What's next?

With the kitchen project behind me (thank God) now comes the part I really hate.

Doing all the little touch-ups and cleaning up the mess that was made during construction.  While I really want to get back to the basement and lock myself in, I can't.

Tonight I had to do some little touch-ups in the landing:  painting the new trim around the steps into the kitchen, and while I had the brush and paint handy I had to touch-up the casing around the outside of the entry door that I put in several years ago before it rots out.  Well not really, as it's on the inside of the door.  But if I don't, the small strip of raw wood will haunt me every time I walk out that door. So no time like the present.

Next will come the garage, this shouldn't be too bad or take too long.  The place looks like a war zone from about three years ago when Lisa moved in.  She's gone through a lot of her stuff and I need to go through what I have and then see if we can stash it in the garage's attic.  What scares me is what's up there that I can't remember, ugh.  But it's still a little too hot to be doing that, so if I can at least get the garage floor cleaned up so I can at least park in there again I'll be a happy boy.

Then comes the basement cleaning!  All of the dust, wood chips and other crap that sifted down from the kitchen while the base was torn off needs to be addressed.  My work bench is directly below the kitchen and of course I didn't bother clearing it off or put a cover over it before getting started.  This will give me an excuse to clear off the workbench and give it a thorough cleaning that it's been begging for.  Once again, no time like the present.

I've also got two other major personal projects that will need to be worked on, but at least there really isn't a deadline on those, albeit sooner the better!

Now directly regarding the trains and the layout, I have a long list of things to do.

The first and foremost is to get down there before the dry season and static electricity returns and concentrate on replacing a couple of small electronic pieces. I have a PM4 and PM42 that I want to replace with some PSX circuit breakers and one PSX-AR.  I picked these up not too long before I started on the kitchen.  I think I know where I put them???

I also want to get another ops session worked in shortly, at least before winter sets in so I may wait until after the session since everything is working right now.  But before any of that can happen, I need to clean the layout off, both the tracks and layout as it became a catch-all during the remodel.

Other major things that I have planned are some serious track work and re-aligning.

I want to redo several sections of the main for operational improvements.  Quin, Doug and I have discussed this over the spring and summer months.

These include: 

Lengthening the siding at DuBach, removing one of the two sidings at Ruston Jct. and re-aligning the junction track, adding a new stub siding in Winnfield, try to realign the track to the North of Haskell (behind Riceland and through the backdrop), add a new fertilizer plant between Fordyce and Haskell, move the siding for Flappers away from the main so I have room to add some street running as well as realign the south end of  MQ siding at Calion before adding the Ouachita River bridges.

The siding at DuBach will be lengthened so as to match the length of MQ siding. This will be done by moving the south set of turnouts just south of the ARKLA siding.  The reason for this is two fold.  I plan to add a couple of trains to the schedule.  I want passenger service on the Little Rock, but have decided to use TOFC's or fast mail trains and tack on a few passenger cars to the rear of each for both ops and for looks.  If things go as planned these will meet on the layout at El Dorado.  One can hold in either MQ or DuBach siding while the other one works El Dorado.  We'll see how the schedule works out?

Also by increasing DuBach siding this will give us a bit more room to spot cars that are pulled from the DuBach industries and are left sitting on the siding while the Winnfield local continues it's run to Ruston and Winnfield with just the cars that are needed.  We do this now, but if the number of cars are high, DuBach gets a little tricky to work.

Speaking of Winnfield, by adding a small stub siding opposite of Union Scrap I'll be able to move the cars that are spotted on the End Of Track that we exercise their journals each session off the main and on to the siding.  Instead of placing random cars at the EOT I plan to spot ballast hoppers and Difco dump cars there.  These may be used during the sessions as extra train movements for another operation we talked about.  This should provide us with a bit more room while working Winnfield.

At Ruston I originally laid the junction with two sidings for a run around.  Since we changed how the Rock and ICG work the junction, now only one track is needed.  We discussed leaving both sidings in place and use one for MOW storage, but I was never really happy with the over all alignment of the Junction.

The track behind Riceland Ind has always been a little sharp.  I laid it with two sections of 11"r snap track and have always regretted it as longer cars such as auto racks and TOFC's will sometimes derail going through there.  It more or less becomes a dreaded "S" curve as it comes through the backdrop.  I'm hoping I can broaden the radius and realign the track on the Winnfield side of the backdrop as it enters the yard and across the diamond.  Doug and I discussed this one night and I think we have a plan?

Realigning the south end of MQ siding goes hand in hand with adding the Ouachita River bridges.  Right now between El Dorado and Calion is the longest tangent on the layout.  As the track curves out of the north end of El Dorado and heads north, I want to add the Bridges to the mainline and to the yard lead.

Why a bridge on the yard lead?  

Well I made the excuse that the lead was actually an abandoned track that was either a branch line or old industry lead.  

I thought it would look aesthetically pleasing if I had the track swing towards the backdrop just a bit, go over the bridge and then swing back and align with the south turnout of MQ siding and the Calion lumber siding, which will need to be re-laid with different turnouts.  Hopefully things will flow through the siding better after doing this.

Last but not least, I have a large amount of real estate between Fordyce and Haskell.  At Fordyce the Fordyce & Princeton RR crossed the Rock Island.  Since the only place I have to do this would be on a curve, I decided I would model the area with the diamond ripped out and say that the F&P ceased operations.  Then after widening the right of way through Fordyce and move the Flappers siding, I will try to find somewhere to lay in a new turnout that will connect to the old F&P track so as to still be able to service the new fertilizer plant that sits on the old F&P main.

The addition of the fertilizer plant came about as the Haskell turn doesn't have near the work load that the Winnfield turn has.  So I was trying to even out the work load for the two turns.

I know this is a lot of work ahead of me, but after running ops on the layout for a few years, this should improve the overall operations of the layout?  Or at least this is my hope.

A little fun...

I've been posting the progress of the kitchen on some of the forums.  

The other night I posted a shot of my finished breadboard and some of the guys said it looked kind of railroady with all the lines inlaid in it?

One photoshopped the image 

While others told me to add some scenery to it.  So I dug out some Z scale and did a down and dirty diorama for some laughs. Thanks guys.

Lisa said it needed some buildings, so she grabbed the Salt and Pepper shakers...

A visitor

Several weeks ago I got a call from an old friend who was back in town for the summer again.

A couple of years ago Doug stopped by for a visit for the first time after another mutual friend of ours:Mark had stopped by to test and play with his newest HO sound equipped loco.

Good to see you again Doug. Stop by anytime...

I hate puzzles.

Well with the water all dried up, tonight I went back down to attempt the relaying of the foam floor tiles.  Wow, what a PIA.  I knew it wasn't going to easy, but I thought I would at least be able to do it faster than I did?  I was never good at puzzles.

Only about 2/3 of the tile had to come up.  From the east wall on the south side of the layout over to El Dorado all had to come up.  Then from the East wall by Malvern all the way back to past Calion needed to come up.  There was standing water, but it was only in small areas.  I pulled back the tiles, Lisa then wiped them off with towels and i used more towels to mop up what water was still standing there.  We then leaned the tiles up so they could dry.

In the storage room where most of the water came in, I just turned on a couple of fans and also turned on my dehumidifier and let them run for several days!   

When the rain was coming down that night I figured I was going to get some water in the basement, which turned out to be less than I've had in the past.  I actually had to remove several cinder blocks years ago and repair them, which did stop the majority of the water and I also added downspout extensions.  After these things were done, the basement became dry, so dry in fact that the sump pump froze up from not being used.

I would say this is the first time since 1993 that I've had any water in the basement.  1993 was the summer of Rain.  It literally rained almost every day of every week of every month.  This time we got anywhere from 6" to 14" in about 6-7 hours!  The main reason I got water this time was because it's been so dry and the dirt had pulled away from the foundations so the water ran down and found places to seep in.  Hopefully the dirt has now swelled up enough that we won't see this happen for awhile?

Actually, I don't know what's more of a PIA?  Cleaning up the water and trying to put the tiles back together or, trying to clean up the layout after I've had it all tore up from doing scenery?  I have shit scattered all over the layout from one end to other!  A lot of the stuff I'll have to go back through and find boxes for it and then find some place to store it. It's just going to take some time.  

The workbench is a disaster!

First major storm of the season!

While I live for this type of stormy weather, it usually comes with a price. Last night we got hit pretty hard, mostly in terms of torrential rain fall here in town. The official total at the airport was recorded at 6" but there were places that got up to 12"-14"

Other communities south and southwest of here were hit by several tornados with extensive damage. So I consider myself lucky with nothing more than heavy rain.

They were forecasting bad weather all day, claiming it was coming that night, this was just after 8pm.  I had the urge to build an ark.

The storm lasted well into the early morning, but before I went to bed I thought I'd better go downstairs and see what if anything was happening.

Well, it's been awhile since I've had water in the basement and it's been so dry over the last several years that the ground has pulled away from the foundation. This allowed all the water to run down the outside walls and find several cracks to which to seep through.  Did I say seep?  I found a small river flowing from one end of the basement to the floor drain on the opposite end of the basement!

Why can't it leak right by the drain, why does it have to always be on the opposite end?

This was the first time I've had water on the floor since I redid it several years ago and installed the foam tiles.  If it wasn't for the tiles I don't think I would have had such a mess as the tiles allowed the water to react with a capillary action and spread almost throughout the basement.  I bet we pulled up 2/3rds of the tiles and wiped up the water.

Oh well it was time for a good cleaning.

They say we are due for another round tomorrow night and this weekend again?

Things to do on a nice warm day...

Having no further use of these and not being able to find anyone who wanted them, we decided dispose of them.  Just throwing them in the trash didn't sound like much fun, smashing them didn't sound exciting enough,  neither did some of the other ways we discussed.  But..... giving them a dry Viking funeral did seem interesting.

So when the first warm day came around......

Rest In Peace

 

The traveling NSN observation car.

This morning I heard over the squawk box that some private varnish was suppose be trailing behind Amtrak's Rebel.  So I made a few phone calls and got the skivvy from some of the local railfans.

The Rebel leaves Alexandria around 9am so it was going to be an early morning for me.

After arriving in Alexandria I hit the local Quicky Mart to grab me some foamer snacks for the day then headed for the yard.  Within 10 minutes I heard that the Rebel just left the station and I caught up with her passing the house tracks. Sure enough, there was the private varnish just as expected, but what the?  The Gargoyle II?  Oh well at least it was something different to shoot for once.

I snagged one picture and sped out of the yard and headed for the diamonds at Winnfield to setup. No sooner than I got set up I could hear the Rebel nearing my location.

Another short jaunt down the road I and came to Ruston hoping to catch it again crossing the ICG diamonds this time. Made it just as it passed the tower.  If they keep their speed down this morning I might be able to keep up with it and get several pics before it leaves El Dorado?

I did manage to get a bit ahead of the Rebel this time. I caught it as it begins the swing into the big "S" curve on the north end of Dubach.

After Dubach they must have hit a slow order something as I made it to El Dorado with a few minutes spare.  It's a grab shot as it enters the yard limit, but what the hey?  Just as I got over to the depot to get a closer look, I found them spotting it on the house track, Really?

At first I thought they might have a bad order or something but when I asked the agent, they told me that their plans had changed and the passengers decided they wanted to take a detour over to Hot Springs, AR for the night and enjoy the National Park.  Awesome, that could only mean one thing!

The W&OV will be coming to down to El Dorado to pick up the car.  I wonder if they plan to tack it to the end of the daily Razorback and return to Malvern with it?  Oh this is going to make for some cool shots!  ALCo's on the point and private varnish on the rear!

Knowing the Razorback isn't scheduled to shown until 1pm or so I decided to go and grab a soda.  Just as I got back and parked the truck I heard the horn of the W&OV just north of town as it crossed the Ouachita river bridge.  But it's too early for the Razorback?

A few minutes later W&OV #2073 pulled down the passenger siding and eased up to the varnish and made the joint.  Much to my amazement they wasted no time in getting under way!  

I grabbed my gear and jumped in the truck and headed north to follow them.  I caught up with them at Calion just as they took the siding.  Ah, they must have been in hurry to get here so they could meet a SB?

Sure enough, no sooner than they closed the switch I heard a horn coming south through Fordyce.

Once the LRMP went past, the 2073 slowed to a crawl as they rolled down the siding only to come to a full stop on the north end of MQ siding, another train? Yep!  This time it's the SB Katy coal drag that is heading to Baton Rouge.  Well this would explain the rush to get out of El Dorado.  MQ is the only siding between El Dorado and Haskell.

Once Miss Katy cleared, the 2073 resumed north to the junction at Haskell.

With the Riceland elevator as a backdrop, I snapped another shot of 2073 in the junction siding.

I caught up with her again as she entered Malvern then again as she rolled past Heavy Metal and Crushmoore, Ind. 

By this time it was getting late and there wasn't many more good shots to be had before they reached Hot Springs so I called it a night.  On the way home I stopped by the W&OV shops and found Homer and asked him when they were coming back through?  As he scratched his head he said "Maybe in a day or two, wasn't too sure, but I'll give you a call when I find out, iffins you'd like"?.

On the way home I got a call from Homer saying that the group had decided to stay in Hot Springs for a full day and return the following morning.

Two days later Homer called me again to say they had a schedule on the varnish. "Gonna be in Malvern heading back to El Dorado later that day and that if I hustled I could catch it leaving Malvern around 11 am"

Just as Homer had promised I caught the 2073 doing the honors again, this time near Crushmoore.

Then passing Frump Gas near the Haskell Jct.

At haskell they had to wait for another SB grain train before entering the main.  
Cool!  A Rio Grande SD45! Normally I see more more SP power but this was a nice catch!  After getting clearance, they hustled through Fordyce, this time they didn't need to take the siding so I lost them.

By the time I reached El Dorado the switcher came out to meet them and looks like they're going to snag the car off the 2073 on the main and spot it on the house track with the 4206.  Looks like the 2073 will return to Malvern light, too bad I couldn't sweet talk a cab ride? 

A short time later the Rebel arrived in town and backed onto the varnish.  Again, wasted no time in departing.

A friendly wave and they were off.

The next day, a buddy called me and said he got some good footage of the Rebel running through Haskell with his new video camera.

A long journey

On the way home tonight I made my usual side trip through Biddle yard, this time I found #4446 shoving a few cars around, so I stopped and watch for a few minutes. After pulling back from grabbing some cars I was treated with to a view of an old dog that had obviously seen a rough life. What a sharp contrast between the car and the fairly clean GP!

A few minutes later after the crew had finished up, I caught up with one of them and jokingly asked if it was headed for the scrapper?

He gave me a half smile and said   "Nope, it's bound for the W&OV in the morning.  I think the tag says Effin Recyclers in Camden?"

Well that kind of got my curiosity built up and I asked if I could see the lading. Sure enough, Camden, AR. "But what's this" I asked as I pointed at the routing? I handed him the papers and said "It looks like it was routed from Germany? That can't be".

He chuckled and said  "Yeah, it's the damndest thing, ain't no one can figure that one out.  Nearest thing we could tell was some joker was bored and had nothing better to do".

We chatted for a few more minutes and then he decided he'd better get back to the shops before he missed his break altogether, I told him thanks and and we exchanged a nod.

Hmmm, Germany?  I'm gonna have to pull out some maps when I get home and see if I can find a town named Germany or something close to it.

*****

I wish to extend a word of thanks to my friend Mike Holly from the Elizabeth Oak Branch blog.

I've been in contact with Mike recently and have exchanged quite a few emails with him over the last several months or so.  Some of which were on weathering tips.

Mikes been doing a fine job on some of his Cleveland & Eastern RR locos, not too mention his layout, stop by and check them out.

Mike informed me that a package was heading my way shortly and to keep and eye out for it.  The other day it arrived and in it was this car!   Mike asked me if I could find a home for it on the Little Rock Line.  Mike, It'll fit right in, thank you very much!

Hmmm, Germany.  I guess the papers were right?

Married Life; One month and counting

Well it's been just over a month since my single life ended, so far so good.

For as Long as we've been dating, it doesn't feel much different other than she's around all the time now. Which isn't a bad thing as the house doesn't seem as empty as it did after my room mate moved out four years ago.

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to work on the layout as the remodeling has taken a little longer than expect, which is usually the case.  As of now the living room is about 95% finished and we're waiting on the electrician to install a new circuit and outlets [not a push Sparky!].  He just bought a new house and has his hands full as well.

I'll get some pics in a while.

Once I get Lisa settled in I plan to take a break before starting in on the Kitchen remodel [I would like to have that project done before the snow flies].  In the meantime I want to get a few little nagging modeling projects wrapped up that's been sitting on my workbench and then try for that ops session yet. 

Nothing has changed enough in my life that will warrant any plans not to continue with the layout and/or the blog, but it might be awhile before I can accomplished anything on either at least until this fall.  Somethings just can't wait...

The Locomotive bells have been replaced....

....with wedding bells for today!

Today is the the last day of my single life after 49 years.
I finally found a worthy crew member.

Another sort of modeling

That would be RE-modeling...

All work on the layout has come to a complete stand still for a couple of reasons: One, the upcoming wedding and Two, remodeling the house.

The last two rooms that needed attention for a few years are the Living room and the kitchen.  We got started on the Living room several weeks ago just after I posted the last entry to the blog.

To date, the front room has been stripped of all the old casing and trim, the old paneling has been removed and we spent the last week or so patching any holes and painting and the Living room, it also got a new ceiling in the process.

I really like Ash woodwork and it's next to impossible to find Ash on the open market that's milled for any casing or trim these days, so I ordered in some Ash lumber and had it run by a local mill shop.  We got it stained about a week ago and yesterday I got the finish sprayed on the custom trim.  It's now ready to be installed.

The last thing to do in the living room is to tear up the vinyl flooring and sub-floor, then replace the sub-floor so it's ready when the new vinyl arrives.

The carpet and vinyl flooring is on order so I have about a week to get the old floor vinyl tore out, install the new sub-floor and prep it.

The house was built in 1952 and it's so obvious by just seeing the colors of the paint under the paneling and along with the many layers of wall paper.  Wall paper....Yuck!

Here's a few pics of the process, this is what I started with;

Removing the Paneling

 Pretty Green and Teal Blue!

I got rid of the ugly 50's paint, got the walls painted white [although you would never know it with my crappy phone pics....lol ] and got the carpet ripped up!

 

 

Giggity Giggity

 

Once I get the sub floor cut and stapled for the linoleum, the next thing is to get the window casing, base and door jambs installed!  The carpet and linoleum is on order.  

Almost there...