Monday, January 23
5:00 am
It is -1 °C, with a high forecast of +4 °C.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today A mix of sun and cloud. Becoming sunny this morning. Wind southwest 20 km/h gusting to 40 becoming west 40 gusting to 60 late this morning. High plus 4.
Tonight Clear. Wind southwest 30 km/h gusting to 50. Low minus 3.
Normals: Max. -1 °C Min. -13 °C.
10:10 am Model Trains
Sometimes it makes sense to step back and wait a bit. A few days ago I began to add ballast to my mainline track on my layout. I soon developed a technique for adding the ballast that was fairly quick but when I tried to add the glue I encountered major difficulties. The glue would form a globule over the ballast and disturb the placement of the particles. The written description of the steps did not mention that this was even a possibility and, obviously, did not discuss how to prevent it from happening.
This morning I tried again with the same result as before. Then the lightbulb finally went on above my head. Try google! I typed in "adding ballast to track" and the first item on the list was a youtube demo of how to do this. Excellent!
Basically there are 3 steps.
First, add the loose ballast. I was doing this properly but the approach used in the video was even better - much quicker than my approach. Just pour the ballast onto the track using an empty plastic soft drink bottle with the top cut off so one can bend it to form a V. Then use a 1" brush to clear the excess ballast off the railway ties.
Two, spray the ballast with a fine mist. This is where I went wrong before. The idea is to wet the granules without dislodging them from the track roadbed. Getting water on the layout is not a problem - it just dries with no effect on anything. When the instructions I was following said to spray the ballast I thought they meant with the glue mixture, not with just water.
Three, add a glue mixture. Now I can use the large dropper and it just flows onto the ballast and seeps into the granules (no globules are formed). When it dries, everything is solidly in place.
It took me about 20 minutes to complete all three steps for a section of about 3'.
I now feel that I have a process that I can confidently use to complete this activity for all of my mainline track in a reasonable amount of time.
5:00 PM Literature
I am making good progress with REAMDE. It is a fast-paced yarn with lots of tech jargon. The story line is based on the articles that appeared a couple of years ago about the relationship between the virtual money of some popular multi-player role playing games and the real money of everyday use. Throw in the Russian mafia and the Chinese hackers and you have a high action, high drama scenario, and in this case a long one.