Scattered Thoughts . . .

I put together a short video this morning for Lukey. Lukey enjoys watching train videos whenever he visits us and this video is definitely something he'd enjoy! Another reason for video of a new locomotive is that watching a video playback of anything shows flaws you might have missed in real life. This is especially true with small models and old eyes... it is much easier to see the small details on a video if the video is done correctly. So, I pulled out a camera and attempted some video. Between projects, medical appointments and periods of poor health, I'm putting together a long test track (among many other things) which will run along the wall like a shelf in the back room. This test track will allow me to work on locomotives every now and then when I have time and when I feel up to it. This test track will also provide me with a great way to program my locomotives as well. The track is 12 feet long so it is sufficiently long enough to run from end to end while sti

Bachmann, O scale, narrow gauge, 4-6-0 steam locomotive. I've been trying to get up to speed with Digital Command Control (DCC) for model trains for the past few months. Well... I started trying to educate myself a couple of years ago but have had difficulty grasping how to fully utilize DCC without having a locomotive to program or even a DCC controller. Over the past year or so, I've collected some DCC locomotives and a couple of different control systems. I'm learning more but it is a bit frustrating for a few reasons. First off, if you want to take a fairly easy route, you can just buy a DCC locomotive and use it in its default configuration with just about any DCC controller. This is certainly the easiest and quickest way to get up and running in DCC. That is not me though. I like to perfect things to my own preferences. I'd like to write a blog post about all the difficulties in programming... all the different DCC systems available today... compatibili

I managed to get a little bit more work done on this hopper conversion project today. (As mentioned in previous blog entries, I'm converting four American Flyer S scale hoppers to O scale narrow gauge hoppers.)  Last weekend, I had previously cut two different sizes of bulkhead shims for shimming the coupler boxes to the correct height from the rail but I had not glued them in place. That was today's job.  Since I had already pre-cut all the shims, today's work was fairly easy. I had a little bit of trimming to do on the first of eight sets of shims but I today's task was to simply glue each shim in place with some super-glue gel.  Next, I can glue some brake wheels in place on one end of each hopper. Hopefully that will be quick and easy task too. Hmmm... I need to pick up more glue first... I just remembered that I also need to build or buy some stirrup steps for each of the four hoppers. Once these are installed then I can spray paint each of the cars...  L

This morning, I started gluing the grab irons on the O scale narrow gauge hoppers that I am converting and detailing. As usual, this is not working out the way I expected. Getting the Crazy Glue Gel into the tiny holes is a sloppy task even while using a toothpick. The glue is bunching up and I am leaving spiderweb-like glue trails between all parts. It seems to be taking forever to dry too. I expected this to require me to work quickly before the glue set with the grab irons solidly in place. It is not working that way. It turns out to be a bit messy and it is not holding quickly. I stopped after adding the grab irons to just one of the four hoppers. I decided it would be best to wait to see if the glue will indeed set up well enough to hold these tiny grab irons in place. I don't want to do all four hoppers this way only to find out it won't work.  In addition to seeing how well the glue holds after allowing some extra drying time, I also want to see how