Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

Following this recipe Tatjana found for me I made Stuffed Bell Peppers for dinner tonight. They came out much better than I had hoped for. The kids were pleased.

  I made another apple cake while watching OpSIG's Second Section this afternoon. Cake came out good and will serve us well for the first half of the week.

Today Dave Falkenburg and I presented a clinic on "Remote Operations at Silicon Valley Lines" at the NMRAx Virtual Convention. The session was live-streamed on Facebook and Youtube . Regular readers of this blog will recognize some of the content of the presentation. There's plenty of new content as well, so I hope it was interesting in either case. Here is the raw recording of the presentation of today's NMRAx linked to the beginning of our talk.

I've been waiting for a couple weeks now to be able to write this post. John Abatecola from TSG multimedia visited Silicon Valley Lines in August and filmed segments for this video before and during an operations session at Silicon Valley Lines. I explain various aspects of how we add remote operators into operating sessions at SVL, including an overview of the hardware, software, and systems setup, as well as pitfalls. This allows us to minimize the number of people in the layout room to enable social distancing.

I've decided to build a second camera car for Silicon Valley Lines Ops sessions, so that we have a spare camera in case there are problems. For this one I wanted to try and use the existing USB battery holder I built last month and mount the Raspberry Pi on the side of the battery. I tacked the Raspberry Pi Zero to a thin sheet of styrene that can slide between the battery and the styrene supports. I built a support structure for the camera that's glued to the styrene sheet the Pi sits on, and fits between battery and car side. Then I carefully twisted and bent the camera cable to make a 90 degree turn so that it it oriented correctly. I could turn the image in software, but prefer to go with physically correct orientation from the start if possible. After taking the photos below, I added another styrene sheet to protect the camera cable from bumps. This setup must be placed in a container well car because it is quite high and completely fills out the modern HO loading gauge. I...

I'm participating in a TSG multimedia virtual crew lounge discussion tomorrow afternoon at 4pm PDT. I'm planning to join from the Welztalbahn layout room. Camera, laptop, and props are in place. Looking forward to an interesting discussion. Update 20/Sept/2020: With the extra light I put on top of the garage cabinet it was getting toasty in the layout room. I very much enjoyed the discussion with the other panelists. 

Dinner tonight turned out much better than I expected. 

  I woke up today and had a craving for cake. Marmorkuchen would be nice. Instead of chocolate powder I found chocolate chips in the kitchen cabinet. That'll do. I could have used more. The cake turned out a bit dark on the outside, but everyone approved.

I'm using the opportunity that there is space in the garage to set up the Untergroeningen branch of the Welztalbahn. Today was the first time that I set up Slim Staging with the backdrop and the turnout control panel connected to the module. The Welztalbahn hasn't run for almost a year  and the modular extension so far hasn't run in operations at all. The track cleaning train has some work to do ...

Open floorspace below the Welztalbahn The Welztalbahn layout frame is supported by only 4 legs, one in each corner of the layout. When I built it, I wanted to minimize obstructions under the layout to maintain maximum flexibility for moving about under the layout, as well as storage. That turned out to be a good idea. However, over time storage took over all open floor space under the layout. In the last year it got so bad, that I'd have to remove boxes from the layout room just to run a train. The activation energy to do something with the layout became too high and I didn't do anything, apart from storing more stuff in the layout room. Instead I focused on the Untergroeningen segments, which was good an enjoyable, but I do want to operate again at some point, too. To reign into the clutter I had to move all the stuff stored under the layout somewhere else, sort through it, combine and optimize and then put it back. Which I did this week. I didn't take a photo before I sta...

Turning this ...         ... into this. I made my usual apple pie recipe, but used pears instead. Skinned pears are very slippery...

  Still can't smell any smoke.

Coyote Valley near Bailey Ave at 10:30am, looking West Smoke from North Bay fires as now drifted south at high altitudes above the Marine Layer. Hence the sun is not burning off the fog. Sky, clouds, and light have an orange tint. Interestingly, the air quality is almost good today with an AQI PM2.5 around 70. It's likely to get worse again through the rest of the week when the wind picks up.

  104.5 Fahrenheit. A late summer heat wave on Labor Day weekend. No air movement. Smoke in the air. It's not healthy outside.

[ RSD-5 posts ] On the locations where the new decals would go I applied MicroGloss and let it dry. Then carefully and slowly, one after the other, for each decal I applied MicroSet while the decal wets in some water, apply the decal, wick the water from under the decal, let it dry a little bit, and carefully apply drops of MicroSol so that the decal softens and adheres to the contours of the locomotive body for a painted-on look. The MicroSol is particularly important for the large logo on the doors of the long hood. It usually takes multiple MicroSol applications for the decal to soften enough. I'm working on both locomotives at the same time, so that I can continue with one locomotive, while the other one dries. Once the decals were done, I taped the windows to prep for Dullcoat and weathering.

Another Friday morning hike on the Fortini loop trail with friends. The air is still crisp and clear. The smoke is gone and Mt. Unumhum is visible in the distance.