There's a program called, "Strange Inheritance" on TV where they go to people to talk about and show their strange inheritances. Some are weird, like a zoo or circus, others are a real surprise, a painting or a rare car or coin collection that sells for over a million dollars. The one the other day was titled, "A million dollar train set", and was about a train layout and trains that a wife and her daughters inherited. It was a G scale layout and took up an entire 2000 square foot floor of their house.

That episode will run again this Thursday, 2-22, It shows up on FBN on DirectTV, but it could be different on other cables or satellite stations. If you're interested, you can do a search and find it.

SMS sets out some fly ash cars at Perch Cove Power Plant.

Bruce

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Some of you might have noticed that when you go to Big Blue trains forum, the web address now show it's a secure site (indicated either by a green lock or the word "Secure" on the address bar). The web site now has a secure SSL socket which means we can keep all your secret passwords and other personal identifiable information safer from hackers by encrypting the information being sent to and from the site. It won't change any functionality and you won't notice it being there. It's all done in the background like some computer voodoo.

We've also fixed the redirect issue (which has been an issue for years now) where the web address had to have the "/forum" on the end or you'd get a 404 error message. You should now be able to just type bigbluetrains.com and get to the site without that pesky 404 error message. Some of you might still see the "/forum", and I'm not sure why that is. It might depends on your browser or the fact that all the search engine still see that forum. I'm hoping this will clear itself out over time. For now It shouldn't cause any issues and if you want to try fixing it on your end you might try updating your bookmarks and see if that fixes the problem.

We purchased a new web hosting plan a few weeks ago which comes with new server storage space. At some point, we are going to have to migrate all our stuff over to the new server space. Ideally, this will be done over a weekend to reduce down time and we'll do this with plenty of notice before hand.

And finally, there is a motion to update our forum software. The software we are currently, phpBB, is older technology and there some other things out there that are more current and easily manageable on the administrator's end. We've also talked about the addressing the waning membership numbers and think that possibly incorporating and integrating other social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter might bring in some new members. The newer software can do this integration much smoother.

We'll keep you updated as thing progress.

I knew none of you would remember. 'Nuf said.

Had a lot of snow yesterday. Went to town after it stopped, and on the way home stopped on the back road to allow 25 or so elk to cross the road. One buck and his extended harem.

Down the road half-a-mile and were treated to the bizarre sight of at fifty turkeys perched in the tops of three trees for the night - bizarre because the trees are leafless and bare except for the large black blobs of the turkeys.

One of many reasons we love this part of the country.

Welcome all to the eighth thread in the Hobo Campfire series. We reached 5000 posts on the last one so it's time to start a new one.

Want to see if anyone has had experience with this and see what a solution could be. The NWSL gearbox I used in my H-9 build is a 142-6 gearbox, I have noticed it's a tad noisy in the forward direction and I would consider it quiet in reverse. Is this something that will work out over time? Another thing I've notice is that the worm gearshaft has a little in and out play in it and was thinking this might be where noise is coming from? Obviously, adding shims will remove the slop in shaft movement, but will it take care of the noise?

Thx,
Mark

Also, I've sent a similar question to Dave at NWSL. Likely won't hear from him for a few days, though.

I made an observations while installing a bunch of ditch lights.

SMD LEDs 0204 warm white are used. I buy them in 10 or 20 piece a packs from eBay sellers in China. Virtually free of shipping but it may take 2 - 4 weeks to arrive.
Those tiny are usually installed in the very front of the ditch light housing. Covered with a thin layer of Kristal Clear at best. In contrast to may professional installed ditch lights (Intermountain, Rapido ...) is there no fiber optic involved. The light goest straight from the LED to the eye.
I started with the usual 1k0 resistors, went to 1k5 resistor probed 3k0 resistors and it was still far to bright. I ended up with 6k0 ( 6000! ) Ohm resistors. Your milage may vary depending on the brand of LEDs you get from China but it is remarkable indeed.

You may want to take that into consideration when you are shopping for SMD LED resistors the next time.

Dock Street RR's leased MP15AC makes it's way down Delaware Ave .

Bruce

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Hi everyone, you've heard the old nursery rhyme about the old lady that lived in a shoe, well of course you have.
I'm going to show you how I turned an old bronzed baby shoe, into a home for that old lady.
My wife is always going to those thrift stores, so I asked her to keep an eye open for a neat looking baby shoe.
When she brought me home a bronzed baby shoe, I thought to myself this may actually work out better than a un-bronzed shoe.
So here is how the bronzed baby shoe looked when I first got it.


   

   



Just your basic bronzed baby shoe, for 2 bucks.
Now I needed to smooth out some of the shoe surfaces, in order to apply a door, and some windows.
So I used some black Sculpy/Polymer modelling clay, applied right on to the surface of the bronzed baby shoe.

   

I also built up the front of the shoe to look like a window dormer using the clay.

   

   





Once I was happy with my polymer additions, I baked the shoe in the oven for 20 minutes to harden the clay.
I thought I was being smart by placing the shoe upside down on a baking tray, but this turned out to be a mistake.
It seems that wax is used in the process of bronzing baby shoes, and that wax melted out of the shoe all over my wife's baking tray and down into the oven.
Had I just kept the baby shoe sitting upright this would not have happened. After I cleaned up the mess I continued with making the roof for this shoe.
I traced around the top of the shoe with a pencil, onto a piece of wood. I then cut out the shape that I traced, so that this piece of wood would sit on the top of the shoe nicely.