The Hobo Camp Fire Is going well #IX.. Stop In!!!

[tompm]

Good morning folks

The morning temperature is 38. The freezing fog never materialized and now it nice and sunny and going to mild with a high of 54.

Not much done around the house yesterday due to my back pain. Today I am going to try to rest it some more.

I was able to finish sealing the last four coal hoppers. Now all twelve are finished. I started working on the Con-Cor Tropicana reefer kits. This is the first time I have built a Con-Cor kit in about sixteen or seventeen years, so I don’t remember much about them. I have to say they are annoying. They require a ton of tweaking. Some holes were not predrilled large enough for the screws. Some of the holes on the trucks had to be enlarged. The biggest issue was with the coupler boxes. The box will not take a Kadee #5 due to the metal clip. Luckily, I had some Kadee #148 couplers that do not use the clip. The hole on the lid had to be enlarged so it fit properly. Most egregious was that the kit came with no screws for securing the coupler box lid. Again, I was fortunate that I had just purchased screws to use to secure the coupler clips on my problem Athearn cars. Lastly the weight bar has to be secured to the frame by glue and the frame is flimsy so it bends. I had to clamp now the weights. It took more time than I anticipated to assemble them. I worked on three and got them to the point where I am waiting for the glue on the weight to dry so I can assemble the frame to the car body and then they will be done.

I hope to finish the three reefers today and start on the other two. Once they are all assembled, I will weather them along with the two Athearn reefers I assembled earlier this week. After the reefers are done, I need to decide what is next. There are six Bowser NYO&W coal hoppers that need weathering. I also have several cabooses needing weathering. I also hope to run some trains.

I hope everybody has a good day.