Friday Night at Keith's home 8-19-11

Attending at Keith's home were Concrete Keith (of course!), Glue Bob, Packrat Paul, Popsicle Rick, Coalfinger Ken, Band Camp Mark, and John (nickname yet to be determined).

It was great to see Keith again as he's constantly been on the road for work. Tonight he was tired, but a sport as he kept on going - kind of like the Energizer Bunny!



Mark & Keith interested in ????




Now what was that we were supposed to do tonight? Oh yeh, clean up, clean the track and run
some trains!


Bob get right to work picking up.



Why this picture? Because I LIKE it!



Nice, clean work running the track cleaner over the track. Rick even looks like he is working (sort of).




Bob finished the pick up duty and switched to track cleaning. Who is that mysterious visitor???



Now if we knock out the basement wall we can expand on
to the golf course, and then........................



You missed a spot right there. What would Bob do without Paul's help?


Bob explains himself to Keith. I would have liked to hear
that conversation!


The L&N Boys Ken & Rick show their AWESOME shirts.


After all of the cleaning Keith set out the throttles and the
real fun began.

Mr. Murphy showed up after a few minutes of running and we had a "Naughty Node" that overheated causing a log jam of trains as the turnouts stopped working. It's actually great that this happened tonight as that was the purpose of the session is to get ready for Keith's open
house on September 18th.





Here Keith shows John how to get started.



A great time was had by all - thanks, Keith!


[Text & pictures by Rick Wade]

Alcove Expansion Progress - Fascia

After some careful consideration the cold hard truth hit me that I’m not going to be able to complete the alcove area before my October 15th open house on the Piedmont Pilgrimage. Accepting this fact I decided to change focus to try and install what I though would be pleasing for my visitors. Since I believe that fascia and a fascia curtain help define the area and give it a more finished look I’m going to concentrate on getting those items installed. I believe that I won’t have any problem getting this task completed. Here are some pictures of the progress the last few days:




The challenge with the fascia in this area is that there is a tunnel (8 ft long!) in the lower track that must be able to be accessed. The tunnel itself has three hinged doors that can be opened to remove any problems. Since the bench work is narrow in this area (20″) there isn’t room to reach up under the fascia to get in the tunnel doors (unless you are “Rubber Man”!) from underneath.



Here’s the fascia with the removable panel removed. It’s still under construction as I haven’t installed all of the magnets. There will also be a lower fixed board that will hang the fascia curtain as the curtain will remain in place when the access panel is removed. Any turnout controls or other goodies would be mounted in the upper fixed fascia.

I thought about saving the money on the magnets by not purchasing them and just screwing the access panel in place; however, Mr. Murphy would make sure that I had a bunch of “tunnel troubles” if I tried that. With the magnet mounted access panel it can be popped off in seconds and the tunnel cleared quickly.

Rick