Weekend Photos - November 2025

[webenda]

Laying around the house, sick as a dog (no offense to the retrievers). Grinding ahead on the tunnel project, pasted in some paper webbing to help with the paper mâché application:

What do you have?

The project, a piece of art about to be covered with paper mush.

[healey36]

A bad cold, I suppose. Covid tested on day 4 and it was negatory. Throat feels like raw hamburger, so I guess I should walk down to the pharmacy for a strep test. Gargling with salt-water is not doing much. No fever, so that’s an upside.

How much chicken soup can one eat, dare I ask?

I need a bit more PVA before launching into the papering (none of that wheat paste stuff). Plenty of paper grocery bags thanks to the town ban on plastic. Nothing else required, thankfully.

[webenda]

Throat feels like raw hamburger, so I guess I should walk down to the pharmacy for a strep test.

I had that last year. It hurt to talk. I did not eat for three days, then it changed into dysphonia, and I resumed talking and eating.
Gemini says the medicine for strep is amoxicillin. I call it diarrheacillin. I hope you get over it without medication.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

How much chicken soup can one eat, dare I ask?

Efficacy is directly proportional to your involvement in the demise of said chicken, means of execution, and then preparation of soup. Check with your local shaman before proceeding.

....the medicine for strep is amoxicillin. I call it diarrheacillin.

Affects some that way, but for others it's almost ineffective. It's convenient to prescribe and cheap.

[healey36]

Got a throat culture, the test of which was negative, so no strep, no antibiotics. Feels a bit better today, so maybe we've turned the corner.

Meanwhile, saw this:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/plans-to-close-40ft-model-railway-devastating/ar-AA1QlkaI?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6915decea9784a4f96f642b4eb17c33c&ei=46

Echoes of NJHR, although they've found new digs and plan new layout/display construction. Dismantling and reconstructing the David Clarke Model Railway seems an even greater challenge, given its legacy and complexity.

[healey36]

How much chicken soup can one eat, dare I ask?

Efficacy is directly proportional to your involvement in the demise of said chicken, means of execution, and then preparation of soup. Check with your local shaman before proceeding.

Chicken soup has to be home-made to achieve maximum efficacy, and my wife tells me keeping to kosher laws raises the bar even higher. If that's the case, you don't need a shaman, what you need is a shochet. But what do I know; I'm only an honorary tribesman

[webenda]

Meanwhile, saw this:

Glad you are recovering.

When I was a kid, my mother would take me to the doctor even if all I did was sneeze (I exaggerate.) I would get a penicillin shot. I learned to hide the fact that I had strep throat. I recovered in the same few days without a shot.

Video of the David Clark Railway:
https://youtu.be/0sxxDlfhTmA?si=IalVxUQdVaOtyCak

I noticed the David Clark Railway uses Greenwich couplings.


Rather primitive... they come as a sheet of etched brass and you have to create the coupler yourself.


Greenwich Coupler on a wagon.


Reminds me of the Mantua couplers I used back in the 50,s.

[healey36]

An uncatalogued Lionel Junior set from 1934 or 1935, a 1681 2-4-0 dragging a pair of Lionel O-27 coaches (1690, 1691):



We found this set at the December 2008 Arbutus VFD train meet. The 1681 was in pieces, needed a new pinion gear. Don Carver repaired it for me. Fifteen or so years later, this is the first time it's been run (here).

Meanwhile, it looks like one of the railroad company Christmas trees is up.

[webenda]

I like your trains and layout photos, Healey—especially the view through the bridge. In the foreground, the track looks so high (true high-rail), then fades off into the bokeh. A pleasure to look at.

[healey36]

Thanks, Wayne. It’s the best spot on the layout to take pics, a long two-track straight running the length of the front. The rest of it is rather chopped up.

There used to be a pedestrian bridge here that I would shoot photos from (I.e. prop the camera on), but I moved that elsewhere in an effort to reduce the intrusion by rail fans

[webenda]

Kadee 1-scale coupler on flat car. People glued to the platform with Dollar General hot glue.
The hot glue was an experiment. The people are stuck solid on the plastic platform, but the glue lets go when I push hard on them... perfect.
The Kadee coupler was an experiment also. It couples nicely with Lionel couplers. A body-mounted coupler on this long flatcar will not swing left and right far enough for O-27 curves. The car derails as it enters the curve from tangent track.
Here is a full-scale coupler for comparison to the 1-scale coupler.

Could those O-Gauge, 2-Rail, Model Railroading guys be using HO couplers and not know it?

[healey36]

"The hot glue was an experiment. The people are stuck solid on the plastic platform, but the glue lets go when I push hard on them... perfect."

I've used a dab of rubber cement for temporarily cementing figures in desired locations. For most surfaces, rubber cement easily detaches and can be rubbed off with your finger.

I stay away from the wife's hot-glue-gun anymore. I've burnt the hell out of myself too many times with that darn thing.

[webenda]

My layout people don't have much in the way of faces.

The source for these people said they were for 1:48 architectural displays.
I suppose architectural displays do not need faces on the people in the display.
Today, I met this guy at Walmart.

So... my layout people have a prototype, the Walmart People.

[healey36]

They look like a couple from one of the 100-figures-for-ten-bucks offers on eBay. I have a couple of bags of those, and I'll admit, the mold detail is pretty nonexistent on many of them. The ones I have also seem somewhat undersized. The number of poses is pretty limited, but a few minutes with a heat-gun and you can bend them up a bit. You can't fix faces though, and I'm not a good enough painter to try to make up for that.

[webenda]

There are better 1:50 and 1:48 scale people available.

What I had in mind was filling the railroad station platform with an absurd number of people waiting for the train.
The man in the photo above is more suitable for a layout that runs steam engines, but 100 people like him would cost $1,200.
I believe that 100 twelve-cent faceless people will achieve the effect of a crowd waiting for the train.