Good morning folks

We have another nice day on tap here in the Delaware Valley. Current temperature is 47 F with a high in the seventies. Clouds are supposed to move in later today and we may have rain. Since I scheduled a practice for softball tomorrow I can almost guarantee rain. We are now under a drought warning here in Pennsylvania since we are several inches under our normal rainfall and several of the rivers are running low. Yesterday they had a big brush fire in a marsh over in South Jersey, so things are pretty dry.

No modeling again last night. I took the kids out for softball and baseball lessons. My son needed a hitting lesson. He got hit on the hand at the end of last session and ever since then his hitting went downhill. By the end of his lesson he was smacking the ball. My daughter got a softball pitching refresher lesson. The instructor was impressed by her and corrected a few minor problems. Next lesson she wants to teach her how to throw a change-up. Tonight is daughter’s flute lesson and my son has baseball practice.

I hope everybody has a good day.

Good morning to the entire crew from the sunny Jersey Highlands. I guess that I am in the same boat as a lot of other forum members--yard work is dominating my time. :crazy: So, there was absolutely no modeling done yesterday. I did begin reading the latest issue of RMC, and there is a few good articles in it once again.

I am not sure it I will have any time to work at the bench again today. I have to get my state tax return done and in the mail. The federal return headed out yesterday.[:-irked]

Well, I think that I will go spread some grass seed and fertilizer. Sounds like fun, right?

Have a great day.

Good morning Mike and crew. We luckily don't have any rail traffic passing through the area, so concerns about those tank cars don't exist around here. I live on a large peninsula and most of our rail traffic is coal going to the Newport News coal pier. We have seen special cars for nuclear products since the local shipyard builds nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

It's another nice spring day here, but we too are way down on rain. It's nice for day to day living, but it's going to create some significant problems for farmers and gardeners.

I got my wood from Northeastern yesterday. It came in a nice box that I can use to store my other siding material. I cut out the end walls (again) yesterday and I'm seriously thinking about doing the cupolas in wood. I don't particularly like the metal cupola wall castings in the kit. We'll see.

I have some errands to run this morning. Have a good day.

George

Thanks for opening the lounge this morning Mike.

Talk about going ballistic: a rocket propelled tank car hurtling overhead; now where'd I put that camera? That's not very good mileage; only a mile on a full tank.

Spent a good part of last nite, uploading progress photos and captions to the Fennimore's thread. Everyone else seems to be long finished with the kit.

What I consider to be ideal weather continues here at the mouth of the Hudson. A little yard work, a walk along the waterfront of a few miles, a bit of mrr-ing, a bit of the forum: that's my time spent...

I've noticed that Leeflan, in southern Cal, has been reporting an awful lot of rain lately. That must be really unusual for that area.

Tom PM, you are undoubtedly the model father for your kids. You spend the time that's necessary with them, not just work all the time and disappear into the train room when you get home. I did something similar, and now have two fine sons in their twenties.

Hope it's a fine day for all of you.

Steve O'

Goooooood Morning, Crew!!

It's another beeeeeoooooteeeful day here along the no-haz-mat rails of the NYNH&H Waterbury Line! 8D Haz-Mat is pretty scary stuff. Not so much on the rails around here, but in the trucks that fly up and down I-95! [:-scared] I do remember a fish truck flipping over in Mlford, CT on I-95 when I lived there some years ago...fish all over the roadway! Talk about stink! [:-sick] Okay...


[:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] SO WHERE'S THE COFFEE????? [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] [:-bigmouth] id="Comic Sans MS">id="size3">id="red">

I placed a Micro-Mark order and a Valley Model Trains order for the JL Innovative telegraph station and some scale furniture, too. I have to tread lightly with the money...my [:-love]'s birthday and our wedding anniversary are coming up both in this month and she'll be waiting with her arms crossed [:-angel] waiting to see what offerings I come home with. I'm redesigning my diorama so that it's visible from both sides since these models have good details all the way around. Okay, I have to get going...proposal presentation today and I need to make sure everything is ready. I'll check in when I get to The Office. See ya!
Russ

Now what could be a better gift than the telegraph office placed in a small diorama?

Good morning to all. Thanks for opening this morning Mike.

Tom, I agree with Steve O. about all the time you spend with your kids.

I think its great and will make a difference in their adult lives and how they spend time with their own children. I admire you for still having time left over to model. (And I always enjoy hearing your weather forecast...now I know to expect rain later today)

Luckily, I don't recall too many hazmat accidents. Two that come to mind was from a tanker that exploded on the Schuylkill Expwy under 30th Street in Philadelphia in the early 80's I believe, and another freight train accident in the tunnel next to the Expwy near Belmont Ave in the 70's. Both caused the highway's to be shut down for an extended period of time.

I have a 4-day weekend coming up...I hope to progress more on my layout.

Steve O, I'm going to check your Fennimore thread out...I finished mine a ways back and really enjoyed it.

Have a great Spring Day everyone!

Mike, I checked out your train room pics. Looking good!

Thanks Bruce! Hopefully I can keep the momentum going!

Good morning, guys. We've got a sunny day on tap here in the Heartland. And it's another day of errand running for me - whether I want it to be one or not.

Not much doing here on the modeling front lately. I've had a lot of non-hobby related things going on and haven't had much time for model railroading the past few days.

Mike, a long time ago in another life, I worked with high explosives (bombs, rockets, demolition, etc), so your story about the tankcar didn't come as a big surprise. From your description, I'm guessing the tankcar was punctured just enough that the hole acted as a nozzle for the propellant fuel rather than the fuel simply exploding and sending the car flying off into the air. At the same time, however, I'm surprised that the burning fuel didn't enlarge the hole to the point that the entire car eventually became engulfed in flames and spilling fuel. [:-hot] That must have been a sight! Talk about unguided rocket! [:-bigeyes2]

Well, I've got lots of "stuff" on my agenda, so I'd better get to it. Have a good day, everyone.

Morning, All,

Boy, the sight of that tank car musta been sumpin.

Well, I managed to get in some work on the layout this morning. I finished installing the highway signs in the roadside scene and re-covered a small section of scenery I wasn't happy with.

Actually, Steve, we're behind on our annual rainfall totals. But it's really been crazy. :crazy: Yesterday, was dark and gloomy with a steady rain through the early afternoon. Today, there's not a cloud in the sky; tomorrow it's supposed to hit 80* in our area; but more rain on Friday. Go figure.
Catch y'all later.

Glad to hear that many of the boys don't live near the RR lines which carry this stuff.

Along the Toronto-Montreal corridor, you'll see up to 90 trains a day. A 1992 study to determine if hotboxes should be placed closer together as a preventative measure came to the conclusion that should a roller bearing go...chances are that it'll reach "burn-off" within two miles.

In fact, the train I alluded to was in the process of braking to a "safe stop" due to the detection of the hotbox from a detector. It approached a siding and was to have the crew of another train in the siding perform a "visual". Unfortunately, before reaching the other train, the suspect car (a boxcar full of lentils-go figure) left the tracks and pulled along with it several tankcars of propane...and you know what happened next.

A BLEVE occurred...a "Boiling Liquid Evaporating Vapour Explosion"...yes, a firefighter's worst nightmare.

So...hopefully, no one had lentils for breakfast...as the gas they produce can be just as bad!

Hey - now there's a term I haven't heard in awhile.

Back in a former lifetime I trained for a week at Texas A&M on HazMats. Since we were a bunch of "yanks" in a strange land things were pretty interesting.

Favorite expressions:

"Yup, you roll on up to one of them an' you'll be as nervous as a longtailed cat in a room full o' rockers"

"Tetra-ethyl-awful"

And one really unusual experiment was when the instructor took a hose from a cylinder of anhydrous ammonia, stuck the end of the hose into a 55 gallon drum of water and opened up the valve on the cylinder of anhydrous. You heard the sound of the high pressure gas screaming out of the cylinder but no bubbles came from the end of the hose that was dangling under water.

BTW, my mother-in-law (who continues to cook turkey for three hours after the pop-up timer pops up) knows how to make anhydrous turkey.

-slim

Thanks guys for the support. I guess I am my mother’s child as I look back she spent a great deal of time shuttling me from place to place. My father died when I was 10 and when I was 13 my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Some how she always seemed to make into all the events I was involved until my senior year in high school. She had to give up driving at that point and I did not have a car at that time. She was a strong believer in the old saying that idle hands make for mischief. She didn’t let me stay idle and kept me busy and out of trouble. My wife grew up the same way. So whether they like it or not our kids will be busy.

Modeling does come after the kids and family. I enjoy doing things with them and hopefully in the long run they are learning something. This time of year is just crazy. We have three birthdays in four weeks and Easter. It will be that way until we get baseball/softball schedules in hand. Once we have them we can plan things around them.

I remember that wreck. It was in 1983 or 84. I missed seeing it happen by about five minutes. I was attending Temple at the time and working in Berwyn after classes. For some reason I was late leaving Temple that day and did not get to the interchange as normal. When I was a few blocks away I saw a huge bloom of black smoke rising from the expressway. When I got to the interchange you could see the fire from the accident. The expressway runs under 30th Street at that point in a double decked situation. I can vividly remember seeing the whole lower section being filled with flames and smoke. If memory serves me right three or four people were killed.