Good twilight from the lower Merrimack Valley.  It's been overcast and mid-40s all day, with a little bit of crunchy granular snow late in the afternoon.
Mostly I've been working on slides; today was late fall and winter 1982, when my first wife and I crossed the country by train and did a couple of company jobs in Southern California, while visiting Cajon and Tehachapi Passes on the way from one to the other.

I've gotten back to scanning slides. This was shot in Minneapolis, MN in 1982, on what I noted as MILW track some distance south of their final passenger depot.  The Security Warehouse Co. banner on the newer (RH) building is something you see in urban photos throughout the 20th century. The separate sign on the older (LH) building might be from that structure not being designed with an appropriate facade.

You're welcome, Deem.

Quote from: deemery on Today at 10:45:58 AMI watched the video (had to skip forward to find where your presentation started, that's a problem I have with the NERX stuff...)  One thing I don't understand is how you use a block plane on styrene.  Could you talk about that a bit?

Scribing/snapping styrene leaves little lumps on either side of the knife's cut. They don't usually don't affect the fit. When one does, it's easy to fix with a flat file. But scribing/snapping gets more complicated when starting with a 4 foot square (or larger) sheet without a big cutting rig like you see at plastic suppliers, window glaziers and some hardware stores.

When I do that I'm usually kneeling on the floor holding one end of a 4 foot ruler with my knee. Then I don't want to throw out pieces when the line wanders or the break isn't perfectly clean.  I first started cutting through big sheets with multiple passes of a utility knife. Look at my attic's linoleum to see where I went through in one place first.

Then I found the carbide scriber shown in the video. That makes it easier to protect the floor.  I break with a board & clamps, or the hand-seamer I show.  When breaking along a 4 foot length, sometimes the snap doesn't follow the straightest line. Also, there's always a bevel from the scriber. So I put the strip in a bench vise, edge to be glued up, and plane edges that need it straight and square.

Good morning, all.  The Merrimack valley had a some sun earlier, but now overcast has settled in, with chances of rain this afternoon and overnight.  Town Election went OK yesterday, Town Meeting is this evening. This morning has been news and emails, maybe modeling will happen this afternoon.



Glasgow side of Edinburgh's Waverly Station in March 1997 (didn't see much sun in Scotland that trip). The then Carlton Highland Hotel (very, very Victorian) is above/behind the outbound DMU. When I first visited Edinburgh 10 years earlier it had been all diesel but the East Coast Main Line electrification was eventually completed.

Deem, I wouldn't have known the 0-8-0 was a first attempt if you hadn't said so.  Nice work.

Philip, that old work car body looks very tired, but so does the man leaning on it.

Excellent representation of the bottom of old door boards!  Are the doors to be hinged or sliding?

Nice figures. A search implies they're On3?  I should go look what's new in HO figures.

Good afternoon from the sunny NH seacoast.  It's 72F with a low of 37F forecast tonight. Today is the Town Election. My turn supervising the polling place begins in 45 minutes, off for dinner, then supervising the count at 8PM.  Only one candidate for most positions, none for 3 but we were able to recruit two write-ins, for whom I made a sign earlier.

I have some prep to do for my styrene scratchbuilding clinic Saturday, otherwise modeling will get fitted in when time & tide allow.

I first presented a Scratchbuilding in Styrene clinic at a HUB Division (Boston MA area) convention in 2001.  I've done it several more times, most recently for the Northeastern Region NERx on-line event in March, 2023. They saved it on YouTube, but the indexing of that event on the NERx site is bollixed. I hope this link gets you about 50 minutes of show & tell, including a couple of models that have threads on Modelers Forum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLw7Z4c4cx0&t=7965s

If it doesn't, I was about 2:47 to 3:32 on March 22.  Search around through archived NERx presentations here:

https://nerx.org/past-events/nerx-march-2023.html

I've volunteered to fix the indexing, but to accept the help they have to give me access.

Good morning, Karl and later arrivals. Thanks for the breakfast; I'm still getting good local Cortland apples so I'll put a basket on the counter. It's 60F but the snow is still thick on my lawn in the lower Merrimack Valley. Sun has peeked through the clouds a couple of times. I ought to wait for more snow to melt before pruning my orchard, even though I'm sure the sap will start to flow with a week forecast above freezing.  And today will be the most comfortable so far this year in my attic...

I'll check back late today.

Welcome back!  14 miles up the creek  has different rules for shopping and living in general than where most of us live. My road is rural but I can go either way and be on an Interstate in 10-15 minutes.

The closest track is a middle siding, then the B&M's WB main toward North Station in Boston with stone ballast, then the west siding. At that time the main might have been 100 lb, the rest 85. Photographer was standing on the EB main to Lynn and Portsmouth, NH (to Portland ME until 5 years earlier)

Here's the original photo I cropped to show the canvas better:

,

It shows a lot of long-gone detail I saw in the '60s, and want to model someday, including the pedestrian overpass. That may benefit from looking at European N-scale bridges...  I found this scan of the original photo on a Schenectady NY history site.

Good evening, all. 40s all day here with thick overcast. Clearing and warmer forecast for Sunday, but no bare ground yet. Maybe by midweek. I've never lived in the Midwest but the first week of March seems early for thunderstorms, let alone tornadoes.

No modeling today, spent the day helping a couple of people from the East Troy trolley museum take parts off CSS&SB #32, which got so heavily damaged on the way to Seashore that it never turned a wheel. Drifts are still knee-deep in many parts of York County, ME.

Quote from: deemery on March 06, 2026, 03:07:20 PMWhy wouldn't canvas be the 'materiel of choice' for covering loads?  Certainly the age of sail was capable of producing large sheets of canvas.

IIRC most uses of canvas switched to plastic fairly quickly as the substitutes became available: I recall a circus in the 1960s with a canvas Big Top but campers weren't buying canvas tents (except military surplus) by the late 1970s. I believe sailboats switched to Dacron about the same time. I've seen canvas sails, but only on old or old-style boats with history-minded owners. You might know better, but I'd guess US armed forces used a lot of canvas in Korea, but little or none in Viet Nam.

Issues would include canvas being hard to waterproof (see stories about touching the inside of a canvas tent during a rainstorm) and rotting if left wet or poorly stored.  Also, cost to weave, waterproof etc.  Shipping tarps were usually one-way throwaways unless supplied by the carrier instead of the shipper.