Holiday cheer, and some N scale updates…

Laid out before me are all the tools I need, but at this very moment I have none of the requisite energy to move forward with the task… I am sick. Last night was a blur of television and NyQuil, waiting for sleep to come and heal my weary body….. this morning brought no relief. Despite all this, I am excited! I am excited for the holiday coming, I am excited for the work I have done on my own little hobby as well as Todd’s (we built his layout, as planned, in a day). I am more than excited about getting home today, hopefully to find some freshly delivered Ebay-originated packages of model railroad goodies to further my little 8-square-foot world. Christmas time is a time for toys, laughter, and cheerful feelings and it seems I am quite full of holiday cheer! I am quite sure I’ll be making someone’s Christmas quite memorable this year, details to come after I actually give her the gift 🙂

Here’s what has been done lately on my own layout- not much really, but the grass is a nice start to all the scenery it needs. I’ll be going down to the LHS this afternoon to get a bit of foliage and ground cover to start really filling out the details here-

The mixed ballast I used came out nice, in my opinion, and looks similar to what can be found in my own locale, as this little layout will likely pay homage to a bit of local lore. With all the lighting and painting and gluing left to do on the buildings, I have a lot of opportunities to add some character from familiar places to each little structure. I received a box of several pre-built buildings yesterday, and with some reworking I should be able to have them all looking quite snappy by next weekend! I still need to push the box containing the unbuilt miniature sawmill under my girlfriend’s nose; she promised me she would build it up nicely so she could claim some stake in our little living room centerpiece-to-be!

Another recent addition to my collection is a pair of TCS CN-GP decoders for my Northern Pacific freight engines; the decoders (when installed inside a locomotive) allow me to run multiple locomotives on the same track, while individually controlling the locos without affecting the others. Quite a nifty little setup, I am sure after getting them all installed I’ll have fun teaching Todd the ins & outs of Digital Command Control. He’s like a kid in a candy store, with his trains… his purchase of an HO scale Northern Pacific GP-18 makes my heart warm- I have 2 of those locomotives, but in N scale. Anyone who has seen my collection knows my adoration for the ol’ NP, whose herald adorns most of my collection and even a few antiques around the house! I have a nifty little gift for Todd this Christmas, my help in building his layout notwithstanding. Again, details to come after the “big day” 🙂

Other recent developments include my addition of a painted cab interior in the NP FP7, which is visible through the windshield, and some new additions to the collection of a six-car flatcar set all individually numbered, and a new set of NP reefers to line up next to the meatpacking plant behind my other three reefers- all six are a beautiful argent silver and look quite realistic in a consist, perhaps to be pulled behind my BN GP-30 around the loops….

Speaking of the GP-30, I had a little lesson in the quality of Kato Locomotives the other day! The GP was whining and grinding around the curves, and making one hell of a racket. I pulled the shell, and found almost every internal part to be bone-dry! That simply is not acceptable- I took care in removing every part and piece, I lubricated the bearings for the work gears with light oil and the truck gears/worm gears with white grease (teflon type). I had never seen such a freerolling truck before, the little suckers both went off the edge of the table into my lap with almost zero slope to the surface. Those low-friction Kato/Atlas drives are a thing of beauty. After lube and reassembly, I took the engine for a spin at half-power and over the course of a minute of running, the engine sped itself up (noticeable both visually and audibly!) and smoothed out, taking on a near dead silence while running, and to top it all off the loco coasts to a stop when power is cut- flywheels sure do their job. For a $30 Ebay loco, new-in-box, the only thing I can think of to possibly make this model nicer would be some proper couplers and a decoder! Otherwise, an A+ all the way. Have you got one? If not, I highly suggest it- you won’t be sorry!

One last note- I have found that the couplers and trucks on my Con-Cor Passenger car set are painfully inadequate. I’ve replaced the front coupler/truck of the RPO car with a Micro-Trains set that proved to be a good fit and looks wonderful, but could be cost-prohibitive at $10 a set for 9 cars. I’ll be looking into bulk packs. Otherwise, I’m slowly but surely banishing Rapido couplers from everything I run, and I say good riddance! The cars do not seem to be friendly to my tight radii on the coffee table layout either, so it seems I may be forced to retire the set until I have a larger layout at my disposal. Last night, while running the train around a bit, I had a derailment of the trailing observation car. I decided to run it a few more inches to see if the couplers would hold up, and it hit the left-hand switch just right. It rerailed itself onto the inner track, and for a brief period I was running perfectly on two different tracks with one car! Honestly one of the most cockeyed things I have ever seen…. but entertaining nonetheless.

small stogies

I just left the local cigar store off *** street. What a disappointment. I know things are pricier in San Francisco, but that’s ridiculous! I don’t make a habit of spending $17 for a $11 cigar. The selection is decent enough… but from what I can see the store caters to only the high-end cigar conniseur. Is there even a market for that anymore? Is there even much of an upper class left for whom these exorbitant prices are intended? I suppose today’s market does not require one such business to lower its prices, but it damn near demands some leniency at the register. What’s making matters worse is, with the limited number of people/businesses left with any money these days, the “powers-that-be” are squeezing every red cent out of them because nobody else can be squeezed any further! I have days where I feel like it’s all a joke, all a revolving little universe around each and every one of us to strip us of finances and, in the  long term, deny us escalationinto the moneyed ranks. Nobody ever got rich without someone else getting poorer…. And naturally, I did not leave emptyhanded so my whole argument is $12 lighter!

Be that as it may, I still rather enjoyed the little CAO flavored cigar (vanilla) I just happened to have with me today, on the walk towards the cigar shop. I had snuck it out of my girl’s humidor, and grabbed a good (yet cheap!) Thompson-provided off-brand cigar for my long smoke after the gym. The CAO was, until recently, low on my list… but at some point I remembered this isn’t one of my 45 ring gauge churchills, it’s a little cigarillo and should be smoked delicately. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Lighter, more intermittent draws (puffs?) solved my complaints about an acrid finsh, and now I rather enjoy these flavored sticks.

 I had paused briefly outside the skating rink, watching the lonely half-dozen skaters brave the cloudy sky and the drizzle, to get their midweek fix of a fixture that only materializes downtown for a handful of weeks, then disappears for the warmer majority of the seasons. I’m rather looking forward to my plpanned trek to the rink this Friday, I’ll be with my love and my friends and a flask of something warming…. Of course, all the while I’ll be trying to sneak in a few cigars! I purchased some small (3” ish) Romeo Y Julieta Habana Reserve Piquenos, a nice firm little box of eight sticks printed with some delightful little romantic artwork reminiscent of old Roman art. I’ve unwrapped two from their plastic sheaths in anticipation of smoking one, but as I’m at my desk it will be a while before I have anything to say about them! Patience, Hunter, patience….

Progress in 8 square feet

I’ve been busy, but making time to do what needs to get done on the layout. I made a stop at the LHS (local hobby store) after work, and picked up some goodies including enough ballast to finish the track. I’ve long ago decided on a simple track plan, partly because of my size constraints but also due to the glass-topped, looking-down setup of this little coffee table layout. I suppose it would be pointless to go into painstaking detail on this little town, as the view is strictly bird’s-eye and the operation has to be houseguest-friendly. A few nice bits of eye-candy and some cool scenery, and it’ll be done. I’ll likely be doing a full ground covering of snow, something that looks amazing on a tree-laden layout. I’d first like to show you something I added last-minute, as a nice break from the monotony of a double-loop-

The carve-out will be a dry winter gulch, rocky and snow-laden. The bridge will look a bit nicer in a few days, likely silver rather than plastic-black. The actual double-loop is not totally concentric, each end is different. Also helps get away from the click-together ready-made track concept-

The sidings are dual-purpose; to get a train off the mainline should I want three trains on these two tracks, and to provide a reason, of sorts, for trains to run in this little town. I will likely have a good visual break in the middle, perhaps a rocky ridge and tunnels for both tracks to run through. We’ll see. More importantly, I think I’ll focus on having some nice little operational details, like all-powered switched and an interlocking tower at the main crossing/switchout area (2) with lighted signals for every switch(1 & 1)-

 Tonight comes the track cleaning, and stripping raised ballast from between the rails to keep clearance at a maximum. I’ve just yesterday received a new set of Cigar-branded boxcars from Model Power, they’re perfect as a reason to have a Cigar warehouse on the layout! Makes me want a good maduro right now…. anyway I’ll be working for a few days on Todd’s layout, so updates will wait till this weekend. At the least I’ll post pics of my new acquisitions off Ebay!

Escape

It seems I am stagnant right now. I am sitting at a desk serving no true function and worse still I am sitting in the stead of someone who, as much as I appreciate them, fills this same seat for more hours than I…. every day. What I want right now is hard to define…. what I want right now is visceral, is sense, is sight… something comprised of humming parts and rattling steel and scratching rubber and cold, black vinyl. My little car awaits…. miles away, and worse yet, hours away. That changes over the course of the day, from impossibly far away to merely minutes ahead. It’s quite a thing, this “patience”. I bide my time to escape this four-walled confine, which in its quietness makes me feel like something of an aesthetic. People pass me by without a bat of an eyelash, without a returned nod that I so graciously gave them. I am part of the surrounding “everything”… the rush-by of worldly variety that passes the eyes of everyone who seems to walk around with their eyes on the floor and stone blank faces…. which, sadly, seems to be nearly everyone these days. I digress.

I want to get out. I want to move. I want to run away, but far faster than my legs could take me- I am no speeding bullet on my own. People jest at my choice in automobiles, they laugh at the notion that I am without GPS or “Nav” or airbags crammed in every interior panel…. they don’t understand, and they never will. I drive what I drive not because of economy, not because of legacy, but simply because if makes me feel. Plain and simple. The dull drone of a late-moel Honda’s tires on dry pavement makes my eyes heavy and my breath slow…. the top-heavy lurch of whatever SUV makes my equilibrium hate itself for seemingly everlasting moments.

Then there’s Pennyworth. I had, for years, had a fixation on Chrysler (conversatioally it’s Mopar, for their MOtor PARts division of such reknown) A-Body compact cars. There is a “sweet spot” of model years, a short list of cars that were built as cars should be, with care and attention and enough guts to drive 250,000 miles…. my car was. Cars are rarely made to last half that these days, before a major malfunction forces a hurried Craigslist sale of that 6-year-old sedan while you rent a car to make the commute. That, my friends, is not the way for me.

Fast-forward to tonight…. I will ride the local tube-train to my city, and walk out into the evening air that looks to be cool and crisp. I’ll jiggle the key into the lock (it’s an acquired skill), I’ll shed my heavy coat before sliding into that black vinyl seat that shows little age except on the bucket…. four pumps of the gas (five if it’s really cold out), and I turn the key just for a moment- the whine of the starter and torqueflite transmission will disappear after a half-second, leaving only the rumble of the cherry-bomb exhaust installed under the car (which, I must say, I am rather fond of despite its propensity to sound-off the neighbor’s car alarms during the wee hours) and a puff of tinted smoke out the one-sided exhaust….

I look over the black dash, nearly perfect in its old age of 45 years. The chrome skull I have adorning the dashboard, facing out for the world to see, smiles back at me through the windshield’s reflection with a wickedly toothy grin as I pull the console shifter into gear and back out of the cheaply-painted parking stall. The drive home will be, and always is, quite refreshing. I crank down the window to get the scent of public transit out of my nostrils, and I can smell once again the old perforated headliner’s vinyl as if it were my Grandfather’s car…. familiar indeed. The only sad part of my drive is arriving home, where I’ll park Pennyworth and close the garage, and go upstairs- inside- the world stops rolling past here. Perhaps I should go out for groceries? coffee? Anything to get the world rolling by again…… just so long as I have my beautiful girl by my side to see it all with me.

Fun in the hobby shop!

http://s221.photobucket.com/albums/dd232/sactown58bugg/RxR/?action=view&current=MOV03329.flv

The link above is a video, a snippet of a conversation about my work-in-progress, and we’re talking briefly about how my lovely lady at home is going to build me a tiny little sawmill to compliment my N scale coffee-table layout. The layout belongs to Bruce, who is the proprietor of Sacramento’s largest hobby shop- Bruce’s Trains. He has been working on this little N-scale project for fourteen years, and it looks as beautiful as when I had first seen it over a decade ago. Very nice guy, especially if you like what he likes. Since the little layout’s early iteration Bruce has modernized some buildings, he has powdered the roofs and ground with snow, and his locomotive roster includes some of the finest, smoothest, quietest jewels of locomotive miniaturization that have ever been produced. I also like that (as you may notice) he is running mostly Northern Pacific locomotives! This is pertinent to me because I just-so-happen to be running NP as well! In fact, while I was there, I purchased a nice little Christmas gift for my layout, something I have been wanting for an excruciatingly long time- Northern Pacific Lowey F-units! The full-size brethren of my new little green giants were the primary motive power, for years, of the famous and breathtaking Northern Pacific “North Coast Limited” passenger train. Here’s a brief example of its legacy-

 

 Naturally, I have decided to model a nice rocky terrain and some very dated, 1950’s style buildings and locations (“I like Ike”?). My inspiration comes from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest and Rear Window, in that everything will be clean and squared and forward-looking for the times. Graffitti was never to be found, people put on their nicest suits to travel, and the little white picket fences were on every street, with children merrily (and safely) playing inside them. Times long past, yes, but not forgotten- not even by those of us who never had a chance to really earn such memories…. so we make do by re-creating it. Here is the newly minted micromechanical incarnation of my forest green muse-

A work of art to be sure, and more…. eh, flattering photos are sure to come. Proper light is tough to find sans-coffee at 5:48 a.m., let alone any other time of the day! I just had to share 🙂

Like a child’s eyes at Christmas

A family member and great friend, Todd, is hunched over a cabinet right now. He is feverishly cleaning small things, miniature things, with a cotton swab and god-knows-what-cleaning-agent in a little porcelain cup. His hands are blackened with dirt and his eyes are red form squinting, but he’s got a big grin on his stubbled face and nothing else matters right now.

He mirrors me in many ways, in his love for nice cars and his appreciation of old Star Treks (I can be a geek at times, I know). Until very recently, I had no idea how very much we had in common. It turns out, as I see from his rows upon rows of little plastic houses he is furiously cleaning the years of dust from, that until he was about fourteen years old he had a neatly detailed and beautiful HO scale model railroad (more “empire” than “train set”). He and I spent an hour Saturday un-boxing 2 tubs of his old trains- his locomotives and his boxcars and his houses, shanties, apothecaries and even a little Italian restaurant with a red awning, for which he had printed out a little tiny menu for its plastic patrons!

It has been 15 years since he had even opened the boxes, since he had put any thought at all into what to do with those crates of DC-powered childhood joy. After a flurry of visits to the hobby shop and excited conversations about layouts, track plans, and light-up 4″-tall somethings; we have a plan! I’ve designed his loop-and-a-siding of track, I have pored over size constraints, and I’ve bought him a Ben-Franklin-worth of track and switches and cork to glue it all down…. what a project! My Christmas gift to him is this- the means to once again feel like a child, to renew his love of detail and making something mass-produced and common into something eye catching and so-very-uniqe. I’m almost as excited as he is! Of course, I have been working on my own N scale project quite a bit this week (not to mention the amazing locomotives I picked up Saturday, but that’s another story) and I’ll be poring over a cabinet, gluing and cutting, for a few evenings this well as well! I wouldn’t have it any other way….

Hockey Hockey everywhere, but not a puck to drink….

I’ve got a plan for the night. Step 1) get off work and meet my lovely lady for a ride to San Jose. Step 2) Go to a hockey game. Step 3) Get completely knackered*. Step 4) Smoke a big fat dominican maduro on the way home, and talk with my sweetie about hockey, her little classic car, and our upcoming weekend with the family….  maybe if I’m good she’ll let me buy some Spanish Cedar?

*Knackered- drunk 😉

Humidors! Thinking aloud….

I have been considering building a small custom humidor that would occupy the console compartment of my 1966 Plymouth. I’m quite a fan of smoking a great stogie on long trips, there’s nothing like taking your time smoking a nice Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 or a nice top-shelf churchill on the obligatory weekend cruise. My portable cigar box is a black plastic glove-boxer, which always leaves me feeling like a cheap “Phillies Blunts” smoker. Ick. Nothing classy about black phenyl-type plastic, not even a hint of brass! Yes, dark woods and brass…. thats’ what I need. I do some basic woodcraft when needed, and with Spanish cedar readily available, it seems like a fun project! To properly fit the console I’d need to come up with a design reminiscent of a coffin; there’s some kind of irony in there somewhere….

Of course, this damn car has no less than 5 ashtrays! Dash, console, front passenger armrest and both rear armrests. You would think everyone would have died from lung cancer halfway through the morning commute! And yet, no cupholder? Strange times indeed….

A gift from a Christmas past….

I woke, one Christmas morning, to find something wonderful under the tree….. the mysterious box was wrapped with care, large and flat with some good heft to it. I had absolutely no idea what the wrapping was hiding from the world, but I was determined to find out! I patiently opened other presents as Mom and dad had asked me to, and the socks and sweaters and gift cards rolled pastinto a pile of “I’ll wear/use it later” as I focused on that one. big. box. sitting there in front of me. I was Foutreen years old, and I had been growing up and growing out (fat childhood- TONS of fun! haha) and my obsession with Super Nintendo, I think, left my parents wanting me to put my far-too-developed sense of ‘how things work’ to good use.

As the presents dwindled, my anticipation grew. I had recalled the “Great American Train Store” that we’d visited recently on Downtown Plaza in Sacramento, how I had been absolutely floored by the model railroads contained in that little storefront and how I wanted to know everythig about this hobby, I wanted to put down tracks and paint some mountains and build my own little empire…. well, it seems I got my wish. I tore that damn wrapping off in jittery excitement, and I found this inside-

My first train set!

 

Life-Like Products’ American Workhorse N scale trainset. I was in awe. I hastily opened the package and found the box contained everything! Buildings, trees, fences and telephone poles… track and train and power pack too! I was well on my way to creating an empire in miniature! I opened every box, looked over every little piece… I thought this was the most fascinating thing, that every little detail was there, just like the real thing, but miniaturized! The level of detail floored me. As I opened up the jewel cases containing my new obsession, I found that the locomotive stood out among the other pieces as just about the coolest thing I had ever seen. I had no idea about trains, no clue how they worked or what they really did….. but I knew one thing; “This is beautiful“.

My first locomotive!

I pored over every detail, I played with every little part and piece. Eventually I would take it apart and put it back together (about 25 times!) but today, Christmas, I just wanted to watch it go.

Flash-forward to today; it’s twelve years later, this month. I ventured onto Ebay, and decided to track down a duplicate of my first Iron love, my Northern Pacific GP-18 Locomotive. I tracked down the perfect copy, the perfect engine- it’s been fitted with newer style couplers but that’s just fine by me. Last night I came home from grocery shopping to find a small box in the mailbox, a parcel that could have contained anything…. but I knew what it was. I opened the box, carefully pried-loose the little engine from its plastic padded protection, and I was fourteen years old again. For just a moment, I was a short, tubby antisocial kid with a brand-new love for something small and inanimate. Recalling the times past I had bought action figures and toys that I had once owned twenty years prior, I felt the renewal of my inner child’s spirit, a giddy feeling that recalled imagination and the oblivious joy of simply playing. I smiled.

Good morning!

It’s a beautiful rainy day in San Francisco. The streets feel clean, less visible evidence of our dirty little city lives. I love it.

I suppose the best way to start the day is hot coffee and a fresh baked “something”, but I took 2 Ripped-Fuel caplets (energy, sweet energy!) and a half a protein shake. My mornings are mundane, and the commute is almost always a disappointment. The one perk is that I get to ride the rails, albeit on BART (Bay Area rapid Transit) which is to trains what a Yugo is to cars. Noisy, smelly and always crowded, but it gets the job done (eventually!). Today, I drove in. Not in my own car, no… I had done brake work last night on a friend’s late-model Impala. God what a turd. Plasticville, with a touch of bloat.

I spent my shower time daydreaming, I say good morning to my 2 furry feline friends at the house, and kissed my sweetheart goodbye as I embark on about 8 hours of labor, or as I call it  “getting-paid-to-dick-around-on-the-internet-at-work-between-tasks”. Now don’t think, by any means, that I don’t work I do work! I just happen to be well overqualified for the job so my free time is in no short supply. I do have a boring job, so I’ll leave it at that.

My day started today, as it usually does in December, with swirling thoughts of toys and christmas  and family dinners talking about wish lists and such…. I’ve got a big weekend to look forward to. I’ll be spending some quality time with Todd (brother in law) who wants to rebuild his HO scale trainset for Xmas, I’ll be picking up some amazingly cool new N scale trains (locomotives specifically, just wait!) and of course, I’ll be smoking a mouth-watering-good Victor Sinclair cigar on the drive up to Sacramento in my sweet little vintage Plymouth! Life does NOT get any better. Needless to say, my gal will be with me all the way, and perhaps enjoying a cigar or two of her own (HEY! No dirty jokes there- she has a humidor and loves the stogies!).

As you can see by the title of this blog, I don’t stick to just one hobby, I never have! I’m a young guy with an old soul, a New-York bred, cigar-chomping, cursing & drinking son-of-a-gun. I am also one hell of a nice guy, and I like to make other people happy. I have a beautiful partner-in-crime who happens to share some of my loves, like my adoration of all things antique and vintage. Really, that’s why I’m here, that’s why I feel the need to share my “old man’s hobbies” with the world! Come to think of it, I’d love to retire soon… but at 26 I just don’t think that’s in the cards 🙂

I am sure some of my rambling, ranting, and grunting will be quite readable on occasion and totally useless other times, but just remember…. this is all opinion, conjecture, and all in good fun. Good morning, everyone!