My Dad: 1932-2014

My Dad and me doing one of the things we loved to do together, watch baseball.

My Dad:  

The man who bought me my first train set  (HO scale Lionel).

The man who taught me the value money and of working hard.

The man who shared the love of baseball, and the Yankees with me.

The man who I didn't get along with and couldn't stand in the first half my life, who became my most best friend who I loved with all my heart in the second half of my life.

My Dad, Carmine DiIorio passed away peacefully Monday morning at the NJ Veterans Home in Menlo Park NJ, the same place he had spent so much time volunteering to help out all the veterans who lived there.

Was he a perfect man?  No, but then no one is. But he still was a great man to those he helped through the years, especially the veterans.

Love you Dad, RIP.

GSD Works in Progress Meet/Valley Forge RPM

1 week ago the Garden State Division of the NER/NMRA had a meet at the Scotch Hills Country Club in Scotch Plains NJ.  They used the WIP format (Works in progress) of clinics where there are stations where a clinician will be located and the attendees rotate every 30 minutes from one station to another.  Each station covers a subject that the clinician presents with about 15-20 minutes of info and 10 or so minutes of Q&A.  They also can be hands-on clinics where attendees can work along with the clinician and pick up a new skill.  I gave a clinic on standardizing your car fleet: proper weight, metal wheels, couplers all the same and at the right height etc.  I discussed the importance of setting your standards and having each car meet those standards before they ever hit the layout.

Other clinics presented at the meet were:

Dave Ramos- Building Fast Tracks turnouts

Craig Bisgeier- Casting parts in resin

Tony Koester- Kitbashing buildings

Ralph Heiss- Weathering rolling stock

Joe Calderone- Creating retaining walls out of meat packaging containers

Bruce De Young- Applying and weathering dry tranfers to rolling stock and structures

Ted Pamperin- Using creative methods and materials in building your layout

The WIP format has been used in the NJ Division for a few years and has been successful.  GSD’s version was a big hit and my hat goes off to Jim Fawcett and the whole GSD crew for putting together a fun meet.   

Here are some pictures from the day’s event:

Craig Bisgeier demonstrating resin casting.

Joe Calderone demonstrates how he builds retaining walls from meat packaging.

Bruce DeYoung and his dry transfer clinic.

Yours truly and my clinic on car standardization. 

The Commodore, Ralph Heiss and his weathering clinic.  (See!  He's still alive even though he doesn't update his blog! :)

MRP editor Tony Koester and his kitbashing clinic.

Ted Pamperine discussing using some different and unique materials to build your layout.  Ted was a major influence and help to me in developing my Gator Foam bench work. 

Dave Ramos giving his clinic on building Fast Tracks turnouts.

All in all, every clinician was in agreement that the time flew by and we all had a lot of fun doing the GSD meet. :)

 

On another note:  The Valley Forge RPM Meet is coming up fast and again will be held at The Desmond Hotel and Conference Center, March 28-30 in Malvern PA.  I'll be there again and I will be doing an update to my last clinic on modeling the Ma & Pa RR 1943.  Last time out the clinic was well received and we had a lot fun during it.  Now, just know that if it's after 12 noon, there will be a good chance of a Stoli Martini with a twist sighting in the general vicinity of my lectern.  I like to keep my clinics informative, but also lighthearted.  I do not try take myself too seriously. If you plan on attending the Valley Forge meet stop on in to my clinic and say hi. :)

 

"Kung Hei Fat Choi! Congratulations and be prosperous!"

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Congratulations and be prosperous!  Another year has past and today a new lunar year starts!  Unfortunately it starts with me coming down with a double whammy of bronchitis (or as those of us who attend the big Amherst Railway Society Show each January call it the dreaded Springfield Plague) and conjunctivitis (pink eye)  so let's say I'm not off to a stellar start for the new year.  But as the Dr. (who is Chinese) put it today, this will be the first and last time for me being sick this year.  Let's hope she's right. ;)

Anyway, from our family to yours, we wish you Happy Chinese New Year!  Kung Hei Fat Choi! Congratulations and be prosperous!

Shakedown?

Happy New Year everyone!

I've been working on fixing a lot of "little" problems on the layout that would add up to be big problems during an op session, with an eye towards having a shakedown op session (or as Marty calls them "Sea Trials") to see what other bugs pop up and need to be fixed.  One thing that was a consistent problem was a lot of the sidings had slight grades on them.  Unless I leveled them out, I would need some kind of "hand brake" system to hold cars in the sidings.  So, I've spent the last week going over each siding, testing with a torpedo level and a free rolling car, and fixing the siding when needed.  Mission accomplished on that job.

It took quite a bit of sanding and or shimming to get each siding level.

Another one finished.

The Knisely Coal siding needed some shimming to level it out.  You can see in this picture just how bad this particular siding had become.

As I found problem sidings, I marked down there location and once done, marked that they were OK.

Success was not only measured by the torpedo level showing level, but also by parking a car or two on the siding to make sure it didn't roll away.

Another problem found during some test running was two turnouts had rail that let loose from their PC ties close to the frogs.  So I used my NMRA gauge and spiked them down to fix the problem.  I was afraid if I tried to heat up the PC tie up to re-solder the rail, the other rail might let loose.

Spiking down the problem rail.

Another thing that needed to get done was to paint the fascia on the helix, install the sign for Yoe, and the throttle plug.

Last thing accomplished this week was to lay the track on the portable active staging modules.  I just need to devise how I'm going to attach them to the layout during op sessions and build some detachable legs too.

One finished, one to go.

Both staging modules with all track installed.  I just need to put in feeders, bus wires with a plug to connect power to the main layout, and detachable leg system.

I'm hoping to schedule a shakedown op session for sometime in February.  I can't wait to see how it goes! :)

Merry Christmas!

"I knew I should have used a Woodland Scenics tree instead."

Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours! 

 

This latest delay in construction has been brought to you by...

I've been to busy getting married to my best friend and soul mate Amy. ;)

Me and the Love of My Life!

Layout progress will resume.. Sometime.. ;)

Dressing up the Helix..

The latest progress made on the layout has been to finish up installing the last of the fascia and valance, which needed to be installed on the helix.  A couple of problems were causing me to put this off: I had some 3/16th Masonite that I had cut down and spliced together to form the fascia, and I tried to install it one day when a few of the guys came over.  But the stresses from the bend I was trying to make the pieces go around caused the joints to fail, much to the amusement of my helpers.  I had to rethink what to do here.  Eventually I settled on going with thinner Masonite and this time I managed to get it installed (without any help from the peanut gallery). 

Here is a the helix with the fascia, valance and backdrop installed and painted.

The valance presented another problem:  How do I get the valance up without support from up above?  The solution was to buy small angle brackets and attach short pieces of 1x2 wood to them, then secure them to risers that support the backdrop.  I then used left over pieces of curved plywood from helix construction to form the proper radius to match the bottom deck fascia/valance and attached that to the 1x3 angle bracket combo. 

Here we see the curved plywood/angle bracket combo used to form the valance radius.

Next up was to figure out how to get the black foam-core to bend smoothly.  The answer was to lightly score the back of the foam-core at one inch intervals.  That created enough flexibility to bend the foam-core smoothly to the desired radius.

The valance came out good and the curve looks very smooth, no kinks at all.

 Last up was to paint the previously installed vinyl flashing backdrop.  I used the same method used on all the other backdrops. 

Blue hazy skies.

With some black paint for the fascia, and signage installed, the helix will look as good as the rest of the layout. :)