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Sunday October 15, 2006 6:10 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:52 Sunset 18:42 Hours of daylight: 10:50
A. Morning Musings
6:10 am It is +13 C at the moment with light rain. The forecast is for a high of + 15 C.
My weight is steady at 184.
Top priority today is to apply the undercoat to the bathroom vanity cabinet. I plan to tack down the outer mainline track on my model train layout and begin adding to the wiring for that track.
B. Plan
Immediate Health Walk & exercise 1 hr Chores Paint new bathroom vanity cabinet 1 hr Model Trains Continue wiring outer mainline 3 hr Mathematics Read & make notes for "Fearless Symmetry" chap 4 1 hr Literature Continue reading "The Major Plays" by Anton Chekov 1 hr Later Chores Investigate water softeners for home Technology add keywords to iPhoto records 1 hr Read manual for cell phone Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac" Begin reading "iPhoto" digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Literature Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus Read "The Song of Roland" Mathematics Larson "Calculus" Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3 Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles" History Continue reading "Citizens" Watson "Ideas" Model Trains Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover Assemble second oil platform kit Puzzles The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9
C. Actual/Notes
9:15 am
9:15 am I have thumb tacked down and cleaned the complete outer mainline track. CN 7847 left Coaldale at 9:00 am and went as far as Distillery Row before reversing direction and returning to Coaldale. The trip was uneventful, however the power in the line at that point was too weak to continue. The next step will be add some additional wiring to boost the signal strength. There is a reversing loop around the coal mine at Black Diamond that will require special wiring for DC until I purchase the DCC equipment. Before I do the special wiring I will run a locomotive to the loop and then reverse it back to Coaldale. This will at least test the track for signal strength.
I will also try to complete some maintenance on two or three more cars and then add them to the layout. Track fastening and cleaning, wiring, and car maintenance gives a fair amount of variety to the day.
7:40 PM I have added one 4 terminal barrier strip to the layout. I now have power connecting to both ends of the Coaldale mainline track.
The power problem was due to a short circuit where a loop of track fed back on itself. I thought I had insulated the point of connection but a close examination indicated that I had missed this one connection. As soon as I replaced the metal connectors with a pair of plastic connectors I had full power on the locomotive for the entire length of the outer mainline track. Great. I need to buy some more 4 terminal barrier strips before continuing wiring the outer mainline track.
I dusted off two more cars and checked the couplers for height and action. CN 473966 (a box car) and CN 522360 (a stock car) are now on the layout. Diesel locomotive CN 7847 picked each of these cars up from a siding in the Coaldale yard and moved them to a classification track.
2:00 PM The bathroom vanity has been sanded down and the undercoat has been applied. Tomorrow I will apply the first coat of semi-gloss white paint. I am not sure if two more coats will do it, or if it will need three coats. Either way, it is almost finished.
D. Reflection