Joe got the July magazine out the door today.

Les Halmos also flew out from Quebec to make the trip to the national convention (X2011W) in Sacramento.

To celebrate we had an op session. Here's proof -- these guys DO run trains!

Les (in rear) is the engineer of the Oakhill turn, Jerry is conducting (and guiding a sleep deprived Les around the switching dance in Oakhill)

A gentle reminder...

There has been a discussion of a certain online-vendor where the vendor appears to have engaged in inappropriate business practices.

What are appropriate comments for such a discussion?

To borrow a line from Sgt. Joe Friday from the Dragnet TV show of the '50s and '60s, "Just the FACTS, maam"...

If you're the initial poster, then posting 

Finally, after a 6 month moratorium on operations while I was shooting video, making scenery, shooting more video, making more scenery, shooting more video, etc. ...  for HOT Trains volume 1, the Bear Creek and South Jackson management decided it was time to run trains again. Well the guys in the video credits were complaining the yard was a mess and that none of the paperwork was with the freight cars it should've been and they were right.

I just finished putting together a Tichy water column. I've never done a water column before and the directions are best described as 'sketchy', but after studying them for a while and making a trip to the LHS for a #80 drill bit it went together without too much difficulty. I tried mixing India ink and alchol, Polyscale roof brown, Polyscale boxcar red, and a Floquil rust pen to wether the concrete pad. I also used some acryllic gloss medium on the pad in an attempt to simulate water (but it's pretty hard to see that effect)

Anyway, here is the result

The 32nd Ave. shops recently completed the new, experimental paint jobs on BC&SJ #74 and #75 (Kato RS-2s). Railroad management seemed delighted. Give Joe Brugger (32nd Ave Shops head honcho) an Atta Boy!

Cheers,

Charlie

I posted a few photos of my Aug 29 op session on my web site. If you like pix of grown men playing with trains they might be interesting to you.

Charlie

I finally got arond to getting the Hartford pictures out of the flash cards from my camera. Here's a shot of da Boss guy hard at work in the MRH booth on Thursday (after setup but before the ravening hordes of Friday arrived).

Cheers,

Charlie

Lighting can really make or break a photo no matter what the subject. Model railroads are especially subject to lighting.

In this picture I used a single 90W halogen flood lamp set about 20' back from the scene as a late afternoon sun with a single 3200K photo flood bouncing off the ceiling for sky-bowl lighting. I manually set the camera's white balance to 2800K (it's nice to have a camera where you can specify white balance that way).

Cheers,

I had an op session Saturday the 28th. Everyone seemed to have a good time and got out to their cars safely afterwards. Today I was looking out the window and saw a kitty in the backyard. Perhaps a good thing this character wasn't prowling around on Saturday! Maybe he was the new negotiator for the union and wanted to add a couple of claws to the contract?

Cheers,

Charlie

I was digging around and found this photo of the first Bear Creek & South Jackson layout. This shot from sometime in 1999 shows downtown in South Jackson, the depot (perched above the alternate lap's tunnel - must've made for some interesting subterrainean sensations when a train was running below!) and a bit of the control panel. The two throttles perched atop the control panel give evidence of a shift from cab-control to Digitrax DCC (I just replaced one of the two regular cabs with the Digitrax command station/booster).