Winding down

I went to the train show today. As usual I spent more than I intended, but did OK. I did find the two Conrail SD40 locos I mentioned in my last post, along with one of their CP Rail stable mates. These locos are made by Kato, one of the better brands. They cost about 50% more than the cheaper brands, but run like a watch and are very reliable. To my mind they strike a good balance between quality/features and cost. Rick (the guy I buy a lot of my stuff from), somehow managed to get his hands on several brand new Conrail locos even though they haven't made them for at least 3 - 4 years, the boxes look like they came out of the factory yesterday. On the other hand the CP Rail box looks 4 years old, even though the loco inside still new. I also picked up one more BN loco, a GP35 #2521. These are smaller diesels widely used for branch line and yard service. I already have two very similar GP30's made by another company, but am discovering they aren't so reliable. I've had to repair both once so far and am currently working on one for the second time. Hopefully the Kato GP35 will work out better. If so, I will seek out it's sister the #2522 during future shows. I originally intended to buy just the two Conrail's, but decided since the other two Kato's are so hard to find that I should pick them up while the opportunity presents itself. Yes, I more than likely could find them on eBay (where I've purchased about 1/2 my locos to date) at a later date, but this way I could touch and see the product and didn't have to mess around with shipping.

To my surprise I found some very nice Cargill vegetable oil and corn syrup tankers. I also bought an assortment of covered hoppers and a couple flat car kits (w/ real wooden floors! Curious to see how they go together. Kits are becoming less and less common with the availability of cheap labor in China). I saw some container cars I liked, but decided to hold off on buying them, trusting they will still have them in the fall. You may recall, one of the big goals today to try to finish up the grain and coal unit trains I mentioned in my last post. I found one more coal car, so the coal car collection will nicely fill one tub with 16 cars total. All said and done I wound up with 18 of the Canadian grain cars. One vendor had 5 of the cars left and offered a special price if I took them all. This won't pose a problem since I have some American grain cars too, so I'm already using two tubs. Something about reaching these two milestones has helped me to feel more relaxed tonight.

After getting back and making up some dinner I sat down and watched a movie. Something I haven't done for a good month or more. Tonight's pick - Antitrust. I don't suppose it will go down in history as one of the world's greatest movies, but I like the friendship shown between the four guys involved in the startup company at the beginning. How many people do you know who would go out on a limb like that for you?

Laundry list

I've noticed my blog reads like a journal. I sometimes wonder if this makes me a bit shallow compared the likes of Noel, Dan and Frank who seem to effortlessly compose beautiful posts on various issues of faith and life. I've got some ideas of topics I could try expounding on, but for now another laundry list post.

Oreo and Mindy continue to do well. They fight once or twice a day, then act like long lost friends the balance of the time. They both sleep on the bed with me at night and compete for my attention when I'm sitting on the couch. I sometimes cry when I think about how much joy they bring to my life, they are both precious gifts.

Things at the train club are going great guns. Everyone seems to like me and I greatly look forward to Thursday nights. I faced a bit of a dilemma when the Chair of the Nominating Committee informed me that the membership nominated me for 4 out of 5 officer positions. It felt strange, I've can't think of another time in my life where a group of people has held such a high regard for me and my capabilities. It also gave me pause that this could all go to my head. I'm not opposed to serving in this capacity at some point, but after much thought decided it not wise to take on anymore right now. I believe I mentioned a few posts ago I agreed to chair the Train Show Committee, and I'm also chairing the Electrical and Maintenance of Way (track and rolling stock maintenance) Committees. I decided this plenty, since I'm still in the midst of getting the house back into shape. Thankfully, our club has a very capable group of people running it right now, all of which won reelection at our recent business meeting.

Recently, I've learned more about the intricacies of routing power to switches and have worked on making our main yard fully functional. Very gratifying to see the pleased looks on peoples faces during our recent Open House when they could run trains through all the yard siding tracks. Evidently these haven't worked for a long time. I've also worked on restoring power to the tracks by our coal mine and diesel engine servicing facility. Next the Holy Grail, getting the roundhouse and turntable up and running.

This the time of year when several of the big train shows come around. I've gone to one and am going to another one this weekend. I'm eager to get a basic collection of cars/engines built up for the railroads I like to model, esp. after seeing the positive reaction from our guests during our Open House last month. This testing my ability to hold the line on spending (ie - not rack up credit card debt). After my disaster last Fall, I've taken several measures to help. One, take along a calculator (Thanks Tyler). Two, make a list. Three, set an overall budget figure before leaving the house.

I've always liked the Burlington Northern's Green/Black color scheme. I also like the CP Rail Red Multimark scheme, as well as the Canadian National North American scheme. Fortunately, these railroads have long standing working relationships with each other so I can mix and match between them. The CP and BN move a lot of coal and grain, so I'm making up coal and grain unit trains (strings of matching cars). The tubs I'm using to store my cars hold 16 each, so this the number I'm aiming for. I had originally planned on 20 cars, but on our club layout a 16 car train looks quite long, so I think this number will prove adequate. Of course, they run regular trains too, so I'm buying a variety of box cars, tankers and covered hoppers, as these make up the majority of trains I see go by. I'm also picking up a smattering of gondolas, flat cars and cabooses (kids love these) which offer possibilities for carrying all kinds of unique loads. During the Open House, between running my trains and loaning out some locos for others to run their trains, I ran out of locos. I'm sticking with the better brands, and they only make so many of a given road name, so I'm running out of possibilities. I always liked the Conrail blue scheme, and you can match Conrail up with most anything, so I'm thinking about picking up a couple of those. We'll see if I come across any at the show.

At work the big cooling tower project moving ahead. After months of meetings and $20,00 or so in engineering fees we wound up with virtually the exact same setup we started with. Very frustrating, but we are making the best of it. The final plans did include a few genuine improvements over the original installation, but fail to address our biggest issue, water intrusion during heavy rains, in a way that gives us confidence. I never got the impression the designers took our proposed solutions seriously, since none of us possess engineering degrees.

You may recall last year I started working on plans for improving the air conditioning in the offices in our building. After getting about 90% of the design work done, the project bogged down, and has remained stalled for months on my kitchen table. With tax time coming up I need my kitchen table back, so I'm devoting Fridays to getting the last 10% finished up. I have about 20 more rooms I need to finish to come up with the final design, so far I've completed about 8 of them.

I've bought a ton more tubs and have continued to organize the basement. All my electrical and plumbing stuff now has a happy home. I tore out the last set of nasty wooden shelves and have a new metal shelf out of the box ready to put up. Some smaller clear tubs they sell at Menard's work perfect for my train cars. My prototype used cardboard dividers. The final version uses kiddy foam. It comes in 2, 3 and 6 mm thicknesses and all kinds of cool colors. I picked up a rolling cutter/cutting mat kit so I could make nice straight cuts along with a variety pack of the foam. It's working out great. Per the variety pack I ended up with Green = Boxcars, Red = Grain cars, Black = Coal cars, Blue = Covered Hoppers, Yellow = Container cars, White = Flat cars, Gondolas, Tankers and Cabooses, Tan = We'll see.

You can see a lot going on around the house and in life in general. These days I'm feeling much better, like I'm not stuck in neutral anymore, although not out of the woods by any means. Not that we ever are I suppose, but getting the house back into shape will free me up to devote my energies to more outwardly oriented activities; which I'm looking forward to, as I don't perceive God intending the house to act as a weight, but rather as a blessing and center of operations if you will to expedite my gifts in serving others.