Friday Night at Keith's

Friday night at Keith's was great, as you can see from the looks on the tired NCIOG boys after a hard night's work.
From right to left: Paul, Steve, Keith, Mark and Ken, doing what we do best - taking a break!

Just to prove we actually did some work, here is the CEO of the New York Central on the floor cutting some foam. Talk about your low budget operations!

Here's Steve doing some painting on an area just next to Westfield Machine. How he does all this painting and never gets a drop on him is a mystery! Speaking of mystery, is that the ghost of Mr. Perry?

Paul hard at work solving the puzzle of the highway bridge supports near Erie interchange. As Paul says, with coffee, all things are possible!

Here's Mark, the master of disaster with regard to plastering! Look at that man go!

Hey! Where's Bob? Not to worry, he's behind the camera, trying to get some good pictures of the NYC in North Georgia.

The CEO reports that the work completed was well and truly done, and a good time was had b\y all, so much so, we agreed to meet again Saturday afternoon to do some more!

What's new on the Richlawn RR

I thought that you guys may be interested in what's happening here on the Richlawn Railroad since you visited last. First of all, the alcove expansion is completely finished! I didn't post a picture on that as there's not much to see. I wrote an article for MRH on the how to cove the corners which they may publish.

I'm currently working on the expansion of the Hoovertown area that will include more businesses along with housing. I'm also working on scratch building my childhood home, named the "Blenheim" project. This will be my first scratch built structure using plastic.


I've laid out the roads using masking tape and drawn a 6" x 6" grid. I also have the area drawn on a piece of graph paper with the same grid layout where I can fiddle with streets, alleys, lot sizes, etc... One thing I've discovered is that I've got a BUNCH of structures that I need to build.

One of the structures that I need to build is my childhood home and I've been busy drawing the layout sketched for all sides. There are a bunch of angles and "fun" areas that I'll have to deal with. Stay tuned for more as I progress.

Thursday Extra on the HOG

Hello everyone! We had another special work session on the HOG yesterday. Thanks to Bob and Paul for all the great help. Paul finished the cement company area and Bob and I air brushed the rails and ties all around. More ground foam scenery as well.

The phantom dead short raised it's head again! We isolated it to a suitcase connector on one of the drop lines to the power bus. I removed two of the suspect connectors and hard wired the drops into place. So here's a word to the wise. When in doubt - hard wire!

See you all this evening at Keith's.

Steve

Video Training for Blog Entry

Guys, Here's a short video on how to add & edit entries to this blog. Please be sure to add you comments, but only if they are positive! ;-)

Friday Night on the "Heart of Georgia" Model RR

Hello all!

Thanks to Glue Bob, Pack Rat Paul (hope you are feeling better), Band Camp, Coal Finger, and Colin for the great help last evening. We are a bit behind the schedule to be ready for the first open house on the 9th of October. Once we inspected the alignment at the joints we used a razor saw and cut the rail. Now the 4 sections are totally indepentend. We then pulled the sections apart again and took them outside around the outside of the house and tested the "fit" in Paul's Jeep and in my car. Not the best situation! I sent an email to Howard G. to see if he could round up a pick-up truck.

We also did some basic scenery, clarified the numbering system for the legs and fine tuned their fit! Bob was a mad man on the belt sander; even with a very sore back!

We reassembled the 4 sections and connected the power. We then attempted to operate a locomotive on straight DC. That sure was a "big flop!" There is a short somewhere. Some of the scenery work around the grain elevator at Zeeland Farms was still wet from the water / glue solution as we think that could be a problem. We did not get a good feeling of the reliability of the DC transformers either.

Okay - now to bring you up to speed....... this morning I replaced all the facia, started scenery work at the cememt yard and retested operation. Limited success on running an engine however. The test engine ran on about 2/3 of the layout. The Zeeland Farms / Lake Blackshear module seems to still be an issue. So still more work to be done!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Steve

Labor Day Labor - Or "Keep on Painting"

Men,

Some think that Labor Day is a day to take off from labor; however, this labor day I actually did some work for a change - on the railroad. After weeks of looking at the unpainted alcove addition I decided that I was FINALLY going to get the drywall mud work done. I was surprised to learn that there was only a little smoothing to do, so after everything had dried I painted the area. The paint is a pretty fair match to the existing paint and I can blend the two colors with a third color when I do the sky and clouds. I'm amazed on how the addition looks painted as the curved walls fool the eyes into thinking that there's no end to the room. I want to thank all of you that helped me get the alcove ready.

Now that I've got things rolling I plan on doing the floor next, adding molding, and putting the trim rings on the ceiling lights this week.

Scott's View of the Going Away Photo

The NCI Operating Group

The Legendary Men of the North County Interchange Operating Group

From left to right

Back: Bob the Builder, Popsicle Rick, Band Camp Weiss, Concrete Keith, Iron Mike

Front: Coalfinger Ken, Gator Scott, Steve-bay

Here are photos from last evenings festivities!

High on the HOG

In attendance:

Gator Scott
Steve-bay
Packrat Paul
Coalfinger Ken
Concrete Keith
Bob the Builder
Popsicle Rick
Band Camp Mark

We had a full house last evening! It was a very productive evening sprucing up the HOG last night. Painting facia, laying ties, securing track and laying ballast, removing extra feet of wire from under the benchwork, correcting some operational issues like dead sidings, and preparing for serious scenery work for next weeks session.

Paul - you left the Korean meat marinade behind. Keith - there was something (can't recall what)that you left behind as well. I may be wrong but Scott has it because he said he'd see you soonest.

Again, thanks to everyone for all the support!

Steve B