well the video did not embed so let me try this below

Rob in Texas

Thought it might be good to combine these items.

Another anecdote

Another from a different thread to keep things on the same page

Back from tues day night at the club house

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Thanks for the laugh...

Wed, 2014-07-23 09:15 — RSeiler

That is a hilarious story, Rob. I think we all know that guy.  

Randy

B&O/Chessie and Penn Central, West of Cincinnati 1975 

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Vicarious Living Thu,

Vicarious Living

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Ok, I think I have things linked up sort of for now.

Saturday is Train Day for our club and the day that nearly everyone is there. LeRoy will be there as well and he is the hands on guy mentioned above. We have a wet paint sign on the wall and we are going to leave it there till LeRoy tells us it is dry. We are not expecting it to take very long.

We have a few more projects to get done that involve building in the scale of the prototype for me and my fellow building  facilities team member. I am going to try and get a picture when LeRoy begins checking to see if the paint is dry, maybe a short movie. At this point I am thinking it might look like he is doing push ups from the wall when he starts to check it.

We have our first open house in the early fall and then several more through January. Our club is on the layout tour during the Fort Worth train show and the Plano train show. We hope to have lots of work done by then but it seems that the construction team is under staffed.

During one of our latest events involving painting one of the new members jumped in to help out and later confessed we shamed him into the job. That was news to me. His comment was you and Paul are in here all the time doing all this work and I was embarrassed not to be helping. I thought this was rather funny as all we have been doing was working on what needed done and just doing it. I posted a job board and it has jobs that anyone can tackle that has the ability to do them.

I'll let you guys know what goes on after I return to the computer Saturday night.

Rob in Texas.

Evidently I was able to add the signature line

I was able to add the signature line after all and I must have remembered my password on one of the attempts to do this. Now I just need to know which one it was.

Saturday Update the wet paint episode

The day the rest of us were waiting for, Saturday, and most of the guys were at the club house. There were still projects to do in the 12 inch to the foot scale. We were getting ready for the Air Conditioner in the work room. It will be purchased next week.

Present for todays session were Rob and Paul who were as usual working on our building and it's infrastructure. 2 Bobs, Ron, Tom, George and Leroy. Tom Arrived Late so missed some of the early morning fun. Ron was working on one of his trolleys and testing out an undecorated locomotive he had just purchased over the internet. He was in and out of the work room frequently while this was taking place.

One of the Bobs was reading a history book at one of the work tables and the other was getting an ABA set of SP F-7s ready to run a while on the layout. He wanted to see how his close coupling kit had worked as well as his programing mods. He was also in and out of the work room. George arrived and Leroy rolled in as well. While working we also began discussing the latest project and what would happen. After hearing all the details Le Roy turned and saw the wet paint sign on the wall behind him. One Thousand One, One Thousand Two, "Paints Dry" and it was followed by subdued laughter. Two seconds after seeing the sign came the laying on of hands by Leroy.

We explained about our joke and Leroy enjoyed it as much as the rest of us. Later while helping Paul and myself with different things we were working on Leroy acquired a shovel to lean on and was photographed for the next news letter in the classic state road pose. We were able to get lots of prep work done to the window we will be installing an AC unit in real soon we will purchase the new unit next week. We got a call in for our warranty repair of our 18 month old ac unit in the main layout room and it should be repaired next week as well. Right now it is spewing hot air like a politician in an election year.

I also took this time to let everyone know they are being read about on a message board and that I had started a blog about the club and our adventures. George stated that he thought Paul and I were in a carpenters club as we were always working on something, or building something. This morning a bank of over flowing storage shelves were unloaded moved, secured to the wall in a new location and then reloaded. We then began the task of getting the WWII era window to open and after freeing it and doing some paint scraping we were ready to close it up again.

While this was going on we had a group of visitors stop in so several members went out front to see what was ready to run on the layout. A couple of trains were soon polishing the rails and Leroy was conducting a tour for several people that heard about the trains. Now as much as we tease Leroy he is probably one of the absolute best people you will ever see conduct a tour of a large layout. He has never met a stranger and in about 30 seconds has everyone he meets feel like they are family. The folks were well entertained on the tour of the layout.

After what seemed like a very short time we had to head off to lunch at one of the local restaurants. While there Leroy wanted to know if the blog had the story about his adventure with Bob Teeters lunch. He then proceeded to regale us with the story even though all but 3 of us were there for it. The short version is we all ordered lunch and one of the entrees came with bread the rest of them did not. The beverages arrived as did Bob's little loaf of bread. Leroy snatched it up and began carving the bread with the supplied knife and announced who wants bread. He did so in a loud enough voice that I think some folks 2 tables over were ready to ask for some with butter. I then advised him that Bob Teeter likely wanted that bread as he paid for it with his meal and none of the rest of us had it supplied with what we ordered. Leroy says he has never grabbed the bread at a restaurant again.

After informing the guys about the blog and the way to read it I suspect they will begin showing up to see what misadventures that involve them get posted to the world wide web.

Our long distance member

Two of our members made an interesting comment about why they joined our club. They commented that generally there is at least one (unprintable) in the club and we don't have one. Some stories were related about past experiences and the inevitable troublesome member or members that want to run the show and make life miserable for all the rest of the members. Both of these guys said you guys all get along and are fun to be around.

The two guys above both travel more than 50 miles to get to our club. One of them lives in Washington state and comes to Texas for our winters but leaves in the summer before the sidewalks begin to soften. Tom from Washington sent an e-mail with some pictures of his home layout I'll include it below.

Enjoyed your blog, luckily you forgot me.. Here are some pics of the Gallup New Mexico southern terminal on my Colorado South western Railway. Thought you might find them of use for something, maybe a circular file. Hope all is well, see you in about two months Guess I need a shiny head billboard. Tom.

As can be seen from the photo above my long coal trains have earned me some notoriety as a business bearing my name was opened in Washington state on Tom's layout. I will do my best to live up to this honor, thanks Tom M.

Now if you have followed the story of the Erwin screws recounted earlier in the blog you will see that a distributorship has been granted for this fine product in the state of Washington. When the joke was actually played many of us were on the roof of the club house fixing a couple of large holes in the roof generated by the falling of a very large tree limb from the house behind our club house. After one of our members became trapped on the roof for a while when a ladder fell we have since instituted a more rigorous policy that requires a ground man be present and ladders be secured so they will not fall. Tom was the ground man on that day.

He obviously enjoyed the Erwin Screws story as he was laughing uncontrollably when it was sprung, I suspect he had a good view of Mr. Erwin at just the right time.

I will try and keep posting things as the developments take place and add some photos of progress on things as well as the humorous events that happen rather frequently. In addition to the cut ups that happen we also have some fine modelers, and I might start posting some examples of that as well.

I would like to see some comments on things you would like to see on the blog as well as that could give me some idea of the direction you would like to see things go. All comments will be appreciated.

Hi Rob I get this error

Hi Rob

I get this error when I try too open the images in another tab.

    must authenticate

Alex

I'm not sure which images you mean, if it is the 2 photos listed directly above your post I saw there was an issue when I went back to look at them myself and then it went away when I was getting ready to repost them. I'm not sure what was going on with that. Maybe one of the mods can fix it or tell me what to do to fix it. The photos were attached to an e-mail Tom in Washington State.

Are they ok now? Time is 813 pm Central daylight savings time. After rereading your post I guess you can see the images but not open them up and enlarge them. It maybe because I shrunk them so they would fit on the page with out needing the scroll bar to see them. Let me know what for sure is going on and I'll try to find someone that knows what I did wrong. After all I am electronically declined you know, compared to most of the folks on here.

On a second humorous note I'll need to tell Erwin that folks have heard about him in Australia now.

It is the images I'm trying

It is the images I'm trying to see above.

They do not show up so I try to open the image in a new tab on Chrome & that's when I see the error.

It's 1125 am Eastern Standard Time (Queensland, Oz)

Alex I just looked and they

Alex I just looked and they are gone again from my post so it must be something to do with them being emailed to me and my attempting to copy and paste the images. I will see if I can save them somewhere and then post them so you can see them. I'll ask someone what I am doing wrong and fix it.

Alex I have just figured it out

As long as my e mail was open the pics were visible when I closed it they were gone.

Alex

I will see if I can do a better job on them tomorrow and make them friendly to the site. I turned one into a PDF but it is really larger than I thought it should be. I'll get some help with this and should be able to have it working later. I think I will be learning more than I thought since undertaking this but it does seem to be rather entertaining work.

It sounds like you were

It sounds like you were referencing an incorrect URL (or maybe an email address).

I can see the last pic you posted OK.

Alex

I took one of the pics and made it a PDF but I need to size it properly. I would like to have the photos post in their entirety. I'll try and get all of those things resolved and then post the photos. After all Tuesday night is train club night. I need to start early the ac repair folks will be at the club at 1200 pm and I need to meet them so we can get the ac unit repaired in the main room.

Tuesday night club night

The ac guy came in today and after measuring some temperatures said the thing is working fine. Said we needed twice as much BTU as we had. I explained to him that what we had cooled it fine for more than a year particularly last year when we had more than 60 days of over 100 degrees and this year we may have had one. He also said some things that were in disagreement with the last guy I had do any AC work for me. Difference the units the other guy works on cool like new the one this guy looked at don't.  But he is the warranty guy for the ac company in the area.

Time to call the other guy.

Tuesday Night at the club.

Tuesday Night at the club. The night time session had 4 of us present, Bob T., Tom B. Rob and Paul. More work on the AC location in preparation for the install and build in of the unit. We fought with the window and were able to raise it some more. We then cut and fit several supports to hold the bottom of the AC unit into the window. Then it was time to put things away and secure the building. New cover plates were also acquired for some unused electrical switches. It was discovered that the switches had no power to them so they were removed and the wires were then properly terminated inside the boxes and blank covers installed over them. This replaced some old broken switch plates that were an eyesore and a potential problem if that particular circuit every did have power supplied to it.

The blog was discussed. We laughed at how pleased Mr. Erwin will be when he finds that he has gotten world wide notoriety for his hardware. Tom M. from Washington informed me via e-mail that he has acquired a pair of B&O 2-8-8-4s and what a fine locomotive it is. He said he initially purchased one and after operating it decided that two would be better since it was such a fine locomotive. He also stated that he has installed a sound unit in one and it sounds fantastic.

Hopefully when he returns this fall he will bring a few boxes of equipment with him so he can operate his equipment on the club layout. It will also give him a chance to show off some of his models.

Tom B. commented that we have really been getting a lot done with regard to repairs of the facilities and improvements but we have many more to go. With all the work on the facilities a lot of work on the layout has seemed to have stopped with the exception of the work on the largest City and some station improvements at one of the secondary towns. I'll try and get some photos posted later on.

This Saturday will be our monthly business meeting. In last months meeting we decided that Leroy should stop smoking for his own good. We have acquired a bunch of no smoking signs to put up in several locations more practical jokes on our part, one of which will get hung inside Leroy's vehicle when he is not looking.

Referring to everyone by their first names and last initials is at the request of the members who are afraid of having their identity stolen. I did not bother to tell them I checked and no one wants to be them but hey some folks are more concerned over it than others.

The newest club news letter should be on the website soon for anyone that wants to read it as they are also forever free and many back issues are readily accessible. We have gotten a bunch done but still have a lot to do. We will be having several open houses this fall for things like the Cotton Belt Symposium or what ever they call their annual meeting, I'll clarify later. It appears we are on their list of places to visit and at least one of our members has some SP equipment and may have some Cotton Belt stuff as well. We also are open during our small towns annual event and receive quite a few visitors for that. Toss in the open houses we need to handle for the train show in Fort Worth and Plano and we have much to get done by September.

I like the Hopper story...

While watching the video and an idea came to me on how to get back at some of those guys in the club.  I haven't looked to see what your track plan is, but if you could have enough cars to make a loop and powered two of Hoppers you would an endless parade of Hoppers going round and round and hogging the mainline..  Nice scenery!

When does Rob & Son(s) Hopper and Welding Repairs get established?

Den

Glad you liked it Den

Glad you liked the video, my first one to put on the web. In that video 160 coal cars travel around the layout, I have run longer trains!  A visit to the club web site will let you look at a mostly accurate track plan on your screen. Our layout. HO scale, is filling a room about 25 feet wide by about 52 feet long. I would likely need about 600 to 800 hoppers to do the nose to tail thing and that is guessing, I might need more. The video takes I think 4 min and some change to watch, that is the second video I originally had it running slower and it took nearly eight min to get through.

I recently noticed that the Virginian began running 200 car coal trains with three diesels for power in 1959 before the merger, I now have a new bench mark for long coal trains to accomplish. Yes, I do have enough coal cars to do that but some of them were built by other folks and will need some work before they can be used in loooong trains. I am also really hoping for some time to begin working on those battleship gons I have because I would love to see them in a train.

In reality all of our kidding around is in fun and when the joke is on me I enjoy it as much as everyone else. The coal company is on one of our members home layouts as well as Erwin hardware and this is the first I have seen of them, having never made the 2500 mile trip to see Tom M's layout. One of our members has already commented about trying to get around on the trolley line when my coal train is running on the layout, he says that a crossing can only be blocked for ten minutes! At slow speed it never takes me more than eight!

One of the things I have done in the past was hand out awards in the form of certificates to most of the guys in the club for their contributions. Since I came up with the awards they could not decline refuse or anything else they got stuck with them. I'll print a short excerpt from one of our news letters below.

Rob D announced that he had noticed members doing things for which there seems to be little or no recognition. Therefore, he has developed an award system to recognize those members. The MOM award went to Ron M. Technical Advisor award went to Bob T. The Spirit of Model Railroading went to LeRoy H. Scribe of the Year went to Tom B and Bob E for their work on the minutes and the newsletter. Thank you, Mr. D. Unfortunately, some of the awardees were missing from the meeting so the mandatory “grip and grin” photo could not be taken. Look for it next month.

 

I’m famous! – LeRoy H proudly displays his Spirit of Model Railroading award from Rob D on the occasion of his first return to the Junction January 25. LeRoy broke his hip in a home accident just after Christmas and has been pretty immobile since. We hope that his visit is the first of more or less regular attendance.

 

The infamous break – Bob E dreamily contemplates the stump of pipe that caused the flood. Unfortunately, since the shutoff valve was part of the break, the water could not be turned off. The break occurred on a branch, so the line to our part of the building did not break and a fix should be relatively simple. The break left the Junction without water for the restroom for the open house. But no visitor needed relief while visiting, much to the relief of the hosting club members.

Above is another of the award recipients and the member that has the famous hardware items named after him. I know I will here about this one. Bob is our club secretary and one of his most note worthy achievements was repainting our clubs back drop. He spent a great deal of time doing this and after a few months was actually able to stand in a more or less vertical position.

I have not given up on the rest of the pictures to post and will begin fooling with it soon so there should be some things on here that have more entertainment value to them. I'll post again soon.

ALEX photos from Tom M.

Tom M. is our club member that lives in Washington State and is about 2500 miles away from our club house. None of us have seen his layout. These are the first photos we have seen.

Not exactly a layout tour but some photos of a layout none the less. I hope these are available for all to see and that you folks can enjoy the new names as much as the rest of us. I know these will be the only buildings that Leroy can't grab for a better look. I'll post again later and hopefully some 1/87 construction will be taking place and be the subject of some photos on one of the club layouts.

An overall from one of our club newsletters

"Our track work is really pretty good. Rob’s mighty 100 car train has made numerous tours of the entire layout without complications – except that it is so long it can’t be stored anywhere without blocking a main line. Just to see what might happen, Rob and Paul added a couple more cars – 22 in all. Everything worked. The train could even be backed up around the layout without derailing. That says something, not only about the track, but also the club weight, coupler, and wheel requirements. The whole train was pulled by just two Atlas FM Trainmaster locomotives. Rob and president Paul used this enormous train with as many track cleaning cars as they could find to clean the main yard tracks and succeeded – the whole yard now runs pretty reliably." quotes from Tom B with correction by Rob D.

Caboose is visible at about my shirt collar, Locomotives are just to the right of the city buildings on the right side of the Peninsula. When starting this train there is about 12 inches of slack that comes out of the couplers before the caboose moves, and when going down hill this slack begins running in which requires some care with the throttle. The different colors in the backdrop are due to it being repainted by Bob E. Lots of work is taking place on the layout at various locations. Just for the record the track work was tested by running a 90 car train backwards at full speed to make sure there were no issues. For reliable operation backwards one needs to get the cars over the NMRA standards with regard to weight.

Non members may visit our club site and access all newsletters photos and videos that have been posted for several years by hitting the link to ETMRC you are all welcome. Also anyone else that has a story about their membership in a club past or present is free to post on here as well. It will only add to the adventure.

Sorry I am taking up so much of the picture, I am also above the NMRA standard for weight by about 2 spins.

I live about 16000 K from

I live about 16000 K from your club so these pics are just fine.

Thanks for posting.

Now after much confusion

I have come to the conclusion I need to save the photos to a folder in my desk top so they will show up in my posts. It seems that when I post from some other place they go hide and are not able to be found by readers. This will be both a test and a chance to show one of the other layouts we have at our club. The Roy King Trolley layout. When Mr. King passed away his layout was donated to our club. The layout as are many was built with out plans for movement. Just try and imagine quick disconnects on the overhead wire. The layout was cut up and transported and then reassembled. Overhead wire, track work and lots of other things were worked on. Many still are. The layout is now equipped with a CVP products DCC system that works through the over head wire! The photos below were taken by Tom B. and used with permission. 

As can be seen there is still work to be done.  This entire layout will be moved away from the wall for a short time. A masonite back drop will be installed and painted by our resident painter Bob E. I am not sure he knows this yet. After some scraping and painting the layout and it's new backdrop will go back next to the wall in very nearly the same location as it was with one exception. The floor and wall in our building move a bit differently than each other. With that in mind it is not a good idea to have things mounted to both the floor and the wall. When the layout is repositioned it will no longer be attached to both.

The building is continuing to be improved. The new AC unit is installed and the climate is again very tolerable with two units in operation although we still need to have the main unit recharged as it is not cooling the way it was. Realistically there is still a good months work maybe two on the inside of the layout room to get the interior finished off. On the bright side it is likely we will have it done for at least the next ten years once we have it completed. Bob A. and Leroy, George, Tom B. and Bob E. have all been involved in replacing some bad sections of the floor in the main layout room it amounts to about 64 square feet in one of the main walk ways. This will be a tremendous plus and it is nearly finished.

In hind sight I would recommend finishing your layout room to the standards you would like before putting in the layout. This includes heating and cooling as well as plumbing and electrical. Adding circuits and the required conduit as well as doing any other tear out and repair work is very much more difficult after a layout is filling the space.

During the fall we will begin replacing the outer window coverings and adding some transom type windows to our structure. We will also be taking the time to caulk and insulate so as to reduce the burden on our climate control systems. I am beginning to think George was right, Paul and I are in a Carpenters club and not a model railroad club. On the bright side when we are done we will be done for quite a while and we will then get to spend our time in the miniature world.

I suggested that one of our members become a diplomat with the city for our club and see if he can not get some additional space for us from the city. Tom B. is going to meet with some people and see if he can make it happen in a fashion that is agreeable to us and the city. If it does happen we will acquire a good sized area for storage and some additional restroom facilities. The bad side is it means more work for me and Paul. Maybe we will be able to get some additional help and things will get done at the high speed pace we are experiencing now. TTFN