Well, the issues I reported on last month (spinal stenosis) has not improved. I had not been down to the trains for most of the month. Finally, on August 28th, I had a chair lift installed which has allowed me access to the trains. I call it my "basement express". The chair runs on a rail, so it is a sort of railroad. At this point in time, I'm not sure what all I will be able to do on the trains until things improve. I hope to provide updates along the way. Thanks for checking in and don't forget to check out my YouTube channel @johnlazar7582.
Well the sciatica that I mentioned last month turned out to be something called Spinal Canal Stenosis. Basically, two of of my vertebrae have shifted and placed a constriction on my spinal cord. This has made walking and standing very painful, so nothing was done on the trains this past month. In fact, I haven't been down to the train room in over two weeks. Treatments are scheduled, but I have no idea when I will be able to resume my model railroading activities. Tune into my site next month for an update. Meanwhile, I did manage to make one video of the RMRR and six shorts. All can be seen on my YouTube channel, which is @johnlazar7582. Below is a link to the one video. Thanks for watching! I developed a bad case of sciatica at the very beginning of June and was unable to do any work on either of my layouts. The sciatica is extremely painful when I stand or walk. I'm currently undergoing a schedule of meds and physical therapy, it's been a tough, frustrating month. I did, however, manage to film 23 shorts and 4 videos for YouTube. They were almost exactly divided between the HO RMMR and my O gauge layout, 12 HO shorts and 2 HO videos, 11 O gauge shorts and 2 O gauge videos. The HO videos may be of interest to the readers of this blog and I have provided links to them. Hopefully I will soon be able to get the sciatica behind me and get back to working on the trains, Sitting around on the couch all day has allowed me to think up multiple projects. Thanks for tuning in! As predicted, not much was accomplished during the month of May. Inclement weather, and other issues, kept me from working on my outdoor G gauge layout. I had hoped to convert one of my G gauge locomotives to remote control, but the friend who planned to help me was not available.
We also had an unusual number of family events during the month, allowing minimal time to work on trains, Plus, for the first time in years, I took on a Lionel train set repair job that consumed the little time that I had. I did, however, really enjoy fixing up that Lionel train set from 1955! I found some time to make three videos of my O gauge layout, that I posted on YouTube. I also made 15 "shorts", six of the O gauge layout and nine of the HO layout. All can be found on my YouTube channel. To end this month's post, I'll leave you with a photo that I recently used for my YouTube channel. See you next month! I ended up my posting last month by saying that I didn't expect to get much done in April, due to Easter and family commitments. However, I actually did get a lot accomplished this past month. Although nothing new got accomplished on the RMRR HO layout, I did finally get my outdoor G gauge layout running after 3 years. The G Gauge layout was totally overgrown with weeds, vines, small tree seedlings and loaded with rotten leaves from the past winter. It took about a week to clean it up and get the track operational. I had to rewire and replace corroded and split rail joiners. It was a tough job, mostly working on my old knees. I produced and posted a video of the G layout on YouTube. I also finally got to out to my good friend Joe Leahy's layout to video it. His layout was featured in the October 2019 "Model Railroader", it is truly a fantastic home layout. I produced a video using a black and white 16mm film that I shot back in1967. It was about a trip to the Horseshoe Curve and featured my family as the actors. I also caught a local CSX freight in Kittrell, NC. This is the first "real" train that I managed to photograph in several years. Along with the previous mentioned videos, I posted 16 "shorts" and 4 other videos to YouTube. Two of the new videos were of the Red Mountain Railroad and links are included in this post. I hope you enjoyed the new videos. May is shaping up to be another busy month and I don't expect to get too much layout work done. I do want to get the buildings back on the G layout and run a few more trains. See you next month!
As I mentioned last month, during March I would be focusing on adding a small, 3'X6', yard to my O gauge layout. This would allow me to stage trains for my videos and provide some equipment storage. I also upgraded the scenery on the main part of the layout, basically converting the small farm to a little mill town and fixing up the swimming hole scene below the bridge on the upper loop. Those goals were met, below are some photos of these additions/improvements. I continued to add videos and shorts to YouTube. This is a great forum to display my layouts and provide a long term record of what I have accomplished. I've actually been really enjoying this facet of the hobby over the past year, it has allowed me to meet new people with similar interest and to share ideas. I produced three new videos, all about the O gauge layout improvements that I talked about above, and 19 "shorts". Ten of the shorts are of my HO layout, the Red Mountain Railroad, which is the main subject of this web site. All of these can be viewed on my channel, which is "John Lazar". Please watch and subscribe!
I had hoped to do more this month on both of my layouts, but due to some serious power issues in our main breaker panel and the repainting of two rooms, I lost about two weeks of hobby time. I doubt if this will improve much in April due to Easter and a number of scheduled family events. See you next month! Well I'm a day late (and a dollar short) getting this blog update out. Its been a busy week and the short month of February caused me to slip up and forget to post this yesterday. I did some maintenance work on the Edstown removable section this month. Back in November 2022 I removed this section to install new street lights. When I replaced the section the tracks would not align properly, so I had to do some track work to get them back in alignment. At the end of February I'm in the process of adding a small addition to the O gauge layout, more on this next month. Beyond those two activities, I mostly ran trains on both layouts and produced four regular YouTube videos and seventeen shorts. The shorts are something new for me, they are usually only 15 seconds long. YouTube has been encouraging people to make "shorts". They are easy to make and generally produce a lot of interest. I'll attach links to the two videos that I made of the my HO Red Mountain Railroad. If you would like to see the other videos and shorts, please visit my channel and subscribe. It is under my name, John Lazar. Thanks for visiting my website! See you next month! Well, as I mentioned last month, I would be slow getting started on the HO layout due to our plumbing issues. When I did finally get to working on the RMRR I found out that the old section of the layout was dead. I spent a day and a half trying to figure out why I had no power on this part of the layout, but I could not find the problem. What made diagnosing so hard was that when I built the old section of the layout in 2003 I used scraps of wire and old toggle switches, some of them being 50 years old or more. Also the wiring under the old section looked like a bowl of spaghetti. When I built the new sections, starting in 2010, I did a great job with the wiring. Everything was new, organized, marked and color coded. So I made the hard, but correct, decision to rip out all of the wiring on the old section and totally rewire it. To explain what I did visually, I made a video and uploaded it to mu YouTube channel. Here's the video: Other than this rewiring job, there was nothing new done on any of my layouts. As we enter February I do have some plans for the RMRR. Most of it is MOW (Maintenance of Way) work, but I also hope to get started on at least one new project. Besides the video above, on my power failure, I produced and uploaded to YouTube six other new videos. Four of them had to do with my O gauge layout. They all can be found on my YouTube channel, but here are links to two that may be of interest. The first one is about the HO Sipping and Switching Society, a group that sets up modular layouts in large spaces. These guys do some fantastic work! The other video is about Lionel's scale Hudsons. Enjoy the videos and I hope to see you all back next month! Happy New Year! Wow, am I late posting this! I've never been this late before, but it is with good reason. I had a bad head cold on New Years day, and beyond, and then we found out that our drain line in the house was clogged! I was able to get the City people here on January 2 to see if the clog was due to their line being backed up (which has happened before), but it was not. I finally got a plumber to come out late yesterday (January 3rd) and he was able to unclog our lines, but it took him everything in his bag of tricks to find the clog. Because our clean-out is in one of my hobby rooms, I had to remove everything that could possibly be affected. As it turned out, I didn't have to do that. Today I spent most of the day getting things back to normal. Anyway, as I figured last month, I did not have any time to work on anything on the HO layout, which is what this blog is about. I did find some time to produce and post to YouTube 5 videos. Only one of the videos was about the HO layout, three were of the O gauge layout and one was a video Christmas Card. I'm hoping to get back to working on the HO layout in January, but so far it hasn't looked good. I have several projects in mind that I hope to pursue. With luck, I'll be reporting on those next month. Meanwhile, here are links to my latest videos Well it was another month of no new project work on the Red Mountain Railroad. It was a busy month for us again, which allowed minimal train room time. It will stay that way this month as we prepare for Christmas. I don't anticipate anything new being done on either my HO or O layout until January. We did make another trip to Wilmington for Thanksgiving, but I did not get back to the Railroad Museum. However I did manage to produce six new videos for YouTube, but only one was about the RMRR. In that video I talked about how I scratch built the coal wharf for Blairsville Yard. There were three videos about the O gauge layout, including one I titled "Lionel Christmas Trains" that I posted just today. I also made two videos using clips of old 8mm movies that I shot some time ago. I attached links, below, to the RMRR coal wharf video and the three Lionel videos. Enjoy the videos and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, like and/or comment. See you next month! Have a safe holiday season! |