Rail Rocket

Continuing the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex theme.

Looks like a V-2 to this reporter.Hardly prototypical, but none of the other U.S. Army rolling stock except the tank cars is. The Navy boxcar probably is.

This certainly isn't. It's Nazi-inspired as well.

The inspriation, a composite Krupp K5, from the captured Anzio Annie & Anzio Express.

Modifications & adjustments: One of the tabs on one of the trucks was broken; had a replacement on hand.

And decided the two wooden crates w/ trefoils were dangerous, & that the V-2 would look better centered on the car. Fortunately there was little glue used, & it took mere minutes.

Three dabs of paint & replacng the string w/ chains will finish the job. Dunno if the rocket is 3-D printed, but it's very light.

Moment Of Truth

Will It Or Won't It?

It will. Whew!

Too long for Blogger, forced to load it to YouTube.77 bones used (+ s&h) clean, all details accounted for & well broken in. Crawls & runs just fine. An Atlas Classic, Chinese-made, not Austrian, this livery & road number were released in Sep't. 2008, MSRP $139.95, up $35 from March 2007, & up 40 simoleons from April 2003 - May 2005. March '26: $209.95 or $329.95. Why I buy used. The sticker on the box, from MTHC (Mark Twain Hobby Center?) reads "Used As Is $48.15". The parts list claims the lights (currently not working) are LEDs, & that there's a light board, which should make DCC installation relatively easy.

Glamour Shot

I have more boxcars than I need & not enough reefers, stock cars, tank cars yada. There's also a possibility I really don't need more than five zebra-striped locomotives for a 9'x7' layout. STOP ME BEOFRE I PURCHASE AGAIN!!

Now I must wait until Tues. for the turnouts I ordered from Yankee Dabbler two damn wks. from next Tues. the 13th! Had to call them & read them the Riot Act, got some double-talk about what's in their warehouse & what's w/ their distributor, & the incompetent buffoon did notify me he'd send the turnouts immediately. After they fucked me earlier this yr. I resolved not to do business w/ them again, but it was the only place that had three of the turnouts I needed. When will I learn never to trust anyone, anywhere, about anything? P.S.: When you're delaying me & not infoming me why, don't get allpissyoif I use some salty language. Unless I specicfically ask Gawd to damn your useless ass to hell, saying "goddam" about some bullshit you're perpetuating is not a "curse", you illiterate dipstick!

Good Deal On Reefers!

Ha ha. Not that kind of reefers, ninnies.

Must admit I've not had a bad experience w/ ebay yet.

Certainly detailed enough for my purposes, which are quantity over quality.

(Now I've screwed myself. Next time won't work out.) Not that I spend big money or buy anything that isn't 20-40 yrs. old. Note the revision date on this; 03-06.

When Athern wasn't a corporate entity in Illinois.

The price tag on one box was dated 4/5/2008.

All Aboard For The Future!

Socialism's Positive Rating Tops 40% for First Time

• 43% of Americans view socialism positively
• Positive views of big business down to 35%; capitalism steady at 55%
• Small business, free enterprise remain most popular economic concepts

They may be wising up, but support for such amorphous concepts as "free enterprise" & "capitalism" is a good indication of how ignorant fools are turned out every graduation by America's bullshit educational system.

And "small business" is a knife that cuts both ways. Sometimes a small business is family exploiting family, or just greedy, small-minded pigs. And sometimes they are good businesses that do help local communities & economies.

Idle Thoughts I Barely Care About

Surely None Of You Will

Positive development: My primary care physician apparently over-diagnosed the thing on the bottom of my foot. Went all the way to Westwood to see a podiatrist, who said it was a mere callus, not the plantar wart (caused by a strain of HPV virus) the M.D. thought it was. He applied cryotherapy twice, the podiatrist simply shaved it right off. No pain, then or now.

Other non-negative note: Rec'd. both pension & Social Security today, & still had US$505.87 in the credit union & a twenty in my pants. Guess I can afford several turnouts at $30.00 each now.

Completely negative: Watching baseball on Peacock, & its few advertisers. Does NBCUniversal no longer have a sales staff? I'm more than ready for TikTok to be banned worldwide & all involved to be imprisoned if I see that effing advert once more. What a crock.If they can't get more than five or six sponsors, could the sponsors make a couple more commercials so we needn't see the same damn ones approximately 50+ times per game? Nor am I interested in any Peacock streaming series, let alone seeing the same promos over & over & over & over. And yes, we understand very well that "This copyrighted broadcast is presented by the authority of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball. It may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form, and the accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent." Most broadcasts only recite that once. I'm wearing out the mute button.

Good to see the Pale Hose beat the Houston Cheat-os. The South Siders might be fun in a Series w/ L.A.'s former Bums of Brooklyn. And maybe next yr. the Cubs & Sox can face off in the Series.

Monday Modeling Story

The Canucks Wanted to Kill Trump!!

In 1960!

T'row da bum out!! Off w/ his head!!

Tired Of It All Tues.

73 wasted yrs. in this world of shit & pain surrounded by brain-dead doody-heads. And summer will be gone w/in an hr.Just purchased a stupid, indulgent belated birthday gift for myself. Don't feel any better, maybe when it arrives.

This not-eating thing has worked out well: Eight days to the end of the month & even after indulging myself I've over US$600.00 in the credit union & 18 bones in folding money. Not to mention many dollars in quarters saved for laundry but now made superfluous by WASHConnect, which infects one's 'phone.

Can't possibly spend more than 100 bucks on "necessities" between now & the end of the month, so I s'pose I can indulge myself in the 100+ simoleons of turnouts & other railroading junk I need/want. And of course, the more one buys at one time, the more one makes up for shipping costs. Wheeee!

Currently attempting to consolidate, organize & discard some things that have been piled up all over, many of which have ended up on the only flat surface available.

And elsewhere.

Friday Night Fun W/ The Big Apple

A very impressive distraction for the end of yet another incredibly stupid wk.Read all about it. Inspiration.

Model Railroad Humor

From.

8647, Comin' Down The Line!

Won't even need to re-number it for the last train to Mar-a-Lago.

BNSF Needles Subdivision at East Siberia, California - MP 674.3 30 January 2016

Bigger than life at the source.

Get Away From Me, You Loathsome Bastard!

Nowhere is safe. Can't even watch model railroading videos w/o this bullshit being shoved in my face.Much more appropriate transportation for his bruised lumpiness.

Can't wait to see his rotting corpse hauled to the boneyard in this coffin by the renumbered 8647 loco.

The pricks at UP have painted three locos to "pay tribute to our nation’s presidents". (Tribute* indeed: Apparently this 4547 abomination is the Union Pacific sucking up to Fats to get their purchase of Norfolk Southern approved.) The other two are "tribute" to Abraham Lincoln & oil man G.H.W. Bush, the one-term 41st Pres. who lost to Slick Willie. That's some accomplishment. F.D.R.? J.F.K.? Demoncrats, obviously. No more UP rolling stock on the layout; they're not getting a penny in licensing from me. 

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*Per Merriam-Webster: "Historical Payment: Wealth or valuables given by a weaker nation or group to a dominant power as a sign of submission or to ensure peace."

Saturday Night At The Movies

I stand 100% w/ our relatives, friends & neighbors in Canada in their struggle w/ the idiots in the current Republican regime & its active attempts to destroy North America*.Interesting that Charles Smiley Presents released this ©2009 compilation just five days ago.

Also of interest? Two of the Class I railroads operating in these United Snakes are Canadian.

Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway trade the top spot depending on the metric used. Based on the most recent full-year data (2024):

• Union Pacific Railroad – $24.3 Billion Revenue, 32,100 route miles, 32,400 employees
• BNSF Railway – $23.4 Billion Revenue, 32,500 route miles, 41,000 employees
• Canadian National Railway – $17.1 Billion Revenue (CAD), 20,000 route miles, 24,000 employees
• CSX Transportation – $14.5 Billion Revenue, 21,000 route miles, 20,900 employees
• CPKC – $14.2 Billion Revenue, 20,000 route miles, 20,000 employees
• Norfolk Southern Railway – $12.1 Billion Revenue, 19,400 route miles, 19,600 employees
The 2023 CPKC merger significantly reshaped the competitive landscape. Before the merger, Kansas City Southern was the smallest Class I with revenues of just $2.75 billion and 4,000 route miles. The combined CPKC is now comparable in size to CSX and CN, making the six freight Class I railroads much more evenly matched than at any time in modern history.

If you didn't figure it out, the CP in CPKC is Canadian Pacific. That 2023 merger was the result of CP purchasing the KCS from NdeM, the national railroad of Mexico. Them furriners have a stranglehold on us! What will happen when Yank farmers run out of fertilizer & whatnot because of tariffs & oil scarcity? We won't be able to afford Canadian imports either!

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*Does that make me a traitor? I hope so. Slap the bracelets on, G-Men!

Here's a New One: "Leninist Capitalism"

Or "Stalinist Capitalism"

Why Are We (and Were We) in Vietnam?

Today on TAP: The nation that defeated the U.S. 50 years ago now has the largest trade surplus with us of any nation.

A quarter-century ago, when advocates of normalizing trade relations with China insisted that doing so would compel China to transform itself into a democracy, America’s unions, a number of social democrats (including at the Prospect), and a smattering of China hands (James Mann in particular) called that argument a non sequitur: Capitalism had co-existed with right-wing authoritarianism and dictatorship, and would with its left-wing (or ostensibly left-wing) counterparts, too. Today, Leninist one-party rule (or in China, neo-Stalinist one-leader rule) gets along just fine with the C-suites of America’s corporations and banks, for the same reason that Wall Street prefers production in “right-to-work” states: the absence of worker power and the ensuing low levels of workers’ wages.

Meet the new boss, chumps!

I know one of the major Murkin model railroad manufacturers (w/ SoCal roots; started at a hobby shop on Hollywood Blvd.) has moved most if not all its production from China to Vietnam. Great fucking job, from Eisenhower through Kennedy, Johnson & Nixon.

Ha ha. Defeated in war & then in economic competition. Tell us again how the Democrats are all "Commies" & you're all for "free markets" you corporate fellow travelers. We won't be free until we've purified this evil species by eliminating the highly functioning psychopaths.

Slow Summer Sunday ...

Still 'phoning it in. Not that anyone's watching or listening, let alone paying.

At an impasse; I need a mess of new turnouts & I have to decide which brand(s) & sizes to buy. (Walthers or PECo?) Already have track I may never use, so I'm planning & measuring at least twice. Also realized a crossover is needed.

Have two used ones, but I effed one up a bit & the other doesn't work so well either.

Two new turnouts may be easier & less expensive than taking this to Burbank's Train Shack at US$75.00/hr.

Note broken piece of brass(?) that allows the point rail to flop about.

That grommet is yesterday's technology, 'though this newer model doesn't appear any easier to repair.

This will now require hrs. more experimentation & the joining & rejoining of track, turnouts & paper templates. One hears the phrase "World's Greatest Hobby" a lot; thinking it's somewhere between most irksome & most boring.

Have some all-American track-laying, re-laying & then laying again & again music.

This cat is quite the selector. Hey-bob-a-re-bop!

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 ...