Ace-Garageguy

Nice and cool this AM but I was creaky, moving slow, so instead of going straight to the shop, I slid by the little church car show held every first Saturday just a couple miles away. When that wrapped up, since I was in the neighborhood of one of the 'antique malls' where I sometimes find HO train stuff... Jackpot. 32 NOS/NIB blue-box-Athearn, Accurail, and Branchline Blueprint Series freight car kits, some with high-end sprung, metal-wheel trucks and Kadees already in the boxes. Also got an old Athearn powered SDP40 in Santa Fe blue-yellow freight livery, damaged and "worked on" by some ham-handed chimp but restorable and also sporting Kadees, plus four Heljan, Con-Cor and AHM structure kits. $5 each. Sad little loco, below. Box was marked in pen SD30, but it's actually an SDP40. Broken motor mount and driveshafts, buggered wiring, and a few loose handrails "reattached" to the body shell with a soldering iron...but the dual-flywheel motor runs fine, the trucks are OK, and I have the parts. Repairing everything else is pretty easy, and it needs a paint job. These were built for passenger service so wouldn't have been in freight colors (the longer squared tail houses a steam-generator for passenger car heating), and AFAIK SF never owned any anyway. One of the structure kits, below. The Branchline Blueprint Series kits are particularly nice, US-made, with separate ladders, grabs, doors, etc., and separate ends and roofs with nothing molded on that can be used as masters to cast more for upgrading el cheapo rolling stock.

However...it's the same basic concept. Raising the spindles relative to the rest of the suspension is exactly the same functionally as installing 'dropped spindles' in a real car. Models in general can benefit from the builder having real-world knowledge of how things work, no matter the genre. On the other hand, building models is a great way to learn how things work in the real world.

Receipt-hoarding might be a handy affliction if you get audited by the IRS.

"Pen is mightier than the sword" had more validity back when reading-comprehension was thought to be a valuable life skill.

Long days of mooing, cud-chewing, and emitting methane probably have some appeal to those who don't much like a challenging life.

Reincarnated as a holy cow I would not choose to be; moo.

"Universe" is understood to be a pretty big place that's constantly expanding, and this of course is necessary to have room for all the ever-increasing stupidity.

Away somewhere in the mysterious innards of that poor vehicle is an engine that's simple, robust, and capable of being rebuilt almost indefinitely, unlike most of the overly complex stuff that's hailed as "modern" and "advanced" today.

LLVs of the USPS are superior in many ways to what's come after, and every one could easily remain in service for a million miles or more (cost-effectively)...but that would have required somebody who had once turned a wrench or was a silverback engineer to be a part of the procurement (and maintenance-and-repair program management) process.

Heels and seamed stockings and tailored clothes on women used to make my life much more enjoyable before fashion changed to look like nobody cares what they look like..

My peeps just doin' a flyby to remind me that there IS actually intelligent life in the galaxy, and not to give up hope when almost everything on Earth seems to be terminally stupid.

"It's not things that upset us, but our judgments about things"

House cats that never go outside tend to get fat due to overeating from boredom and lack of exercise, while indoor-outdoor cats tend to maintain healthy weight and fitness, as do feral cats that have access to plenty of human-provided food.

You can't use reason to convince anyone out of an argument that they didn't use reason to get into.

Colors can evoke emotions, like the electric blue of Wednesday's midday sky made me feel happy, but I find the golden-yellow light of clear fall afternoons kinda makes me sad.

"Paystar" was the chick in HR who made sure the checks went to the right recipients at the end of the week.

I've used Micro Mark's liquid mask successfully with Testors and Duplicolor lacquers. Just don't hammer it and don't use WATER BASED paint. https://www.bnamodelworld.com/microscale-mi-7-micro-mask-liquid-masking-medium

Now might be a good time to take a big psychological dump.

See Celia sell seashells by the seashore, while simultaneously sowing sasquatch seeds, and sustaining semi-cyclical swings of her psilocybin-stressed psyche.

Up at 05:30, just walking out the door now, 4 hours later. Some days are rougher than others.

RE: sidcharles You don't even really need to vacuum-form.

You can convince 50 scholars with one fact, but you cannot convince one idiot with 50 facts.

In my experience, CA-removers are acetone-based. Acetone has a very good chance of damaging clear plastic parts, making the problem much worse.