Weekend Update: A House, A Session, A Turnout, and Wheels

After almost two months of focus on other things, it's been great to get back to to the 'bench and basement a little this past week - and a lot (thanks to a wonderful Missus that encouraged me to take it off) this Whole Weekend.

So here's what I've been up to, in the form of a quick preview of posts to come . . .

I got back to the house I plan to use across the tracks at Dividend. I haven't worked on this since late August, but there really isn't much left to do on it, so I figured it was high time to try and finish it up. Or at least get back to it . . .

As a change of pace from the workbench, I also did a little operating. Ops sessions are one of my favorite parts of the hobby, but this year has been IM-possible. But solo ops can be a lot of fun - and a great way to put your layout through its paces. Last time, I operated PDX-1 from New Haven to New London, so next was PDX-2 - heading from New London to Saybrook and up the Valley Line. More on that in a future post . . .

While putting the layout through its paces, you're bound to come across things that need some attention. Now. I discovered the problem with this particular turnout while cleaning track a few weeks ago (another maintenance chore & a perfect COVID project). One of the points had broken loose, so needed to be repaired. Fortunately, it's in the staging yard so didn't affect PDX-2 at all, but it definitely needed to be fixed, and this weekend was the perfect time to take care of it. . .

Along with track cleaning and turnout repair, another maintenance chore that manifested itself was WHEELS. As in dirty wheels. It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend all that time cleaning track if you're just going to dirty it up again the next time you run dirty-wheeled cars over it. In the specific case above, I'd "painted" the wheels with a baking-soda-grimy-black mixture to simulate the caked-on dirt & oil on the faces of wheels used in friction-bearing trucks. That's a mouthful - but suffice it to say that an effect that looked so, um, effective at first has deteriorated to this . . .

So I ended a RR-packed weekend cleaning wheels - starting with all the cars that I'll need to return soon to my friend BillS. He'd graciously lent me a TON of freight cars a few years back to flesh out my ops sessions, but with full ops sessions being so rare - and Bill making lots of progress on his own, new layout - it's high time for me to get these cars back to him and get to work building the dozens (hundreds?!) of freight car kits packing the shelves above my workbench - and hopefully done in time for full/regular ops sessions starting up again . . .

But before I can do that, I need to actually finish up the Dividend House to make some room . . .

So stay tuned for some more detail on all that's going on 'round here. Holiday Season is oft-times Train Season and I, for one, hope to get to a lot more of both.

Here's hoping you're able to too!