Category: Random

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Happy New Year, everyone!

Well, that’s another one behind us all. 

In 2023, the State Belt hosted 7 sessions for people who had never operated here before, and (at least) 5 more for returning guests. I’m pretty happy with that, especially since it had basically been shut down since the autumn of 2017.

Dave Vos & Lou Vidal
Mike Jordan & Greg Hippen
Bill Jolitz & Matt Malwitz
Dave Vos & Joe Binish
Pete Vos

Finally feeling a bit more confident in traveling these days, I got the chance to bang around a few PFE reefers on various layouts during BayRails in March:

Seth Neumann’s UP Oakland Sub
John Zach’s Sierra
Jack Burgess’ Yosemite Valley
Dave Loveless’s CP Coast Division Monterey Branch

and then moved a few more cars in Omaha in October:

Tim Coyle’s CGW Crimea Division
Bob Roegge’s Geneseo Railway
Dave Husman’s Wilmington & Northern

I’ve been learning a lot of things lately, including sign making with CNC routers, creating buildings with a laser cutter, and carving up some locomotive frames with a real mill. There will be details on those in the coming months, as the progress gets further along and there are some “after” pictures.

I hope your 2024 is your best year yet!

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The railroad work week has started

Every year I take the week between Christmas & New Year’s off from work[1], but I stay at home and usually work on my railroad.

This year I am happily continuing this tradition.

Yesterday I got rid of an old couch (one that’s been with me for over 35 years – probably 15 different dwellings in 3 states).  It’s been in my basement for many years now, and the space it takes up has too rarely been used for sitting and more likely used to pile stuff.   I had to remove the handrails to the stairwell and move a bookshelf in order to fit the sofa up the stair well.  It was a tight squeeze, but Max and I got it up the stairs and out into the garage.

I then put a bunch of other things away, making room to move things around now that the 8 foot long couch was gone.   It’s amazing how much more space I have in my basement now.

So yesterday was cleaning.

Today was benchwork, about which more will be posted soon.

I hope to actually have some track laid and operating before the end of the year.

 

 

Note 1: This stems from one year, one of my first in the full time working world, where my boss did not allow  me to take my planned vacation because the release wasn’t done on time, even though the person who didn’t get their stuff done did go on vacation.  So I (the release engineer) made the release on December 25th, which was encoded in the version number that every customer saw for  the next several months (until the next quarterly release).  Boss took no small amount of crap from customers who wanted to know why the company forced someone to work on Christmas.   The following Christmas my vacation request was granted, and thus the tradition was born.