Ace-Garageguy

"Retirement" means different things to different people, and it's not always unlimited free time...depending of course on an individual's personal choices.

Rite spling duddnt seam ta bee tot inn skool no mor.

Basement layouts are great if you have a dry one, attic layouts are great if you can keep them cool in summer, but garage (or in another dedicated building) layouts at ground level are the best.

Even logging in and out are starting to hang up now, on both Chrome and Firefox, and photos are taking longer and longer to display...sometimes not at all. No problems with ANY other sites or forums.

Kits of railroad equipment manufactured in the '40s and '50s, mainly of the "craftsman" variety that are close to scratchbuilding, are the subject of much of my collecting interest at the moment.

Sense of the common variety is remarkably uncommon.

Both the old 392 Chrysler hemi and the later 426 have even exhaust port spacing, and the heads are about the same length. Unless you're a real nitpicker, the 426 headers should look just fine in 1/25. Big-block Chevys and many Fords also have even exhaust port spacing, so something made for those might work for you.

Co-worker shirking and hiding somewhere with the smartphone is becoming ever more common.

Results of human/chimpanzee hybridization attempts were supposedly never successful...

Get a cat that will lick up spilled chemicals. It may take several hundred generations of selective breeding to get one that will survive, but think of the long-term marketing potential of a thing like that.

Came from a long line of pontificating procrastinators he did, and became positively petulant when questioned about his penchant for pompous platitudes and platypi.

"Waste not, want not" may be prudent advice, but if you always eat everything they pile on your plate at most restaurants in one sitting, your waist will certainly show it...so is turning food into useless poundage a waste or not?

"Opinion leaders" (otherwise known as "influencers") effects on the general populace really make me question whether average IQ is much over 75 these days.

Getting some weird glitching when trying to leave "likes" now too...

This was waiting when I got in, an almost-new HO scale Proto 2000 Alco PA power-chassis and body shell, never assembled. Looks like the earlier Athearn D&H PA shell (above) will be pretty much a drop-on swap once the front coupler is removed...pretty much as I'd expected. Maybe a small bit of clearancing inside the shell, as well. BIG THANKS to Steve Grantham for those photos of a PA with her innards exposed, too.

"Head to the border" and get me a 10-pound bag of Taco Bell sorta-Mexican food seems to be a good way to kick off this long weekend...'cause I don' feel like cookin'.

For what it's worth, my real '63 Olds Dynamic 88 convertible has another oddball and unloved GM slushbox, the "Roto Hydramatic" known also as the "Slim Jim". Parts used to be hard to find. Now they're probably impossible. Unfortunately, because of its small size, the Olds tunnel won't accommodate a TH350 or 700R4 without sheetmetal work, and the later boxes won't bolt to an Olds 394 anyway. I've always wanted a manual box in the car since I drove it in high-school, so whatever it takes to make that happen...

Yes, in a torque-tube setup the tailshaft and housing would be different, but many gearboxes over the years were used in both open and closed driveline configurations. Far as what American Motors products used it, known technically as a "controlled coupling Hydramatic" ("Jetaway" was a GM marketing name), according to the trans reference site I linked to, the basic design was built from '56 through '64...and WikiPee (which I never take as definitive) lists these cars as being equipped with GM Hydramatics (which are, of course, entirely different from Turbo-Hydros): 1950–1957 Nash 1951–1956 Nash Rambler 1957 Rambler 1958–1960 Rambler American (AT&T associated company fleet units only)... so basically, who knows whether a particular car had the earlier Hydramatic or this one? I've done all the searching I'm going to.

"Intriguing" is what I generally call something that I really think is idiotic, but I'm too nice to say it...or too afraid of the censors.

Sandwich making is beyond the ken of many folks today, but never fear going hungry as long as you can pay ten times the cost to make one yourself for one delivered by DoorDash.

Which is why I specifically added the qualifier "in the hands of a skilled and practiced driver" to my comment above about left-foot braking with an autobox. I also mentioned a slalom driver I used to compete against who was amazingly fast driving a slushbox, often posting FTD (fastest time of the day) in innocuous little shiboxes, and I mentioned one of his "secrets" was left-foot braking. If you've ever driven slaloms or autocross events, you'll understand why this could be a plus for a driver who'd trained to do it without thinking. Your basic dozy bozo, which covers the vast majority of drivers, is lucky to get anywhere without putting himself or others in the hospital...and just remembering which pedal makes the car go and which one makes it stop seems to be pretty much the absolute limit of their ability.

The cast in support bands on the case and the square pan identify it as a '59-'64 "Jetaway 315", used in some Pontiac, Olds, Cadillac, Buick, Hudson, and American Motors products. It's a 4-speed automatic, kinda like the Hydramatic B&M used for their "Hydro Stick" racing autoboxes, but different. https://www.charlietranny.com/315Jet.htm

Yup...definitely starting to hang again, photos in posts taking forever to load, etc.

NOS Athearn HO scale Alco PA1 locomotive shell in Delaware & Hudson livery. I'm pretty sure this shell is out of production, as more recent Proto 2000 PA models from Walthers are essentially vastly upgraded Athearn models, with separate handrails, knuckle-style couplers that are NOT truck mounted, etc. I have a new Proto "DCC-ready" chassis to go under this old girl. The new chassis is complete with all the upgrades to make this vintage shell the equal of a gennie Proto 2000 unit. The D&H is rapidly becoming my all time favorite of the "fallen flag" railroads because of their habit of buying some very interesting used locomotives and then rebuilding them, including four Alco PAs, plus saving the last two remaining Baldwin "Sharks" from the scrapper and returning them to revenue service. The model, carrying number 19, is representative of one of the four real PA locomotives bought used by D&H and rebuilt, shown below in 1978.

"Electricity is just, like, in the wires" said a very vocal proponent of EVs not too long ago when asked where the electricity came from to charge her car...and she said it with this incredulous expression and inflection that implied "how can anybody be so stupid as to not know that?"