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

[tompm]

Good morning folks

It is a rainy 39 at the moment. High is supposed to be 43. According to the weather hype specialists there is a Nor’easter coming on Wednesday. Depending on who you listen to we could get anywhere from 6 to 10 inches. They say parts of North Jersey could get 18 inches or more. We will see. I might have to drag the snowblower out into the driveway and start her up and see if I can scare the storm off.

We have a bunch of new restrictions to deal with starting yesterday. The vaccine can’t come soon enough. In the school district my wife works the high school and a elementary school went all virtual for the next three days due to too many students having tested positive. The announcements came Sunday afternoon. Doesn’t affect her since she is virtual. My daughter’s district’s high school switched to virtual last week and they announced they are staying virtual through Wednesday due to not having enough staff to run the school. She got the notice 7 PM last night.

I had a pretty good weekend with my back until last night. I was up half the night with it bothering me. I took it easy. The only thing I did was remove the old Ring doorbell camera and replace it with a new one. It was somewhat frustrating mainly since the mounting holes on the new one did not line up with the old one.

I finished building all the Tropicana reefers, two Athearn blue boxes, and five Con-Cor. The last Con-Cor one was the worst of the Con-Cor kits. While the misaligned and undersized screw holes on the other four Con-Cor kits were a minor problem, this one was ten times worse. One of trucks had a hole too big and the provided screw could not hold it place. I had to steal trucks off an undecorated Atlas Trainman 50 FT boxcar. Then I had trouble getting the frame into the shell. I gave up for a time. When I returned, I was finally able to finesse it into place. Then I noticed the brake wheel was missing. No luck on finding it and I used an extra from an MDC/Roundhouse express reefer kit. At last, I was able to seal the reefers to prepare them for weathering. I also sealed six Bowser NYO&W coal hoopers, two Atlas cabooses (Chessie and Western Maryland), and an Athearn RTR Chessie Safety caboose in preparation for weathering.

I hope everybody has a good day.