kristof65

Well, you would never have to worry about me stealing your jelly bellys....

As I was in amusement and vending in the 90s, I used to have access to several catalogs like that as well. Quite fun to browse through. When I worked at the family fun center, we had "shopping days" for the skee ball ticket counter prizes, where the manager, assistant manager, the head cashier and two lucky randomly picked employees got to sit down with one of those company sales reps, and place the prize order for the upcoming season. The company sales reps would show up with bags and bags full of samples. FTFY

Man, that would be cool to run across.

As I delve more into the modular N-scale world, I'm finding my idea of adding futuristic/fantastic stuff to my modules isn't really that unique of an idea. I've found tons of photos of modules with toy dinosaurs, crashed UFOs, Star Wars ships & figures, Gundam robots, War of the Worlds ships & figures, HG Wells Time machine, even WH40k models - heck, I even found a module that was Barbie and Ken as if they were operating a model railroad running through their living room. The only unique thing about my idea right now appears to be the use of CAV models specifically. ETA; Oh, and Tardis & The Doctor. I can't believe I forgot that one. It's surprising the number of modules that appear otherwise "normal" that have a little blue police box tucked somewhere.

He finally got it, and then changed his tune. Now he wants to know who's going to compensate him for the lost business these transactions represent. I told him to talk to the processor. Cause that's the point I've been trying to make with them the last three times.

So I hit submit reply on my post here, went to go pick up my kid from school, and returned to find a quote for the site from the salesman in my inbox. It's not a generic quote though, it's specific to the site, which means someone told him something. But since he sent it to just me, I'm guessing that it was the Gen Mgr. I'm a little annoyed by that.

Basically, yes, but I don't think it's intentional. I think it's more about reading comprehension. I was going back over a previous conversation I had with the distributor tech about this same site a while back, and saw where she had told me English was not his first language. I had forgotten that. He hasn't responded back since my last email, so he may have finally gotten it. So the sales guy has blown me off and not given me the generic quote, like I asked. On the flip side of things, I haven't heard back from the landlord guy, either, so I haven't pushed it. Based on my conversation with the General Manager, I think I can probably get away with writing the quote myself - which will piss the sales guy off, but meh, I don't care. Cross that bridge when it comes to it. But it doesn't just end there if you're looking for drama. The car wash owner sent me a link to an old local paper article about the landlord. Apparently, he's a realtor and he did this to a restaurant owner - tried to take over their burger business when their lease was up. The community was up in arms over it because after kicking the old burger place out, he changed one letter of the name, and added one menu item, and tried to basically use the goodwill the previous business had built up. He didn't even bother to change the menu font. There are even allegations that before the lease was up, he entered the restaurant after hours and copied all their recipes and operating procedures. So I'm hoping that either the car wash owner will prevail OR the landlord will buy his new equipment from one of our competitors. And as I'm proofing this before I post, I realized that some of the info said landlord guy gave me, combined with some things @Green Eyed Monsty paints one interesting possibility. I asked him if he had any car wash experience, because it's not about picking up your quarters once a week - it's hard work. He told me he used to work for his grandfather's all cash business when he was growing up in a city well known for it's mob connections. Hmmm.....

OMG... Currently arguing with a customer about ~$800 in credit card transactions. This is part of that big processor issue from the weekend. Anyway, this guy wants to be paid for transactions that were recorded in his system, but for which the system errored out, and the customer was not given a wash. Now I can see how he might not have understood the various flags and that he needed an explanation, but I've now explained it to him three times, and he's still not understanding that he's not supposed to be paid for those transactions. You don't charge someone for something they didn't get, even if the system still has their transaction data in the buffer. All he is seeing is eight hundred dollars! and not listening. He just wants to be paid for them before the data is flushed from the buffer. I have half a mind to manually delete the buffer and say "oops, too late." But that could cause other issues if we need to look up a valid transaction.

I think there can be a lot of cross over in several hobbies - miniature painting, model railroads, doll houses, model building, just to name a few. When I first joined the train club here, I thought I was going to have to do more explaining of my miniatures hobby - turns out the club president's adult son is big into Star Wars Legions and mini painting, so most of the group already knew what I was talking about. I've been using my Reaper and Vallejo paints on my module - for the most part I see no need to invest in yet more paints just for model railroading.

Hmm. Turns out I didn't take any pictures of the yards or switching modules other than this one: This one is I think a quadruple and a triple module together. The switching setup I thought you would like to see consisted of 3 or 4 triple modules, which are approximately a meter long each. Switching and train operations aren't my thing, so no photos. I just like building scenery and watching trains go by it.

Funny that we both thought to bring the discussion here at the same time. There are people who build sets of switching modules. I believe I have some photos of some from the Des Moines Train Show on my phone. Let me see if I can find them.

@WhiteWulfe As not to derail the Department of Acquisitions thread, @Corsair's dead on with using T-Trak to get into model railroading without breaking the bank/having the space. I've wanted a layout for decades, but didn't have the space at first, and when I finally did, I knew myself well enough to realize that It would only get partially built and never finished. Then I saw T-Trak - took me another decade to actually jump in and do it. The modules are as small as 308mm x 210 mm, but can be as large as 1238mm by 330mm. If you have a local club, then you can run all sorts of large trains. If you (or anyone) wants to check it out, I recommend starting here: https://nationalt-traklayout.com/2020-virtual-layout It's a show case of 400+ modules.

Nice. Locomotives are crazy expensive these days, especially DCC equipped. I've got an N-scale Kato Amtrak P42 and a three coach set that from Amazon that is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Wasn't going to get it until one of the club members pointed out that the price for the set on Amazon was only $10-20 more than the price of the locomotive alone.

I thought about high gloss for the canopies, but that will have a tendency to reflect the room lighting, which could really vary from location to location. The module will have a backboard/backdrop that shows mostly blue skies, so I think it would be better to paint the canopies to assume the same blue skies. I may still go the gloss route for the one that will be inside the building (not currently shown), because I'd like to put an intermittently flashing LED in there to represent welding, and it would be cool to see that reflect off the "glass" there.

No, no commercial links. I did manage to find the same set on Amazon before I saw your reply here, though. Wish I would have seen this first - would have saved me time knowing the item name. They have been ordered. Considering how I want to paint up the CAV cockpit windows. Normally, for my gaming models, I just do a simple three color scheme in grey or blue that hints at the idea of reflective glass - I don't get too specific, because they're obviously getting moved around. But in this diorama, they're going to be in static positions, and mostly viewed from the same angles. So I'm thinking about trying to get fancy and trying to paint the cockpit glass as it might reflect the surroundings - just not quite sure if I'm skilled enough to do that. On the other hand, when I was at the train show this past weekend, I think I'm probably ahead of 80-90% of the other module builders in terms of my modeling and painting skills - I think most of them are more about running the trains than doing all the detailing. So anything I attempt will probably be quite passable by their standards, even if it couldn't even get an MSP Open Certificate of Merit. Anyone know of any online tutorials for painting reflective glass at smaller scales?