Prime Condition

This week, the room was taped, and then I cut in all the wall corners with Kilz Primer. I proceeded to roll the rest of the walls with Kilz as well. The former wacky colors can still be seen through the primer, but that is a temporary situation. I have the white paint ready, so hopefully you will see some finished walls pretty soon! Thank you to Amber for providing some good painting advice.

Now lets have some fun and talk about some future passenger trains. These will be O-Scale sets, but you can be sure that the smaller O-27 trains will still be around. The first is called "The Northern Range", and is named after the mountainous region of Yellowstone National Park north of the Blacktail Deer Plateau. I hiked through this area in May of 2008. It is home to many buffalo, some waterfalls, and beautiful vistas. The passenger train will be a relatively small, four-car consist, pulled by matching F3 A-A diesels. I purchased the passenger cars a few years ago; they were manufactured in 2005 and are rather sought after by collectors. Before K-Line Electric Trains was purchased by Lionel, they created a series of trains based on the Santa Fe "warbonnet" paint scheme, but with the silver coloring replaced with deep black. Lionel has continued to manufacture trains with this striking paint scheme, but as of yet they haven't made any O-Scale offerings (they have all been semi-scale). This paint scheme is called "Black Bonnet" or "Midnight Chief". For the yet-to-be-purchased locomotives, I can choose between the K-Line engines originally made for this set, or the more common Williams (by Bachmann) locomotive set. If I go the Williams route, I will want to inspect the paint job first to insure a good match with my passenger set. This train would also look spiffy being pulled by any of the larger O-Scale steam locomotives in the fleet. "The Northern Range" will run between Silver Falls and Iron Horse National Park on the train layout of the future, and will soon be seen on the semi-scale layout I am in the process of building.

Primed and ready for painting

The northern range of Yellowstone National Park

Three buffalo

One of the cars of "The Northern Range" passenger train

A Different Kind of Reefer...

This week produced major changes in the Train Room. I removed the remaining floor trim, for use elsewhere in our dwelling. I also removed all of the carpet and carpet pad. I scraped the bear floor, using a bladed tool that Bill Gamsby lent me. This involved moving things multiple times, including the contents of the closets, which are to the left and right of the entryway. Several more loads of non-train items were moved to new homes in other rooms. I finished up by doing the initial taping for the upcoming painting project.

An unexpected find behind one of the baseboard trim pieces was reefer, but not the refridgerated boxcar type. This "stuff" was left by the previous occupant, and I'm not planning to incorporate it into the refreshed decor of the room...

Half of the carpet gone, getting ready to scrape under the pad

Bare floor seeing daylight

Shuffled furniture, no more carpet

Non-railroad reefer!

Bare walls, almost bare floor

This week I finished sorting and moving out the items that were on the left side of the room. I was able to remove some of the trim, which will be relocated to some upstairs room. I also started removing some carpet.

Left side getting closer

Under the blue and green paint is some odd, light pink paint

No More Misc

All of the "Misc" boxes are now re-sorted and de-ported from the Train Room! That was about all I did in the Train Room this week, but that is okay - because my wife celebrated her birthday, we received an unexpected amount of rain (which flooded parts of the city), we attended the Home Show, went to a musical downtown, built a fence/railing in front of the house, and dog-sat for our brother and sister. Also this is a big conference week at work, and I had two classes to present, so the number of hours to make advancements in the Train Room were understandably limited. Currently, I am cataloging the "N" gauge trains in the visiting collection - goodness they are tiny! Their detail is quite excellent - this might explain why Captain Picard mentions them so often: "N gauge!"

Sunlight! Gasp!

Very tiny - and very well detailed N gauge freight car

The Green Wall Emerges, and Some Small Visitors

Massive progress was made throughout the house over the Labor Day weekend. Items bound for the kitchen, craft room, and garage were sorted and sent to their rightful places from the Train Room. We now have quite the view of the rather neon-greenish west wall, which hopefully will be coated with some white primer sooner or later. While many things have exited the Train Room, I also moved in some temporary visitors, in the form of an HO train collection. I was asked to sell it on behalf of some family friends and need to prep a spot for prospective buyers to view it. So, the Train Room will be a good place for that...

Many thanks to my wife for helping with sorting, and for doing tremendous work in her new kitchen!

The green wall and window can now be seen

A selection of some of the temporary HO train collection

And more sorting...

The boxes/items in the Train Room are now sorted by type. This makes it a lot easier to send them to their appropriate spots in the rest of the house. Projects for this Labor Day weekend in the kitchen and garage will make room for large sections of these items to depart. Many of the tubs on the right side of the status picture below actually contain train/railroad items, so they will be staying in the Train Room.
Last weekend, the Poynters and Gamsbys camped in West Yellowstone. During some free time, Bill and I built a wooden steam locomotive model from a kit I received as a gift.
On Monday, a special 3-car passenger train was parked at the depot across from my workplace. This may have been a special MRL business train, or a charter.
Well, it's almost September, so I'd better get going!

 

Boxes/items now sorted by type

Wooden steam locomotive kit completed while camping

Special visitor to the Depot

Extra shiny engine pulling the passenger train

Westbound from Billings, I believe the fourth locomotive, MRL #51 (an SW1500), is en route to Livingston for repairs, since it usually remains in the Billings/Laurel area for switching duties

Consolidation and Christmas Decor

Over the past week, I set up my workshop in the garage, thanks in part to a borrowed hammer drill for concrete drilling. This drill was so fun that is spawned other projects as well. I built and installed a railing for our front steps, and moved some theatre items about in the garage to make space for tubs that were sitting in the Train Room. Most of these tubs contain Christmas decor, and I consolidated several small tubs of stuff into a few big tubs of similar stuff. Amber helped with hanging up a railroad-themed welcome sign, pointing to the Train Room door. I also moved furniture around in the Train Room to their actual proposed final positions. They will have to be moved again when the room gets repainted and re-floored, but it gives us a good idea of what space will be available. So I'll leave you with a few updated views of the Train Room and hallway...

Train Room as of 8/22/2013. Believe it or not, things on the right side of the room are much more organized now.

The first artwork to be hung in the basement. Thanks to my wife for hanging it up :)