Jul 31, 2021
Who needs birthday cake when you can have birthday pie?
—orc Sat Jul 31 22:46:51 2021
Jul 30, 2021
Jul 27, 2021
The LT&L’s fleet of RS-2s pretty much all evaporated in the 1966 purge of 244 power, but 3 units remained on the roster; 375 & 376 were rebuilt to low short hooded RS-251rs (v12 251s, 375 with a GE-style cab & 376 with a RS-32 style one) and 377 became a SL-2 (everything but the control cabinet & traction motor blowers ripped out, the radiator & most of the access doors stripped off and replaced with welded panels, and a shop built hood extension replacing where the cab used to be.
It eventually ended up mated with the BLWRS switcher, but until then spent most of its time hanging around with the two RS-251rs.
(It’s obviously not finished yet; I’ve a fairly substantial collection of things I need to do/add to it before I paint it and put it aside waiting for a railroad to run it on.)
—orc Tue Jul 27 15:51:27 2021
Jul 25, 2021
Frustration with trying to fit a dcc decoder (one of the tiny digitrax units that, alas, was not tiny enough) into a Kato rsd5 led me to grabbing the one remaining rs32 shell and dropping it onto the rsd5 frame to make a hypothetical rsd532 (somewhat like how the SP had Alco rebuild a bunch of their rsd5s into ‘12s, but this was done later enough so that Alco could make a more powerful rebuild.)
Alas, this is my one remaining rs32 shell and I might want to use the cab & short hood for another rsc2m (since 577 & 579 could have been purchased by another thrifty shortline in the Northeast or Atlantic Canada) so I will probably carve out a recess in one of the lead weights on the Kato unit so I can tuck the dcc decoder inside.
—orc Sun Jul 25 00:03:32 2021
Jul 24, 2021
My original 576 was built on a Kato rsc2, which sadly didn’t match my 578 (proto 1000) either in detail or in gear ratio, so I killed two birds with one stone by pulling out my spare proto 1000 rsc2 and moving the cab & short hood over to it. And now I have two rsc2m models that have the same level of detail & the same gear ratio.
—orc Sat Jul 24 17:08:24 2021
Jul 23, 2021
Dust Mite wires up a couple of locomotives
—orc Fri Jul 23 23:53:11 2021
Jul 22, 2021
The PH&W’s entire roster (+ PV&T C420 #436 & a spare rsc2 sitting on the ground), in the throes of being put together. Cutting down the rs32 short hoods was the easy part; it took me longer to find a dcc decoder that would fit into 578 (on the left; a Life-Like Proto 1000 unit) than it did to lop off the short hoods & cut down the rs32 hoods to fit onto the frames.
Now it’s a bunch of punchlist items (replace the stacks with w/c versions, take off the footboards, add air conditioning units, ditch lights, MU stands, snowploughs, DS all-weather window extensions, underframe bells, rerailing shoes, the correct fuel tanks & air reservoirs, and horns like they had when they were working out of the Milwaukee Road’s La Crosse division) before I paint them in the PH&W’s orange & black and set them to one side while I race death to build a model railroad.
—orc Thu Jul 22 23:11:47 2021
Fortunately for me the post office is only a couple of blocks away!
—orc Thu Jul 22 00:41:49 2021
Jul 18, 2021
Julie found a pair of midcentury modern overstuffed chairs online, so we bought them (and rented a van to go and get them, which was only moderately terrifying because trucks tend to drive like trucks) and stuffed them into the place where the old disintegrating sofa used to be.
They actually fit well with the sectional mcm sofa I fell in love with at a used furniture store downdown (or they will after we finish cleaning out the still sadly cluttered living room!) but now we’ve got two rocking chairs floating around that need to be placed (after said cleaning of said cluttered room) before we start using it as a living room again.
—orc Sun Jul 18 15:10:40 2021
Jul 16, 2021
Ballet Mite, or Bellying up to the Barre
—orc Fri Jul 16 23:56:49 2021
We had a horrific heat spell a couple of weeks ago (three days each broke the high temperature recorded in Portland; 108°F, 112°F, then 116°F) which dried everything out, and haven’t had any substantial rain since then. So things are really itching to turn themselves into ash.
When I first caught sight of the actual fire (I’d spotted the smoke billowing when I turned onto the Springwater Trail @ Johnson Creek Blvd) it was at the foot of the slope below the power line, racing up the hillside and crowning under the tower, but while I was on the phone with the 911 operator it expanded sideways up to maybe half an acre (I wasn’t going to go offroad to see what the shape of the fire on the other side of that little hill was due to not wanting to set my synthetic clothing on fire) and while I was taking this picture it was creeping enthusiastically towards me despite a headwind.
(No, I didn’t stick around to see the firefighting. The fire crews don’t need rubberneckers while they’re trying to club a fire into submission.)
—orc Fri Jul 16 23:14:39 2021
Jul 09, 2021
Dust Mite plays with trains
—orc Fri Jul 9 23:15:55 2021
Jul 05, 2021
Mantua(I think?) bodyshell, Athearn Blue Box chassis, then I’m going to have to strip off the CN paint and figure which of my handful of fictional railroads wants to run Baldwins & Baldwins with Blomberg trucks.
—orc Mon Jul 5 17:13:57 2021
Jul 02, 2021
Dust Mite in my father’s old rocking chair.
—orc Fri Jul 2 23:39:36 2021
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