Good morning folks,

Guess what? It is raining again here in the Delaware Valley today. It is supposed to rain for the next seven days. There was a report on the news about some guy buying up all the lumber at Home Depot, something about building an ark. I guess my daughter’s softball game will be rained out.

We took the cover of the pool yesterday. We have one those mysteries to figure out. How did the bottom of the pool get filled up with leaves if the cover was placed on before the leaves started falling off the trees? With all the rain we are excepting I may not have to add too much water to the pool to bring the water level up to where it should be.

I finished painting the trucks and wheels for the Seaboard covered hopper. I am still working on painting the wheels of the CRP hopper, and the CNJ boxcar.

My layout has not progressed to the point where I am doing any operations. I do plan to use some kind of car card and waybill system when I get to that point. I have not thought about running on clock.

I hope everybody has a good day.

Morning everyone! It's another rainy day in NYC. My feet are beginning to grow webs, but hey, at least it ain't snow! Had enough of THAT last winter to last me a few years, I can tell you!

No railroading done since the weekend. When I get home from work I'm pretty well beat, doing fine work doesn't work to well when my eyes are worn out. Maybe this (rainy) weekend I'll get some time to work on my coal silos.

No layout yet, so no need for a clock. Once I have a layout I'll experiment to see if a clock would add interest to my operations. I've heard of people getting a cheap battery-powered clock, taking off the hour hand, and having each minute represent 12 minutes so each "number" on the clock face is an hour, making a 12:1 fast clock and if the minute hand is pointing at one tick after four it's 4:12. 12:1 might be a little fast, especially for switching moves. Still, shouldn't be too hard to print up a new face for the clock in whatever "Scale" you want, and for my purposes on a small layout one clock would do fine.

Anyway, have a good one folks!

Good morning, everyone. You too, Rusty.

Glad to see we have a daily topic again. :up: I'm too dense to ever think of one myself. :crazy:

Well, the local weather weenies were all in a dither last night about "record low temperaures" for this morning. Supposed to drop to around 38-39 degrees (F for the Canadians in the crowd. ). So I got up this morning and put on a heavy sweatshirt before heading out with the dog. It's a balmy 54! grrrrrrr on the local weather weenies! [:-censored][!]

I have never really gotten into actual operations on any of my layouts in the past. I've read about car card systems, and tab systems, and fast clocks, and so forth, but none of it actually interested me. I'd make up trains and just run them around the layout or do some switching at an industry for a few minutes. Nothing formal or organized. The way my current layout is evolving, I imagine it will be pretty much the same, although it will be large enough this time that I could implement a fast clock and operating scheme if I wanted to. But I probably won't. [8)]

Enough of me. Have a good day, everyone. You too, Rusty.

While I have considered using a clock, I am still struggling to get the hitches worked out of my card card system. I have several sidings that are short or hard to switch from different directions. It is turning out to be very difficult to print up a set of cards that don't at some point have more cars arriving at a siding than it will hold. I tried to print up a list of setouts and pickups and look at it before printing my carcards but I way overloaded the system. Should have started with a minimum amount of traffic and then gradually increased the number of cars switched. At this point my major problem is having enough interested operators to be able to have a real session. A clock would not help at all until I get some operators that would watch it! The operating system has added years of real enjoyment to this layout in spite of the pitfalls.

Good morning all

Well interesting thing happened a few hours ago. I was reading Rusty's Good Morning post when my monitor decided to bite the dust. :erm:

No amount of gentle prodding including a few swift kicks could bring it back to life.[:-censored]

So it was off to Office Depot to buy another monitor and I can now see what Rusty was saying earlier this morning. :up:

Also we are expected to get rain for the next 7 days. :down:

Since no layout, no clock or system as of yet. We shall see what the future will bring.[:P]

Have a great day everyone.

My railroad is an anachronism, that means it exists outside of time. There are no timepieces in my layout room except the watch I wear on my wrist.