Today it was raining too much to haul my table materials to the house, so I decided to give the old 211 Texas Special another shot. I just cleaned the brushes and everything with rubbing alcohol and connected the rebuilt ZW transformer to the track. Either the cleaning or the high power got it going pretty well. Could have been a combination of the two. Once I had it running, I got to work on making a new horn for the top, from scratch. It turned out pretty well for a rush job. I then ran to the auto parts store and grabbed a couple of bulbs and cleaned and rewired the socket. It has a light again! I also added a lens to the front to make it look more like an actual headlight. Now I've got to come up with a plan for fixing that front apron and hope that will brace the front coupler up enough to keep the truck from derailing in reverse. My other project is to add some semi transparent plastic to the windows to hide the "hollow" look.
I also rewired and cleaned one of my two whistle tenders, bringing it back to life, for the second time in a week.
I also added a new headlight lens to my old 1666.
The last thing I did was add new truck springs to my 2020 Turbine. The front truck was jumping off the track way to often today. The only other thing it needs is a switch to turn the new smoker on and off. It runs you out of the room in just a few minutes as it stands.
I'm really hoping to get the table materials in the house tommorow and get started putting it together.
To think this journey started back in 2015.... It's taken five years just to get to the point where I can start a layout. I don't know how much more time will pass before I can get scenery on the table. I have some goodies coming, Thanks to Tom, which should give me a good start.
