Friday 8-20-10 at Scott's - Cast of Thousands!

What a crowd!  What a crowd!  We had a great turnout tonight!

Concrete Keith (late)
Band Camp Weiss
Coalfinger Ken
Packrat Paul
Popsicle Rick
Steve-bay
Neighbor Mark
Gator Scott

I didn't take any photos, so if you have some please upload them!

We spent most of the night learning how to make resin castings.  Each of us had some Alumilite resin and cast different objects.  We learned about different resin, mold building and other things about reproduction.  Not THAT kind of reproduction!

Then Scott gave away all his lumber, plywood, sheet foam, luan and other building materials.  He also dumped all his flammable paints since he is moving soon.

Was great to see everyone!

Friday 8-13-10 at Rick's

The group was at my house this week and what a treat! Present were: Scott (Gator) Perry, Packrat Paul, Steve-bay and Coalfinger Ken. It was especially nice to have Scott back as he hadn't been to the Richlawn Railroad in ages! We missed the rest of you guys! Bob & Keith (drywall experts) - you would be proud of the job the guys did!

We started by having a little mini-tour of the latest (if not little) progress which included adding static grass in the foreground of Hoovertown, starting the back section of Hoovertown which will include the residential area, and the addition of JRMI to the railroad to starting with Decoder Pro.

Have you ever had a "sticking" point on your railroad construction where you just can seem to make any progress? Of course you have! For me, it was finishing the drywalling of the alcove addition (6-1/2' x 7' area). Tonight's main objective was that drywall completion and to "get-r-done"...... and the guys did!

I actually did do a little work, although it was documented. My main function was to make the cuts using my radial arm saw as I think the guys were a little scared of this 50 year old DeWalt wonder. I also ran tools and of, course ran my mouth (I'm an expert!). Enjoy the pictures!


Someone had made a remark at the last get together that "these aren't Doublestuff" so I made sure that mistake wasn't repeated. We had the usual mix of cookies, soft drinks, water and coffee. It was warm in the basement due to our Georgia heat wave and all of the furious working!


Recycling is the name of the game, so we reused the lumber taken down from the closet demo. Here Paul & Scott are removing nails, screws, etc. from the lumber before measuring and cutting.

Steve manned the measuring tape much of the night and is laying out one of the studs. The next "un picture" is of me making the cut.

Paul brought his handy-dandy driver gun to make short work of attaching the plate to the floor.

I had a couple of sections of 4' x 9' 1/2 dryway ready for the guys. Here Scott & Paul are marking the bottom to remove 1/2" before taking the sheet into the alcove.

An up it goes! The guys also brought the other sheet in the room before sealing it up.

Scott mans the gun while Paul & Steve hang on.

Heeeerrrrs Johnny!!! - I mean Heeeeerrrs Ken! He just couldn't resist the impulse to stick his head in. It's a good thing that he didn't get a drywall screw in it!

Scott's not afraid to get down and dirty when it comes to railroading. Here he's making the cut for the final piece. I'll make the rest of the cut from my end once he's through.

Steve was our "high man" when it came to driving the screws. Scott had just finished trimming the sheet to fit in between the existing wall. Somebody made the comment that there weren't any trains running, so I fired up two throttles using my laptop and Decoder Pro and ran them around the layout for a lap.

Talk about some nice looking studs! I'm talking about the wall, not the NCIOG guys!

Done! All I've got to do now is taping, mudding, and painting! After the work was done we had a nice chat about Scott's upcoming casting clinic. Scott is an expert the the art and the guys are really looking forward to learning from him. I got out a bunch of possible canidates for casting while we all hammered Scott with questions about casting. Can't WAIT!

We ended around 11p and I really appreciate the guys making the trek and "unsticking" me! Thank you!

Work session at Paul's 7-30-10

Great night tonight! Donna made brownies for treats, and Ken, Mark, Keith, and Rick showed up. Collin Daly called to ask if he could come over, and I said "Of course you may!" He showed up a little late, but got involved with our main task tonight...

I had the remnant carpet that had originally been installed in the room where we built the upper level re-installed on the raised floor earlier in the week. So we took all my boxes that had been stashed in the back aisle of Donna's back stock room, and moved them under the benchwork on the raised floor. That allowed us to segregate them them a little, into boxes with Active Roster models; regular rolling stock, parts, and supplies; stuff to sell on eBay and at train shows; and narrow gauge models. Keith expressed the opinion that they wouldn't all fit, but they do! There's some stuff that wasn't in boxes, and I have to get some non-standard boxes so I can take the eBay stuff out of some standard boxes we had used, and most of the stuff left over will fit into them. The other stuff will sit on top of the stacks, under the benchwork. Then we took a break...

We did some track spacing determination on the second turn of the helix to move the track a little farther from the edge than it is now - my concern is that the farther from the edge the sharper the radius, and since it'll have a passing siding inside the main, the siding radius will be even sharper. As we re-configured it, the outside track will have about a 44" radius, and the inside track will be about 42", which should work out pretty well. Then we ran trains for awhile, including Collin's SD-70. Of course, it lost part of its program, so Keith took it home with him to re-program it on his NCE system, after fighting with my Zephyr for half an hour, and searching on the internet for the instructions he used last week to program it originally. That only took another 20 minutes! Anyway, we made a short night of it, but it was great progress for me. Thanks, fellas!

Paul