming a very long process.   First, I primed it with a spray can or two.  Then I spray painted an Anvil Gray spray paint and it was far too blue.  I wouldn't even call it a gray.  It really was a very dark blackish-blue and I didn't care for the color at all.  Once I started spraying this color, I realized that I had been fooled by the name of this color once before when I was painting my steam locomotive.  It was far too blue for that project too and ended up wasting a few days while I searched for a more appropriate color.   Then I sprayed a can of something named Deep Gray.  One would think this would be a gray that is into the darker shades of gray but, on the contrary, it was a rather light shade of gray.  This paint also had...