- December 7
Now that the Coca-Bubblie building has stairs and an elevator shaft that
permit workers to pass from floor to floor, Ed Drozd is adding floors and
associated support columns. In another part of Gifford City, Andy Miller
continued work on the Hotel Bassex, adding a back wall and additional side
walls. John Purbrick installed an interlocking tower at the end of Gifford
Passenger Yard nearest the double doors. This required some countersinking
into the scenery. Alvar Saenz-Otero filled the Coke machine, updated the
financial records, and discussed System3 with John Purbrick.
Recent weeks have featured several visits by "olde time TMRCies" - a couple
visits by Mike Newman and a visit tonight by Bill Freeman.
- December 11
Bill continued to work on the vegetable oil facility. Next to him
Ed worked on the details of Coca Bubblie by adding columns both
in the inside and the outside. Andy also worked on scenery, continuing
his work on the great hotel downtown. John Shriver was around today to
work on the switch ladder into the carbarn. Alvar and Ed then tested
our control system computer for Y2K complieance, and while MS-DOS quickly
failed the test (just at about fake 01/01/2000 00:01 we rebooted, and
DOS thought it was 01/01/1980 00:02), when we set the bios to 01/01/2000
and rebooted, both the BIOS and DOS reported the correct time. So we
are safe from Armagedon at TMRC :-) James and Alvar later on talked more
System 3, trying to come up with a good design for the system, and
we reached at least partial resolution on using the same processors
for everything, and some other details to be worked our with JP and JEB
later on. At the end of the day James and Alvar decided to 'just do it'
and put a curtain separation between Gifford City and the back of the room
in order to soon be able to open the window into the hall.
- December 22
Ed Drozd has added some realistic structural supports to the part of
Coca-Bubblie that hangs over its siding. This is somewhat complex as the
siding curves more than the building does. Ed tested the clearance and
found that all freight cars except high-cube covered auto carriers fit. A
full-length dome car scrapes only very slightly, but we don't expect our
passengers will be interested in a trip to the Bubblie siding.
Ed also helped Andy Miller perform some locomotive perfromance tests and
equipment debugging on some of his equipment.
John McNamara had been working on a wall section that fits where the office
area joins the main roundhouse. It is modeled to look as if the office was
an afterthought and one of the roundhouse windows was converted into a
door.
James Knight refilled the Coke machine. Business is down a little bit due
to school vacation and upcoming holidays. He also did some more research on
PIC processors.
- December 29
John Shriver worked on the carbarn ladder and has completed the in-street
running rail portion. Andy Miller worked on a sign for the side of the
Hotel Bassex. John McNamara worked on the office area of the roundhouse.
Ken Terrell ran his Twentieth Century Limited for the first time on the new
layout and for possibly the last time in its namesake century. Stefano and
Esme Curtarolo worked on freight cars and buildings respectively. Ben
FrantzDale and Molly visited, as did James VanBokkelen. The three of them
performed the most important TMRC task - supervising.
