Week 148

Week 148

Sunday, May 28, 2017 thru Saturday, June 3, 2017

Monday, May 29, 2017
Happy Memorial Day!
We also had a Train Day today!

Rob Fair and Jordan Osborn stopped by for a couple of hours at 2pm today.
Thanks men!

Here's what we did...

Rob Fair started out at the sign shop making the backing for another Kedzie Avenue Station sign.

Jordan Osborn picked up some clipboards for our Task Clip Board Projects.
Actually his mom, Chrissa, found a great deal on Amazon.com.

After Rob finished the Kedzie Avenue sign, he started work on painting the stairs for the Center Platform at Kedzie Avenue.

The left picture is the "BEFORE" shot.
The right picture is the "AFTER" shot.

Here are some of the clipboards in place.
The ones you see (l. to r.) are UP Global 2, Proviso Yard West, UP Engine Terminal, CNW Engine Terminal, Berkeley/Wheaton Metra Station and the far side facing the opposite direction is Oak Park/Lombard Metra Station.

More clipboards. The foreground is Melrose Park/College Avenue Metra Station.

Rob Fair painting the concrete for the Western Avenue sidewalks.

Before Jordan ran the Track Cleaning Car he had to park the intermodal cars which were already online.

Jordan Osborn taking notes at CCT (Central Control Tower).

I liked this picture of the locomotive coming to connect with the track cleaning car and the camera car.
You can also see the same thing in the screen Jordan is watching.
It's a live shot.

 We had a little problem with the track cleaning car jumping a switch at Gruesome Casket.
I'll see if the Train Guys on Wednesday can take another look.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Last Day of May
also TRAIN DAY!

But where is everyone?

Carlos: working on a home project that needs to get done by July 4th. Big job!
Dean: Working on a home project that needs to get done by tonight!
Ed: No show. Where are you, Ed?
Jordan: Planning on coming by with Josh tomorrow.

So what am I going to do?

Here's what I did...

This afternoon, Rob Fair, dropped off some wire and some instructions for tonight's activities.

These next few pictures are from underneath the Geneva North Platform lighting.

So what I had to do, was to connect the blue wires from the copper strip to the blue wires coming from the tube.
Same with red to red.
The tube in the upper right corner leads to the light on the west end of the platform.

This next picture shows the wires already connected...

These are the Geneva station lights that were on the dismantled center platform and now mounted on the north platform.
This tube goes to the middle light on the platform.

Here are the wires that need to be connected.

And finally, this tube leads to the light at the east end of the platform.

And again, the illustration which shows which wires need a jumper shown with white lines.

I only connected the west lights.

But when I activated the lights only one of the two lights went on! UGH!

Hopefully I'll get some time this weekend to try to solder the connections so this won't happen again.

One can only hope!

Until next time.

Happy RRing.

Week 147

Week 147

Sunday, May 21, 2017 thru Saturday, May 27, 2017

Monday, May 22, 2017

Train Night!

Rob Fair came a little early stayed until 8pm (2 hours)

Jordan Osborn and Josh Jones came a bit late 6:30pm and stayed until 8pm (1.5 hrs.)

Here's what we did...

As I was running the intermodal train I noticed it derailed every time at the same location same car.

I had Rob Fair take a closer look.

Rob Fair taking a close look at the track.

Here Rob takes a check of the track dimensions using a NMRA track gauge.

 Bottom line?

We couldn't find out what caused the car to jump up and come down and derail.

So what did we do?

We turned the 5 car unit back to front and front to back.

We did a test run and everything ran just fine.

Go figure.

Here we have Jordan Osborn and Josh Jones...
now that I think about it, what were they doing?
By the look on Jordan's face, he's not sure either.

After Rob Fair took care of the intermodal cars, he began working on the Kedzie Avenue station roof sign.
You'll see his work later in today's blog...

Jordan Osborn and Josh Jones preparing for their project.
More to come...

These directional signs were over by Kedzie Avenue but it seemed too busy and out of the way.
I re-positioned these closer to Command Central Station.

Jordan Osborn and Josh Jones keeping their project going.
What they did tonight was take the individual prototype pictures from the big binder and put them with the hanging project clip board for each project section.
Here they are working on Global 1 and Western Avenue Buildup.

As promised earlier, here is the finished product Rob Fair was working on tonight.
Instead of gluing the sign directly on the roof he added the framework more like the prototype.
I'll take a picture of the prototype and put it side by side with the picture of the model.

Here's the rear view of the same sign shown above.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Here are the side to side pictures of what I promised to show you yesterday.
It's really hard to see the details in the sign, but they're there!
Seriously!

Wednesday, May 24, 2017
TRAIN DAY!

Present: Ed & Jordan (1.5) Curt (1.25) Carlos & Dean (1)

We found some very serious issues with the outside curve at Kedzie Avenue switch to Powder River Basin. We worked the entire time on the problem.

What was the problem?

I'll tell you at the end of today's blog.

Here's the location of the happenings for today's session.

Checking clearance for the water shed and the commuter cars on both sides.

Now trying to figure out why the cars derail at the switch at Kedzie Avenue.

Here's my view on the monitor of the guys working in the South Power District.

Here's my view looking directly at the same location.

Getting the job done.

So what was the problem?

It was the trucks/wheels on two of the Walthers Well Cars.
We "retired" those two cars until further enhancements can be made.

One possible solution:

When I go to the Train Show on Sunday, June 11th I'm going to pick up two packs of wheel sets.
One pack of 33" wheels and one  pack of 36" wheels.

Hopefully we won't see this problem ever again.

Week 146

Week 146

Sunday, May 14, 2017 thru Saturday, May 20, 2017

Monday, May 15, 2017

Train Night!

Our crew tonight was Rob Fair, Jordan Osborn and me.

We began at 5:30pm and worked until about 7:15pm.

Here's what we accomplished...

Rob Fair finishes installing the railings at Kedzie Avenue Station.

Putting on his best face is our main man Jordan Osborn.

I found a can of Testor's Dull Coat finish spray paint.

Nice work, Rob, on the finished railings.

Close up.

I sprayed the flat dull coat black spray paint to seal the grout.
It naturally weathered the grout, which I didn't expect at all.
A very nice "mistake".

Rob Fair began painting the middle platform station railings.

Rob Fair also finished the vertical posts and painting the railings at Kedzie Avenue Station.

Here are the center platform stairwell railings.

Another view for the other direction.

And another further down the tracks.

Back to the platform at Geneva Station.
The flat dull coat actually made the dark black grout look very weathered.
I was surprised once again.
I like when that happens!

Jordan Osborn was chillin' tonight.

I switched out the 1k resistors to 330 resistors.
Not sure if you can tell, but these are a bit brighter.
I think we'll go with this as to not blind the audience with brilliance.

Rob Fair finishing up the evening.
Nice work men!

Wednesday, May 17, 2017
TRAIN DAY!

Ed Nelson: 3:45-5:15pm (1.5)
Dean Hatzis: 4-5:15pm (1.25)
Curt Berg & Jordan Osborn: 3:45-6pm (2.25)

Some intricate work done today.

Ed Nelson installs the wood frame on the center platform.

Dean Hatzis shows off his handy work this week.
He added extensions to the base of the signal bridges to his right.

 Length: 00:00:14s

Dean Hatzis and Ed Nelson working on  clearance issues.

Some of Dean's weathering of the railings.

More clearance issues especially with the well cars.
We decided we'll raise the rails to solve this problem.

Because of the well car issues we ran them around the track and found some other issues that needed some attention.