Ace-Garageguy

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"Gambling" goes by a lot of other names that are entirely "respectable"...but they're all still gambling, and the house always wins.

Really cool old airplane. Looking forward to watching it come together. I have that older boxing somewhere. An acquaintance gave it to me after he finally realized he wasn't ever going to progress beyond the glooey-fingerprints-on-everything stage.

Hopper cars have a hard life.

Side with evil, it'll bite you someday...hard.

In-competence, in-efficiency, in-ability, in-sufferable ignorance define my days, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Thu, Aug 1 6:15pm Delivered, In/At Mailbox NOPE. NOWHERE ON THE PROPERTY, OR THE NEIGHBOR'S BOXES MARIETTA, GA 30066 Thu, Aug 1 6:10am OUT FOR DELIVERY MARIETTA, GA 30066 Thu, Aug 1 6:10am Estimated delivery date updated to Thu, Aug 1 9:00pm Thu, Aug 1 5:33am Arrived at Post Office MARIETTA, GA 30066 NOW, AS USUAL, I'LL HAVE TO WASTE MY MORNING AT THE PO DOING SOMEBODY ELSE'S JOB THEY GET PAID FOR

Down-grading the fun of the game is the excessive response time of the site, so methinks I'll be signing off for the foreseeable future.

Hairdo with poo isn't a good look, but if your head is full of it, watch out for leaks. Colors of the rainbow show up everywhere.

Nowhere did I say you were "casting shade" on the guy in the video. What I said was: That was in response to: Terms like "cutesy" and a "loose connection to reality" aren't particularly positive. Anyway, the model RR hobby has pretty much always had two schools of thought about prototypical-correctness, and the one I gravitated to was the one concerned more with technical correctness (as in: could it work in the real world), but not necessarily slavish, rivet-counting representation of particular prototypes. John Allen, for instance, scratch-built many steam locomotives for which there has never been a 1:1 prototype, but every one employed arrangement of components and mechanical motion that would work in full scale. He was also known to stretch reality on occasion, to create a more evocative scene. Several of his dramatically swaybacked truss-rod cars were sagging WAY beyond what any real railroad would allow...and the full-scale truth about truss-rod cars is that they mostly tended to be humpbacked after the turnbuckles were over-tightened by overzealous maintenance guys. But Allen's severely sagging-in-the-middle rolling stock instantly evoked cash-strapped shortline operations where maintenance was "deferred", perhaps indefinitely. Due to the realities of space limitations, layouts have always had to employ techniques like "selective compression" and various types of intentional, often highly artistic optical illusion to achieve the desired effect, which further loosen them from "connection to reality", even though the primary desire IS to represent reality. Other compromises, like truck-mounted couplers that allow longer equipment to navigate smaller-than-scale-correct-radius-curves, also abound...in every scale. The guy in the video describes how he engineered articulated trucks under his "centipede" tender to allow IT to negotiate his obviously much-sharper-than-scale curves as well. And the front-engine overhangs on curves his Big Boy achieves is, again, WAY beyond what could possibly occur in reality. The widespread lack of awareness of "could it work in the real world"...or just plain ignoring the concept in the name of "fun"...is something that bugs me about car modelers too, even though some of the most visually striking models I've seen have gone so far as to cut the tops of wheels and tires off to achieve the desired stance. Far as I'm concerned, "could it work in the real world" is one of the primary ideas that separates "models" from "toys", or "art". And I personally enjoy the added challenge that comes with pursuing that idea. It's a large part of my "fun". Modelers don't necessarily need to ADHERE to the idea that something should accurately represent functional reality, but in my opinion, in order to be GOOD, modelers should at least be AWARE of functional reality, and make CONSCIOUS DECISIONS when they choose to ignore it. EDIT: However, that is the way I approach the hobby. Nobody else has to comply, or even agree. Rant ends...

On Dasher, on Blitzen, and all the rest of the reindeer I can't remember the names of.

I've currently got one from North Carolina that made it as far as one of the local Ga. distribution hubs 40 miles away from me, and is now in Phoenix, Az. You can't make this stuff up.

Ebay seems to be doing everything humanly possible to ruin their business by trying to wring every last cent out of every sale, and penalize their exemplary decades-loyal customers for all the deadbeats. I'm closer to being done with them after every transaction.

To the best of my knowledge, Merit never made any Scarab. Monogram did the mid-engined 1/24 version based on their slotcar hardbody, and MPC did the 1/24 front-engine hardbody slot. There's also a Strombecker 1/24 version. I have them all.

Now I'm gonna have a pint of blueberries for dessert, because you can eat 'em by the bucketful and not get fat.

Water your cactus too much and it'll drown.

Several ways to make much better looking and realistic model car "glass"...like this: https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/58564-replacement-windshield-heat-formed/

If you mean layouts like John Allen's Gorre and Daphetid... ...the guy (and a very few of his peers) was a master modeler among masters, and though he "freelanced" many of his rolling pieces (meaning they didn't represent any specific prototype exactly), they were all made with respect for prototype engineering and obvious understanding of how things functioned mechanically in the real world. Understanding and correctly representing prototype mechanical function was one of the central themes in the old model RR mags, in case you missed it. Frankly, I don't see the point in bashing those guys. They were the equal of anyone working in the model RR hobby today. The guy in the video you posted is absolutely one of the best, a skilled machinist and engineer, most definitely another master of the craft, but what's gained by tearing other people down, or making fun of them with terms like "cutesy"? (EDIT: My remark about many of the YT clan of RR modelers not knowing much about prototype operation, mechanics, or history isn't the same thing. At all.) Even John Allen himself regretted using that name after a while, but there has always been an element of subtle humor attached to rather a lot of model railroading endeavors...as in Emma the Stegosaurus, "Engine #13" on the G&D. https://greatdivideline.com/unearthing-"emma" And a friend of mine locally has an extremely unusual and complex glass electronic tube lashed down as a flatcar load. When hard-tech-clueless visitors to his HO layout ask what it is, he explains (with a straight face) that it's a model of a very early flux-capacitor, before they were miniaturized down to being able to fit in a DeLorean. Some of the looks on the onlookers' faces are priceless.

Probably won't be long. In case you haven't noticed, there's already a fair number of models on here that have been "enhanced" in Photoshop. The tells are there if you know what to look for...unless whoever does it is really really good.

16 HO-scale NOS Athearn Pullman "heavyweight" passenger car kits, for less $ each, including shipping, than they sold for new many years ago. This design of all-steel passenger car became standard around 1913, but many of these were still in regular service well into the 1970s. Though I'm not particularly interested in running passenger train models, every major railroad yard in the past would most likely have had "coach tracks" or a slightly separated "coach yard" where passenger equipment was temporarily stored, and I'll be representing that with some of these, as well as newer more modern "streamlined" equipment. Stainless steel "streamlined" cars with fluted sides were introduced in the 1930s. "Heavyweight" car: Stainless steel "streamlined" car: Additionally, some will be heavily weathered and spotted for either scrapping adjacent to the steel mill, or waiting for restoration/rebuild outside the "car shops" industries.

Wow. That's really something. Sure would be fine fine fine to have the room to work in that scale. Fantastic stuff. Thanks EDIT: The thing I particularly like about Hyce and his channel, besides being very enthusiastic about modeling, is his in-depth knowledge of the engineering, function, and greasy bits of REAL railroad equipment and practices. Lotsa guys on YT doing model train stuff seem to have, at best, limited knowledge of the full-scale counterparts, and this always kinda makes me wonder "how do you build good models of anything if you don't know much about what you're modeling?" Different strokes I guess, but one of the things that always attracted me to railroad modeling was the tendency among the majority of RR modelers in the past to be concerned with what was "prototypically correct"...not necessarily slavishly accurate models of everything, but enough understanding of reality that their models could represent it reasonably well.

Date palms don't grow in the arctic.

Food for thought is often refused because it might not be sugary-sweet.

Jerk chicken, grilled plantains and pineapple, and rice would go down nice right about now.

Now is as good a time as any.