Back into the routine

Life falling back into it's pre-holiday routine, but some changes on the horizon. I talked with Steve and Cheryl who lead our home group on Monday night about my easing out of the group. Turns out they have thought about going to a bi-weekly format anyway. This would free up Monday night every other week, yet keep me in touch. We will talk about it more as a group tonight.


Next week I'm going to Chicago for the Air Conditioning Heating and Refrigeration Expo. They have it in Chicago every three years which works out great for me. I stay at one of the Extended Stay Hotels, this time Studio Plus, so I can cook my own meals for breakfast and dinner.Saves a lot of money over eating out every meal for three days. I'm going to take the whole week off so I can stay at home when I get back and work on the basement. Sure would feel good to get another room into the shape. The basement key, as several items on the upper floors belong down there in the first place.

We finished overhauling a major piece of equipment at work between Christmas and New Years. After New Years the factory rep. came over to do a start up with us. It normally takes about an hour, he stayed until 9P and we still didn't get everything done. Nothing major, just lots and lots of little things we needed to iron out. The unit cools a poor man's supercomputer of sorts housed in our building. The humidifier portion hasn't worked in years so the room bone dry and prone to static electricity build up. We got all the humidifier problems fixed, now just a problem with one of the cooling circuits remains. My boss looking into it as he does 99% of the refrigeration work, where I do most of the electrical side of things.

Now that I own my own locomotives and rail cars I'm contributing to an overcrowding problem in our clubs main yard. To help alleviate this I've tried to find an inexpensive way to store my cars under the layout when I'm not running a train. My first idea a bust, but idea number two shows much more promise. I found some Rubbermaid tubs at Menards that fit the cars perfectly. For the prototype I put cardboard in the bottom and cut up cardboard dividers to place between each car. I set the cars belly up side by side, then laid in another piece of cardboard to support a second layer of cars. Turns out a tub holds about 16 50/60' box cars, which works out nicely. For the next generation I'm going to look into different foam options for making the dividers and to cover the cardboard. Some members concerned over time the roughness of the cardboard by itself will rub the paint off the sides of the cars. Especially if I ever transport them this way.