Good day
     
     We have 52° heading for 59° by noon and then they are to start falling. Gas has jumped a dime to 2.999. 

     I finished 2 more box car kits last night and had a couple hours watching a British detective show on Acorn TV.

     I get to take the week end off so I will work on my trains.  

      The local doper that the media latched onto for interviews about the disastrous train wreck (even though he hasn't lived in town for years) has joined the rest of his family in the great beyond. It didn't surprise anyone. (well maybe the media).  I went to school with his father who also died young. He was a very heavy drinker.  
Booze, drugs and cigarettes take their toll. 

     Have a safe and healthy week end. 

Charlie

Afternoon All,

Well we are having another warm day again today. It has been warm for the past couple of days with temps reaching into the mid 60's.

Gas is still going up with the highest being $3.59

Not to much going on today other than picking up my daughters best friend and taking them both to a school dance.

I did finish up the last hopper car last night for the C&I and now that gives me 11 active hoppers. I do have another hopper but all the research I've done, I haven't seen any four bay hopper cars on the C&I so it might just make an appearance every so often.

Hope you all have a great day and wonderful weekend. Take Care.

Good afternoon (barely), a bit chilly and damp, but no rain. They apparently canceled the Phoenix Open celeb pro-am on Thursday and started play late yesterday because of rain and flooding. I guess all is good out there now since there's no rain, just a slight chance now for the next few days. Still, those party people out there don't really care, I'd love to have the liquor concession.

Gas is kind of holding, still some stations around $3.00 +/- but the word is out that gas prices will be going up thanks to demand.

I've started on another wood puzzle, a 1980's sleeper cab truck. All this in preparation for the big one, I just picked up the holy grail of wooden puzzles. About 500 pieces and all sorts of electronics. Should keep me busy for a few weeks at the least. The thing weighs in at over 7 pounds, just to give you a hint as to size.

Yup Mikey, you have arrived, only thing left is getting your monthly stipend from the government, called SSI...

Have a great weekend, be careful of those Buffalo chicken wings and chips 'n dip, but enjoy yourself. As for me, I might peek into the game a few times, I just cannot get worked up about sports like some folks do.

Good evening.

     We had a beautiful day with the temperature almost hitting 60° for the second day.  I repaired a wicker thing for my daughter, I don't know what to call it but it has a top that lifts up like an old desk. It is only the size of a laptop but she keeps her painting supplies in it. The top had come off so I had to make a block for inside that I could reattach the lid. My wife is happy so I am happy.

     I assembled 5 more old Walther's box car kits making a total of 15 for the week. I actually have figured out how the doors go on easily. 

      I will be watching anything but the big game. Add the blond gal that seems to make the news and it has just added to my disgust of the whole sports package.

     Well cheers
Charlie

Good morning everyone, a great day in sports. Not only the Stupid Bowl, but the final round of the Phoenix Sloppy. I say that with reverence, but I'm with Charlie on watching football today. As for the Phoenix Open, they had to stop serving liquor yesterday when it became obvious that too many had too much. A skybox at the Open runs around $60K, I see where you can spend up to $2.5 mill to get one in Vegas today. A half-minute TV ad during the game runs at $7,000,000. Wonder what it would cost for me to park my jet there? A quick Google, and I find there's no room at any airport, normal rates run from $20 a day to $150, today's rates start at $150 and go up to $3,000. They figure there'll be about 1000 private jets needing parking spaces, then there's all those limos necessary to get them to the game on time. Who pays for all this stuff? Have you ever heard of the trickle-down theory, of course, we wind up paying for all this.

Hope you all have a great day today regardless of what you wind up doing.

Hello Blue
Some sun today with 40 as the Hi. 
About 2 minutes after the news reported a refinery fire WAY out west, gas prices jumped 30 cents a gallon. Last night I saw $3.19 most places.
I Will watch the Super Bowl game. I have no favorite and normally would not watch either team play but I am a football fan and this is the big finish. 
About 30+ people attended our club meeting last night. There are a lot of toy train nuts here in SE lower Mi. And this 30 are just members and invited guest.
S.J.

Good afternoon. 

     44° here heading for 44° for the high. 

     Sir James, that sounds like a great turnout for a club meeting. I am glad there are so many that participate. 

     Don, I never was much of a golfer but golf is the only sport I watch and then not a rabid fan. As with other sports it is pricey but if you want a raise you have to do better. You might say the players are self employed. 

     I did manage to assemble 5 more Walther's box car kits yesterday and only 5 left. Next will be to finish the 2 bay covered hoppers, then back to the lighting in the passenger cars. 

     Prayers for everyone but some folks get very special ones. 

Cheers
Charlie

Good afternoon folks

It is 46 heading up to 52. We have not seen the sun in three days.

My wife came down with something. Starting Friday after dinner she felt extremely tired and running a fever of 103.8. She went to bed early and basically spent all day and this morning. The fever finally broke this morning, and she is moving around a little today.

I worked overtime yesterday which meant I did not get the running around I needed to do. I am hoping to do the running to the grocery store this afternoon.

I was able to add windows frame and glass to the wall sections of the Ambassador Hotel. I probably got about 40% done. I hope to continue installing them today,

I hope everybody has a good day.

Good Evening All,

Tom I hope the Mrs feels better soon. Never a good thing being sick.

Not to much happened today other than we did some food shopping and played some games on the nintendo switch. We are now watching the super bowl and it's a divided house lol.

I did set up some track this evening and did some switching with the C&I engines and it was a lot of fun. Now everything is cleaned up and put away for now. Our phones have been going crazy today with a winter storm watch. They are calling for 5-8 inches of snow with it starting tomorrow sometime and switching over to all snow tomorrow night into tuesday with an inch an hour.

Hope you all have a good evening and take care my friends.

Good morning good people, I did watch a few minutes of the big game yesterday, add it up and maybe all of four minutes total. Just peeked in to see the score and then moved on. Penn & Teller had three episodes that I had not seen so that was plenty of entertainment. I can sometimes figure out how some of those tricks are done, but not often. I haven't a clue who won the Phoenix Open, don't even know who was playing, but I think the payout was in the millions.

No real rain in the forecast for today which is good since we're headed out to the desert to do some target shooting. It'll be a bit chilly out there, I just hope the wind is kind to us and waits until after we've finished shooting.

That's about it for now. Got to load the truck up, we normally leave early, but we're not always the first out there.

Tom, I wish you're wife the best, that's a high fever to deal with. I hope everyone enjoys the week and stays safe and happy...

Greetings, gang.

23 going to maybe 45. Similar conditions until Wednesday night when there's a chance of rain. No significant snow in the forecast. It's been an extremely mild winter here in the remote reaches of northern Iowa.

Another quiet day occurred here. No super bowl or super bowl commercials were watched. On the up side maybe the news outlets will get over their Swift/Kelce fixation and actually cover something important. Hopefully I get a call today that my new glasses are ready.

All stay safe,

Tom

Good morning

     It is 33° heading for 46° and cloudy. 

     The president is finally coming to East Palestine. hopefully this will be the end of the media. The media destroyed this town with the coverage. Now people are afraid to come to town and the business' are suffering.. There are not many business places as it was, more craft and "antique" stores than anything else. Believe me, the derailment was bad, and should not have happened but the media blew it all out of proportion. There were no injuries and no property damage except the local fuel distributors fuel tank and the railroad cars and plant. In the aftermath they closed 2 industries for clean up when this could have been done without shutting them down. 200 good jobs are lost and the companies have left town and will not reopen operations here. 

     I finished my Walther's box car kits yesterday. One kit had the wrong sub frame and I was lucky enough that all it needed was to be shortened by a 1/4 inch. I finally discovered the easy way to install the doors on the 15th kit  .

      Tom, I am glad to hear your wife is recovering. That is scary for sure.

      Fiat Tom, I am with you. It is 10:30 and I don't know who played in the super bowl nor do I care. 

      Don, have a good day shooting. 

Cheers
Charlie

Good afternoon folks

It is a pleasant 46 with a high of 50. Apparently, the world ends tomorrow. Depending on which weather buffoon you listen to we will be getting an inch of snow or five inches of snow. The mountains are going to get so much snow they are going to collapse under the weight.

Thanks for the well wishes. The wife is feeling better but still not fully recovered. Her energy level is nowhere near where it should be. She does something and then feels tired and worn out quickly. Her temperature as fine most of the day but in evening it went up to 101. By the time she went to bed it was 100. She was able to pack up some returns which I ill drop off at the post office for

I finally got to the grocery store. I was able to get a couple loads of laundry done. We did some cleaning.

I worked on the Ambassador Hotel kit. I sprayed the last of the parts that needed spraying. I have installed about half the window frames and glass. I began to reorganize one bin of rolling stock.

On the way home I need to drop off a couple of packages at the post office. I also need to run to the pharmacy. I plan on doing more windows and glass.

I hope everybody has a good day.

Afternoon All, 

Well the stores are a madhouse because everyone is in a panic because of the storm that is coming. We only had to go and get toilet paper and a thing of scent beads for the laundry. 

I did paint the other side of the bridge girder blue to match the other side. Also started to paint the other bridge girders so they can dry and be put together. I did order more decals last night from the supplier I go through so those should be here this week sometime and also a AHM Mine should be arriving soon. 

I am going to pull out all the rolling stock and see what I have and what can be painted and readied for decals or I might just set something up on the kitchen table for a few hours and have fun. Only time will tell lol. 

Gas is still the same price as it was the other day. 

Have a great day everyone and for the other PA people make sure you have shovels and salt.

Good morning everyone, Nice day yesterday. We left an hour later to go shooting and that paid off. It was cold and windy when we got there, but after the wind died down, we actually took our jackets off. We did OK target shooting, but on the way back a large rock had a fight with my windshield and the rock won. They'll come to the house tomorrow to replace the windshield and calibrate the camera. On the good side, we took the parkway home since there was construction on I-10. The parkway has little traffic and you forget that it's not a freeway. Well, I remembered just that when I saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror. The officer said he clocked me at 77, but was not going to give me a ticket, just that he knew it was easy to go over the 50 limit there. BTW, the limit on I-10 in that area is 75, so I am grateful that he understood.

That's it for now. Got a few things on the agenda today and tomorrow but nothing earth shattering, even for Valentines Day. Y'all have a great day, stay away from that bad weather, we're looking at the high 60's today, then into the 70's for the next week or two.