Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

[ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 4 ] I left off working on trackwork in Untergroeningen with Segment 3 last July . Wow, time flies! A couple ops sessions later, I spread AR&M #1332 on Segment 2 last week. My main concern here was to intergrate the paved platform with the surrounding ballast. I was not super-happy with the result, so I took a few days to let it grow on me, and decided today that I'm fine with it, so out came the matte medium to glue down the ballast. I used the opportunity to add some more ground cover to the gravel base, too. A short while later everything was soaked in glue and I left it to dry. 

Instead of operating on a cool layout with other meet attendees as in previous years , on the second day of the meet we had a panel discussion with the hosts of layouts that would have operated if we could have. I joined to represent Silicon Valley Lines, and did get to talk about the Welztalbahn for a minute, too. Kudos to the organizing committee for making this very different event happen under difficult circumstances. Everything worked smoothly for attendees and presenters.

I have regularly attended the Layout Design / Operations SIG Weekend for years, met lots of great people, and saw fantastic layouts around the larger Bay Area. Contrary to previous events , and in line with the theme of the last 12 months, this year the event went fully virtual, so while I miss meeting with others in person, I do get to enjoy at least part of the event from the comfort of our patio. Tomorrow (Sunday) at noon I will participate in the layout owner panel representing Silicon Valley Lines.

I'm done with the first batch of the 2-bay hoppers I'm preparing for servicing the Ashgrove quarry in Jacksonville on the Silicon Valley Lines. After painting and basic weathering the cars over the last couple weeks , today all cars got their matte varnish coat while I was watching the tsg multimedia Layout Design Panel Discussion . Here are all 9 cars staged on the Welztalbahn. While it was a lot of fun giving a bunch of very similar cars a unique personality each, and I still have another 9 cars to work on, I'm now going to pivot back to the Untergröningen module . A couple orders have arrived, so I can continue working on kitbashing the locomotive shed and scratch-building the station building.

The editor of Roundhouse, the NMRA magazine for the British Region, contacted us after the November Virtual Open House  asking whether we'd be interested in writing an article about how Silicon Valley Lines does remote operations, as well as provide background on how we planned and executed the Virtual Open House in the middle of a pandemic. Part 1 of the article I co-wrote with Jeff Rose covering remote operations is in the January/February issue. Part 2 covering the Virtual Open House will be in the next issue. This is my second in-print article . I hope that in a couple months the pandemic situation will have improved enough that we would be able to hold remote operating sessions again. Maybe another Virtual Open House as a lead-in to the virtual NMRA 2021 conference this summer.

It doesn't happen every day that your neighbor stops you while walking the dog and says, "Hey Bernhard, I think the winds last night threw something from your chimney into my backyard. Let me get it."   ... and he comes back with a large metal thing. It turns out that the winds overnight did blow away our new chimney cap. I don't know if it was not properly screwed down or what happened exactly. However, it turns out that the bolts mounted to the mesh are 1/4" regular thread. I grabbed some wing nuts and 5 minutes later the cap was back to where it belonged.

Two hoppers with basic weathering in the front. Several more unfinished in the background. For the last few days, I've been working on a bunch of 2-bay hopper cars preparing and weathering them for gravel service at Silicon Valley Lines. Most cars are getting new numbers. Since I don't want to completely redo the numbers on more than a dozen cars, I'm just replacing the last couple digits with new decals.  That doesn't go without some surprises. The digits for the replacement 25 are from Microscale 87-694, a decal set for Golden West Service box cars. Not a perfect match, but the decal color is very close to the existing print on the car. However, the decals are partially transparent. The yellow of the decal and the blue of the car body conspire to create the greenish tint visible in the photo. I'm going to try and tone down the difference with gravel dust during weathering. Today I finished painting wheels and trucks. When doing multiple cars, it really helps to se...