Brooklyn Army Terminal...

Wh00p Dini in my ore yard dominatin'

So recently I got (3) 933-3045 Walthers HO Vulcan Manufacturing kits under $30 bucks....and just in time because it seems they have retired them yet again! I bought these because I was at a train show and the opportunity seemed to good to pass up. I knew I could do something with them.

..and that something is make a 28" long blowing engine house type building to accompany the other behemoths. I always liked the two "tandem in line" design of these structures at Gary and may want to incorporate it into my layout.

But now the fun stuff, how do I get HO to N. This is what popped into my head.

1. Chop off the entire first floor. The second story end wall door is the same exact width as the Walthers N scale Northern Power and Light train doors.
2. Chuck the kit provided windows. The left over arched N scale windows I have from the Northern Power and Light kits come in 2 sizes. Standard side size and the larger ones at the ends. The mullions for the larger ones line up exactly to the larger end windows in the HO Vulcan kit and the side ones same deal. This adds mulls and scale details. So rather than this being a "2 story" looking building it is a large "one story" high type. The end result are windows on a similar scale to the Walthers N Dayton Machine Company structure.

3. Maybe cut a little brick off the top bumped out course to scale it down a little.

4. Roof built as is. The clerestory is of a similar scale to my 4' long Machine Shop structure.

5. Add 1/4" foundation with N scale personel doors.

Will it work?


Image from http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/layout.php

Who knows! All I know is in moving some model modules into two rooms to condense the model to only be in those 2 rooms I somehow gained 36" x 12" of table top to build something!

I've finally started getting serious about disposing the many years of accumulated crap that's been clogging the basement. Two full truckloads of mostly old electronic gear and computers, an old dryer, TV sets, old cabinets, blown speakers, monitors and household nonsense got taken for a one-way ride. I had several televisions, all with minor trouble that I had hoped to make use of, either repaired and put to use, or used for parts. Before I hauled a lot of these things off, I stripped them of minor bits like speakers, line cords and hardware. One set, needing only a flyback transformer, had a similar chassis to another set (a Sony) that Mom had in her bedroom. Figuring that I would not really need anything from this set to support the one in use, I pulled the speaker out and recycled the rest. Saturday afternoon I dumped all the cruft at the Howard County landfill/recycling center. They have a very well run facility there, with areas for every imaginable recyclable item, and several dumpsters for those things that cannot be recycled or otherwise removed from the waste stream. It takes less than ten minutes to place things in their respective areas and scoot on out of there. And the basement is starting to open up again. That's a much awaited good thing.

That evening, the Sony set with the chassis similar to the discarded set decided to give up the ghost. Hell, that did not take even a day to happen. All those free parts? Gone. Oh well, now there is one more television that will most likely make the trip. A shame, really, because that set kept Mom company for about 24 years. I guess it's just another small part connecting me to the past that has vanished in recent years.

This coming weekend is our final camping trip to Hillside for the year. We usually try to make the last one a big group affair, inviting several friends to stay with us to make the last one the best. But, as has been increasingly the case, trying to get people to commit to the weekend is damn near impossible.I did find out that one buddy (you know who you are) and his partner are unable to make it due to him being stuck on call that weekend. The rest have yet to respond, and we have to make plans for food and space. It's frustrating. We've been hesitant to plan any sort of get-togethers of any kind because what begins as enthusiasm for throwing whatever bash at the start becomes disinterest, avoidance and last-minute cancellations at the approach of the event. We and up being stuck with a lot of expensive food and other wasted items. I would say this is a big problem in the gay community with the so-called legendary fear of commitment, but it happens to everyone at one point or another. Unless it's some sort of A-list who's who gathering of see-and-be-seens or the weekly bridge club that never misses out, it's never a sure thing. And, sadly, it's part of what is making me a bit more antisocial than I want to be as I get older.

It used to be a lot easier.

I hope to get a lot more outdoor work done during the first part of the week when I come home from work. I'm fed up with the place looking half abandoned from the outside. It's truly soul sapping at times.Jeff and I joke about bringing in a housecub to help out. These days it seems to be less of a joke, unless it's on us.

Any volunteers?

I started the work on the Furnace "B" skiphoist and pretty much built it all except the stairs and railings. Before I could even size it properly and line it up with the highline I had to complete the furnace top works by painting the hand rails of it yellow and then securing it to the base.

The added cross bracing to the front of the skip hoist is from the same Walthers HO scale Cinder Conveyor kits used to create the Hoist House. As you can see, they are exactly the same width as the N scale skip hoist and fit right on.



To pounce or not to pounce, that is the question


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Man escapes flurry of bullets but accidentally shoots himself

A man escaped a flurry of shots fired at him in a drive-by shooting, but when he tried to return fire, he accidentally shot himself, The Buffalo News learned today.

The man was in the 100 block of Hagen Street, in the Bailey-Delavan neighborhood, at about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday when a burgundy vehicle pulled up to him and a gunman inside fired shots at him, according to Northeast District Police.

The man, whose identity is being withheld by The News for his protection, told detectives that he attempted to return fire and suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

No charges have been filed against the man nor has the gunman who fired from the vehicle been located.

The man was treated in Erie County Medical Center and released.

 

http://www.buffalonews.com/258/story/414518.html

Just a little wood I cut today. Some time ago a silver maple was removed and the bulk of it was salvaged for firewood, but whoever was salvaging didn't quite get all of it. They left a nice 25"-30" crotch, or 'Y' section, about 3' to 4' long as well as several half split rounds about 2' in length. Anywho, I kept pestering my boss about removing it from the property (since may) and I finally got his approval to cut it up.  So I ran home to the shop and my apartment, grabbed "my" saw. Fortunately I had recently purchased a new full chisel chain as a father's day present for my Dad - so I broke that in for him. Anyways, I fooled around with this for an hour while the others weeded the beds, and here's the end result:




For reference, that's a 20" bar. However, the best investment for this type of task were the steel splitting wedges I purchased. Swing a few times with the splitting maul, pop the wedge in, swing a few more times and *pop*. Worth their weight in gold.

who wants to go see this with me? i am gonna take adrina.

http://www.atlanticstation.com/press_ajc-exhibit-on-blindness.php

If you were blind, could you navigate your way around a busy city street or distinguish between a $1 bill and a $50 bill if you were trying to buy a beer at a bar?

These are some of the challenges visitors will face at a 20,000-square-foot interactive exhibition coming to Atlantic Station this summer.

Premier Exhibitions, the Atlanta-based company that brought the "Bodies" and "Titanic" shows to the city, is opening "Dialog in the Dark" in late August to give visitors a sense of what it's like to be blind.

For one hour, you'll go through a market, take a boat ride, visit a park and get caught in the middle of a busy street scene with nothing more than a guide and a cane.

Seems there is a meme going around the ol' LJ. I am finally getting around to parsing out pictures taken in the last several months that I have been without my main workstation PC. I've also finally upgraded from my original Photoshop 5.5 to PS CS2. As it stands, I got a bit more learning to do with the new features, and the new backup PC has an utterly trashed color profile that puts up warnings every time I start the program. while poring over the many hundreds of shots, this one popped up, and I figure it met the requirements outlined in the aforementioned meme, which is for those cycle-riding bears out there to show off their calves. This was a shot I took of a smallish scratch I got on my leg that nonetheless hurt like hell for the first couple days. I got it during one of the many times I had been riding the bike around town.



This shot will also serve as a reference after I recalibrate the new PC monitor profile. What comes out of CS2 is a washed-out version of what goes in.

As an aside, watching the Olympics tonight, I saw a job I'd like, which is to be the guy who has to lift the shortest of athletes up on to the high bar.