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

I t stopped raining long enough today to paint (primer only) all the locomotive parts.  It was still overcast most of the day but the radar was not showing any rain so today was the day to start painting all the locomotive parts.  I set up a couple of saw horses with an old piece of plywood as a makeshift table and then placed all the parts on the plywood.   I just barely covered everything with a nice coat of primer before the can went dry.  Perhaps I should have purchased two cans of primer!  I had only purchased a single can of the charcoal black paint too so now I know one can won't be enough especially since I'll be painting multiple coats of the charcoal.   All the parts fit nicely on this piece of plywood... Here are the leading wheels... The cab without the window panes installed... Below is the lower half of the locomotive including the driving wheels.  These wheels no long need to conduct electricity to power the motor because I am converting this steam locomotive to

I accomplished another small task this morning with my large scale steam locomotive kitbashing project.   I spent about an hour this morning grinding the window panes down to size, however, looking at the photo here, they could still use a bit of finer sandpaper on the edges.  That will take only about five minutes though.  Grinding down the window panes from their large rough sizes to the finished sizes was a little time consuming.  It was easy with my belt sander but it was a bit time consuming.   I also ventured outside into the wet, damp, soaked yard to survey some facia damage I noticed last night while grilling dinner.  The facia along the back section of the house is so rotted out that the gutter is now falling off the house. These little emergency repairs that continually pop up really screw up accomplishing what I had hoped to accomplish.  Our summer season is far too short.  A long rainy spring doesn't help any.  So, whenever I see the need for an emergency repair suddenl

I t is another rainy spring day here so I'm indoors for the day.  I decided to do a little more work on kitbashing this large scale 4-6-0 steam locomotive.   Long ago, I decided that I wanted to add marker lights to the front end of this steam locomotive whenever I got around to repainting and kitbashing it.  Back when this type of locomotive was manufactured for real-life railroads, there was no such thing as marker lights on locomotives.  Instead of lights, these early locomotives used flags.  However, these 10 wheeler locomotives were still in use when marker lights became more common in use rather than flags.   If I remember correctly most of these 4-6-0 steam locomotives added marker lights to the lower part of the front end mounted just above the cow catcher where the flags had been located.  I seem to remember seeing these older locomotives with marker light mounted this way.  However, I've always preferred the marker lights being mounted up higher on the sides of the to

T oday is Day 10 of my antibiotic for my tick bite that occurred about 15 days ago.  Hmmm...  yeah...  I guess it was two weeks ago last night that I pulled that tick off me.  I still have another four days of this antibiotic and, so far, I seem to be recovering.  I'm exhausted but I'm not feeling any of the symptoms that were very prevalent for a week or two after I pulled the big tick off me. As luck ( my luck...  which is rarely good) would have it, when I awoke from my long afternoon nap today (almost four hours), I headed to the bathroom so I could shower before starting on cooking dinner.  The moment I removed my shirt, I noticed a new bite on the inside of my left arm just above my elbow and there already appears to be a small bullseye developing around it.  Other than going to the grocery store with Sheila last night, I really have not been outside in a couple of days.  Well, I did walk out to get the mail around lunchtime both yesterday and today.  For the most part,

I 've been laying low while I continue to recover from my tick bite.  I'm still fever-free which I think is now the start of the third day of no fever so that is good.  I don't want to overdo it so I've been laying low inside the house.  While I'm laying low indoors,  I decided to start on a long-planned model railroading project. The particular trains I've been working on with this project are my largest trains...  narrow gauge F scale trains that run on G scale track.  These trains are quite large so are best suited for an outdoor garden layout unless you have a basketball court-sized building just sitting around unused.  We don't have that kind of real estate so we'll be setting up a small garden railroad in our backyard. About eight years ago, I found a beat-up freight set with a big 4-6-0 steam locomotive that was reported as "not running" at a small train show.  The guy was asking for $40 for the whole set so I jumped on it.  I figured th