Too Much Wiring

Previously on Web of Evil (& Ennui) we found something of possible railroading use.

Not, however, useful for small structures. Wires too damn long.

And not as bright as I thought when I first removed the Xmas bulbs.

Thinking it will work inside a larger two-story bldg., for example:

Yup. Took it apart, & as I suspected, the other end needn't be connected to the battery, or even to itself, which I s'pose means more LEDs could be added. Powered by two C1220 "3v LITHIUM CELL"s, which allegedly last from 3-10 yrs., 20 for US$7.99 at Mall★Wart. Note black splice: Cut it when removing the base, but was able to put it back together. Sad as it is, I'm quite proud of myself.

Uh oh. Hot spots. Good job w/ the thin plastic, Walthers®. No, the lights aren't bright enough, & should be '50s-style yellow, not fluorescent-appearing.

And of course I'm not the first to have the idea, but Evan Designs didn't show when I made an unspecific search.

Probably Not

Sudden thought while looking at the rolling stock on the flex-track: I could make a yard here.

The space might not work, however, & I'd only have to "invest" a couple of hundred dollars (minimum) in turn-outs,
so nagonna happen.

Thurs. Track Testing

Still not nearly as irritating, irksome, tedious, banal & annoying as the horrible outside world you damn cretins have made for everyone.

Music For Gandy-Dancing

Non-embeddable films, from 1973 & 1990, of actual singing & dancing. The Wolf took a line (10:12) from the '73 one.Embeddable.

Hot Rails To Hell ...

... Are Actually Hot!

Spent almost an hr. post-shooting fiddling w/ sectional & flex-track before suspending operations. But one line is almost going & I've proved w/ geometric logic it won't need added feeds.

Other modeling stuff:

Also, at some point you need to decide if you are content being a casual recreationalist or if you want to move to the next level. It’s your call. No judgement. That said, if you want to move forward, you need to get out of your comfort zone, buy that sixty-buck airbrush, and get comfortable with it.

Easy, Lance. Sounds a bit judgemental to me who, picky as I am, fully intend to remain in my "casual recreationalist comfort zone". No desire to obtain an air-brush, but I did click the "sixty-buck airbrush" link out of curiosity, to find it's a) Amazon; b) $199.99, not any "sixty bucks". Ha!

Don't have the space, don't need the noise.

I'll stick w/ washes & powders; my primary interest in weathering is eliminating gloss & shine on rolling stock, not creating1:87 works of art. Avoided a soldering iron so far too, but if the track continues its recalcitrance ...

Saturday Savings Spectacular!

Going to the corner for milk yesterday I spotted Xmas lights in a cardboard box & decided I could use the wire if nothing else. Well, they work & are battery-powered, so don't waste your money on Woodland Scenics JustPlug® or Dioramo® lighting systems.

My curiosity piqued, I checked battery-powered wired LEDs & found piles, some powered by AAs, some by D cells, & some by hearing aid batts. Turns out the above suckers are made by Greenbrier International, Inc., a subsidiary of Dollar Tree. (Or it's Dollar Tree's parent co. Fucking robots.) All plastic; the only metal is the wiring & whatever's in the battery pack. The biggest deal to me is the self-containment. Everything's in the structure, no connecting to an external power source, so no wall-warts, extension cords or added LED wiring are needed.

This looks as if six bldgs. could be illuminated for $40.00. W/ 30 lights per string, six huge industries could be lit, or a small structure could be overdone until it caught fire.

Hoo boy, now Woodland Scenics is offering this; the video came out two months ago, but the system can't be searched on their crummy site; you have to look in the "Coming Soon" area. No prices yet, but an arm & a leg should cover it fairly easily. Speakers, sound cards & readers &c. will be just a smidge more than a transformer, control box & LEDs. Might not be easily duplicated at a bargain store.P.S.: If you do want the tried & true, I compared the Just Plug® & Dioramo® MSRPs sometime last yr.; Dioramo was a bit less expensive & their system seems more open to using non-Dioramo LEDs & the like. Or, Dwarvin & their fiber-optic "no wires" system. Tain't cheap neither.

Confuzzled

More Music To Lay Track By, More Often

The wailing continues. As does the pounding of nails. I like to imagine I'm beating a Republican w/ a hammer each time I drive a nail home. Relieves the boredom.

Very Excited

Not sure I can stand it! Assembled something electric that works as intended! Only took about an hr. & a half to make the 10 connections. The switch machine's been sitting around for yrs. because the power pack I had didn't have AC terminals for accessories.

Even better, it works when attached to the switch.

Will it work when it's back in the track? No reason to think it won't, but we'll have to wait until it's painted to be sure.

"That's A Meet & A Half, Eh?"

Literal Hot Rails As The Continents Burn

Comment of the day:

Wow! Looks like that's where Lindsey got off.

And two complaints about the beeping.

Orgy Of Consumption Complete*

The TrainWorld tat was there when I woke up, delivered at 1049.

Home Despot divided five items into three deliveries, first sand & the box for fiddly bits (just after 1100) then the alligator clips,

finally, at 1352, the glue & flashlight.

A real damn flashlight (A bright LED that uses three AAAs; almost blinded myself pushing the TRY ME button.) for when I block the light when working, or the dark recesses below.

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*For today. Still need ...

How Do They Do It?

Originally expected Friday the 17th; now, tomorrow!

How does it get to Avondale from Bethpage (just northeast of Levittown) in 42 hrs. & one min.? Flown to PHX, then to Avondale for sorting, & is then trucked to Los Angeles? Hell of a lead-foot to get it to L.A. in four hrs. & 47 mins. Maybe it's flown from PHX to LAX & takes that long to be scanned. As if anything makes any sense anymore.

Anyway, Tues. beats Fri. Shameless plug for TrainWorld; good prices, large selection, & shipping one's stuff by USPS beats the glibertarian weasels at FedEx & UPS by days! My patience grows thinner as I mature. 

In other interactions w/ the outside world, fuck alla you moronic chumps. My patience grows razor-thin dealing w/ lying cheats, scumbags & rat bastards.

And to hell w/ the law that won't allow Home Despot to deliver spray paint. (Although Rust-oleum shipped me spray cans directly from Illinois that I ordered from Home Despot.) Now I have to drag my recently scrawny ass to the actual store & wait for an orange-aproned wage-slave to unlock the heavy-duty orange cage it's kept in.

What a fascinating existence. And why do I share this?Rocking live version.

Music For Painting Plastic

Has other uses as well.Not only the version, but the original!Again, the original. You get it all here! I prefer this arrangement anyway.The 20-odd ft. of butcher paper used for packing makes a good surface for painting.

It Arrived!

Delivered at 1025, US$78.95, plus $32.94 S&H & $10.90 tax worth of plastic & nickel/steel from The People's Republic of China. Now I will cut it open & show you every item, one at a time. NOT!! Sweet Blood of Jesus, what is duller than an "unboxing" video? This is all track, nothing interesting, & now I have to paint all 24+ linear feet of rails & ties before I can try my luck laying it.

Want a mind-numbing video of that?

I am disappointed that the Postal Service didn't put it on a 'plane but trucked it across the country. Expecting some interesting plastic & electronics Fri., which left N.Y.C. this a.m.; maybe the P.S. will send that on a 'plane. I can at least hope for Thurs. delivery, air mail or not.

Jeeze, I'm like a consumer. When did that happen?

Holding Pattern

Definitely have to wait for the flex track."Expected Delivery" is Monday, but the pkg. left PHX suburb Avondale at 0822 today, so my optimistic heart hopes it's already in town & will be at the Nat "King" Cole station in time to be delivered tomorrow. If not, an exciting wknd. of replacing plastic wheelsets & couplers w/ metal ones & adjusting coupler heights.

Auto-focus my ass, SONY.

Even the Catalina is in a holding pattern atop the desk.Minutes later: My stuff arrived at the L.A. Reg. Dist. Ctr. at 1916, so my optimism may not be wrong. Sad when all one's optimism is because one's somewhat wiser than a Postal Service robot.

Impasse Hiatus Momentary Pause

Came to the realization that short bits of sectional track are not conducive to electricity or good running,

& I'll have to give flex-track another shot. Might neeed a slighty better voltmeter, too.

Decided to try TrainWorld again, so was awake before 1600ET, when they close, & spoke to a nice enough woman who set up a new acc't. for me & e-mailed the link to their form as we were on the 'phone. But it looks as if the pkg. won't be shipped until Tues., due to the holiday.

In other consumption news, I finally got an undamaged USN boxcar from Yankee Dabbler. Only took a couple of months.

Looks nice & rolls well. Certainly worth the US$34.99. Not worth the aggravation!

And the pirates at DoorStepInk have promised me a refund. Not there yet, & "It may take up to 10 days for this refund to appear in your account." Didn't take any 10 fucking days for the money to be taken from my acc't.! (Forget quite when I started this, but the refund did show on 5 July. Thanks again, clowns!)

I have been making good use of my time by getting the two areas that go nowhere fine-tuned again, & decided that amusing as it was to have the stock pen so close to the Yard Cafe & depot, it could be moved.

And the transload facility works better on the other spur as well. Win-win.

Then I realized that as soon as I have the new track laid everything will need fine-tuning again. And once I've bought turn-outs to replace some I bought when I didn't know what I was doing, or would eventually do, another round (theoretically the last🤞🏻) of alteration & adjustment. Gah!

Not to do anything the upper classes would, like set a goal, but having had this for four months less than seven yrs. now, it would be nice to have fully electrified, runnable track & even have glued a structure or two together & slapped it on the layout before Nov. I've had seven building kits, trees, plants, 'phone poles & other details in layout limbo for yrs. Pprobably beat inflation & Fat Boy's tariffs by buying early. Speaking of, even laying track like a dirty 19th-century Irishman beats the hell out of current events. An hr. passes like nothing.

Knew It

It did arrive a day earlier than estimated, a die-cast PBY5-A Catalina. What a Navy seaplane w/ early WWII insignia is doing over an Army camp close to 150 miles from the Pacific & around 125 miles from the Gulf of California in the mid-'50s is anybody's guess; maybe it's a Twilight Zone episode.

Not bad for US$17.75. (Just saw the same model for $39.99. And I didn't even compare prices. Hah!) I do resent those pirate bastards at FedEx getting $8.99 for shipping. (And Jesus, next time leave it at the door to the bunker, not the mail boxes, & knock before you run away.)

No tax, which I think violates California law. Ah. Only if your operation moves more than $500,000 anually in Calif. I dunno; populous state full of chumps & suckers. Maybe someone should look into it.

There are few HO scale aircraft available; this is 1/144th scale & should look better flying from the convenient hook, used on the prototype to lift it from or lower it to the water.

Does not want to be grounded.

Not balanced for flight either, so my story is it's struggling taking off from a short field, heavily laden w/ poison gas or an H-Bomb, especially as the landing gear is still down. May have mentioned that the Rice area was considered for the Trinity test. Pretty damn sure something nefarious is going on at Camp Patton.

Now I have to figure how to attach it securely to the ceiling.

Provenance:

Does Macau/Bangladesh mean no Trump tariffs, or has this been on a shelf for yrs.?

The actual item.

Tuesday?

When I saw it was in Chino yesterday p.m., I figured it would be here today. But the estimated delivery date hasn't changed. Nonetheless, it's on the FedEx vehicle, so step on it, Jesus. My patience grows thin!

I'm Mad As Hell & I'm Nagonna Take It Any More!!

Not just our money up in flames, but a waste of our precious time.

Tried to order track from two different corporate entities, both of which had recently added bullshit (apparently from reCAPTCHA) to their websites requiring an acc't. to buy from them. That's immediate bullshit, compounded by this reporter having an acc't. w/ the second company, whose fucking robot advised that my password was invalid, then didn't send a reset code & after a second try advised me there had been too much activity on my acc't., it was suspended, & to try again "later". The second shithole company has a brick & mortar store; I wonder if they demand that you have an acc't. to enter their store & shop? "I'm sorry, we won't take your cash or card unless you open an acc't. w/ us." Mark of The Fucking Beast, baby!!

Had it w/ iNternet commerce, guess it's back to bussing to Burbank to the Train Shack. Higher prices, yes, but no shipping fees, & no interminable waiting as I watch a package being trucked through towns I've never heard of in states I wish I'd never heard of. On the other hand, it is two+ hrs. in MTA limbo. Why the hell does nothing ever work out as well as it could, assuming it works at all?

Naming names: Tony's Train Exchange, & TrainWorld, which wasn't previously horrible, but now won't recognize my acc't. They're about to get a piece of my mind*. And look at this jingoistic garbage:

"Shop Now To Celebrate America": Cheesy consumption is not the way to celebrate America, you shallow buffoons!

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*Or not. Rat bastards only take calls from 0900-1600 Eastern Time. Very considerate of your western U.S victims, let alone "WorldWide Shipping" chumps.

Not "Tired", Exhausted!

Been Getting The Old Run-Around!!

Spent the early afternoon screaming & yelling at incompetent, lying cheats involved in fucking me in iNternet & interstate commerce. (Then wasted 1.5 hrs. typing this screed, which few will read, & they'll probably just laugh at me. You'll be laughing from the other sides of your mouths soon enough, unsympathetic jerks.) DoorStepInk is in Chatsworth (Valley scum!) so that's not interstate. Do not deal w/ these mother-fuckers! Should have checked some of the comments on their ad: "Doesn't work, they are no help & won't give me a refund," yada yada. Do not buy anything from a Facebook advert, ever, period. And look at this pseudo-patriotic bilge:

Gawd damn America, I say!! 

This is a complete & absolute lie. I was given no such options. 

Woman I talked to there kindly informed me that H-P "e" series printers (I have a 2855e) don't take remanufactured ink. Thank you so very gawddamn much for letting me know on your website or when I ordered it, you fucking assholes!! I believe the Cath-licks refer to that as a sin of omission, rather than of commission. Evil lies either way! Then she says she'll e-mail me a return label, & asks if I have any way to print the fucking thing. No, you dumb hoor, that's why the hell I'm calling your stupid ass in the first place!! And screw every single person at Hewlett-Packard in every damned orofice twice w/ a rusty chainsaw! I dare say everyone who has ever owned an H-P printer will agree w/ me on that. Hell, if anything were to start a worldwide revolution, it might well be by uniting the world against those rat-bastard pirates. I'm sure Hewlett & Packard spin eternally in their graves after seeing what their names have been reduced to by filthy pig greed. Now I have to leave the fucking house & go to Target if I want to use this bullshit printer. Fuck everything.

And Yankee Dabbler. Sent me a defective box car in fucking April, dealt w/ an incompetent buffoon who somehow couldn't find my 'phone number for a month because it was "blocked" & he was apparently unable to find it in all the information Yankee Dribbler has on me. Somehow he did find my e-mail, sent me an e-mail promising that some other fuck would send me a return label which hasn't happened for two wks. now. They finally acknowledged me today after an angry e-mail, but I didn't hear the 'phone ring, & called again so damn angry the chickenshit asshole hung up on me. I fucking hate people who get all pissy when you scream at them & call them the cheats, crooks & liars they are after they've spent two months ignoring or fucking w/ you. "Oh, don't curse me." You self-righteous prick. If I'd been in the same room w/ you ... You bastards sit there in New Jersey thinking I can't do one damn thing about your bullshit, then you claim "Oh it was just miscommunication". FUCK YOU!

Another outfit to watch for is Sagebrook Home, which advised my order was coming by UPS, which continued not to have the package, so I called them & they kindly sent a replacement, which arrived a day or two after the original order showed up, but shipped via FedEx. Done by some ignernt cracker moron warehouse worker in AsheSummerville, NC. Fuck you, moron!! I advised them of this wks. ago & asked them to send a return label. No action, as the saying goes. Today I called, rather than e-mailed, & had the operator/receptionist track down the person so I wouldn't be transferred to some bullshit answering system that won't record a message. (COWARDS!! Answer your fucking 'phones!!) So I did speak to her & she e-mailed me the damn label. Finally. Would've kept the damn thing but there is literally no place to put it in this tiny dump.

In conclusion, I so hate this fucking bullshit world of fucking bullshit & everybody in it, because you made it this way you pieces of shit.