GMTX locomotives

[SD40-2]

Totally understandable Shawn. Burnout is very much a real thing. If you want to come back, we'll still be here. To be honest, I'm going through a minor case of burnout because of COVID-19 (I don't have it, but it's made life frustrating for me.), college burnout, and not having a easily alternative to V-scale.

[sburr]

Have to agree with you guys, COVID-19 has just burned so many people out, me being one of them. I can't tell the difference between telework and relaxation on the computer anymore, just have to get away from it after 8 hours cooped up with it in 10 x 10 room. Not only that, I did get it while in NJ at the end of August for my mother-in-law's funeral. Fortunately was a very mild case and I was back up and running in a week, All that being said, I haven't touched MSTS or for that matter anything else on the computer because I'm just plain sick of it at the end of the day, and can't wait to get away from it on the weekends,

Take care, this too shall pass, We'll get through it.

[CSRX]

The whole Covid-19 situation too has kept me down. Total of four weeks I had to be out of work, thankfully the railroad paid it as PTO/Sick Leave, and no one came back positive, it was frustrating. I haven't even had the chance to visit family back in Maine due to this whole ordeal, and it's been almost a full year, next month, that I haven't seen them.

Work itself has been up and down, it's slow, then picks up, then slows down. Normally we get pretty busy at this time of year, with propane and salt coming in like it's going out of style, but so far, trickles of propane cars coming in, and no salt cars what so ever. Just a few months ago, most trains got cancelled due to simply no traffic, however at least Omya has picked up a bit. So that's always a bonus.

I've been wanting to finish several projects, including the Maine Central pack (locomotives and cars all based on TS/SLI equipment) and possibly tackle the version 2 of the MEC Mountain Division. Though I feel several folks have lost interest in that seems well.. It's been constant battle of is it ever going to be released or not, for the past oh, 10 years now? So, I don't blame people for not even batting an eye this time around on it. Unfortunately it never saw the amount of traffic that most routes see that are released from SLI/TS or a western route of UP, ATSF, etc. I always wanted to build several routes anyways, but that list burnt me out something fierce too. Of course, the main one being the MEC Mountain Division, followed up the Vermont Rail System (all of the B&R, VTR, GMRC, CLP subs in one package), Pan Am Southern, Bangor & Aroostook/CM&Q, and the District One of Pan Am/Guilford. Of course, with the constant change of Route Editors and chasing down the appropriate DEMS, getting them converted with a program you have to chase down, because that always changes too, was just a big turn away as well.

Anyways, I need to take a peak, see what projects I had left stashed away, and see what can be done. I got five days off coming up, so maybe on a dreadful rainy day I can at least put together what is almost 100 percent finished, and get it available. The rest, I could pass off to a friend or two and let them take a whack at it.

Thanks for understanding!

[pwillard]

I get it.

Just goes to show, it's always something. In my case... I'm recovering from WIN7 crapping all over itself. Oh, I do daily backups... what I don't do is regular system shutdowns. So, the system craps itself, and I do a reboot, Win 7 takes *45 Minutes* before I can log in and still behaves like a snail slogging through molasses. So I decide to shut down for diagnosis (first time in many weeks) ...and 2 hours later it's still shutting down. Luckily, the hardware is all good. Ok, I have yesterday's backup, so restore it (takes 2 hours). Nope, same issue... ok... another 2 hours and I try Friday backup... the same thing... ok, try last Wednesday... Same again (Aint nobody got time for this). Start a fresh windows 7 install yesterday... I can always reinstall and I have backups of all my data... so... I slog away at it for now the second day. Oh and just as everything starts coming back together... Samsung monitor goes dark. No backlight anymore. <Sigh, I can't win>

After all this... am I thinking about working on any projects? Ummmm... Simple answer. "no".

[dedwa15237]

I get it.

Just goes to show, it's always something. In my case... I'm recovering from WIN7 crapping all over itself. Oh, I do daily backups... what I don't do is regular system shutdowns. So, the system craps itself, and I do a reboot, Win 7 takes *45 Minutes* before I can log in and still behaves like a snail slogging through molasses. So I decide to shut down for diagnosis (first time in many weeks) ...and 2 hours later it's still shutting down. Luckily, the hardware is all good. Ok, I have yesterday's backup, so restore it (takes 2 hours). Nope, same issue... ok... another 2 hours and I try Friday backup... the same thing... ok, try last Wednesday... Same again (Aint nobody got time for this). Start a fresh windows 7 install yesterday... I can always reinstall and I have backups of all my data... so... I slog away at it for now the second day. Oh and just as everything starts coming back together... Samsung monitor goes dark. No backlight anymore. <Sigh, I can't win>

After all this... am I thinking about working on any projects? Ummmm... Simple answer. "no".

If you still get system shutdowns, and “assume” the hardware is all good, check again... I think you may need to add something on your CPU processor, You may wanna repaste with some heat sink grease, as it maybe drying out over the years... Ifound that it does stop the shutdown trick as I cleaned out the old heat sink paste and reply an fresh one, and eliminated the shutdown issue. So check that out..

[R. Steele]

...and if you have an older hard drive for your boot drive, clone to a new SSD, large Terabyte drives ( 1TB-2TB) are inexpensive. I just did that, also upgrading the graphics card and WIN7 boots very fast. I also repasted the CPU, I've read that should be done every 3 years, although, not my field of expertise...

You may need to do a complete disk check and defrag before cloning.

[pwillard]

Taking this advice, I got a 1TB SSD from Microcenter, their 'house' Inland brand, for $89. 10 second boot time, shorter shutdowns. Original system drive... retired.

[wwhall]

I went through some of this a few weeks ago, but with Windows 10. I had upgraded by computer to Windows 10 because I run some non-simulator programs that required it. All well and good. Then my computer started slowing down--long boot times, lower frame rates, etc. I did all the usual virus and malware checks. Checked all the hard drives for problems. Ran diagnostics. All checked fine. Then one day, the computer wouldn't even turn on. I thought the power switch (relay) had gone bad. I bypassed it--nothing. I finally broke down and took the computer to a computer shop. Both the motherboard and CPU had died. Other then age, the only theoretical reason was a power spike (we get a lot of thunderstorms where I live). The computer is protected by a surge protector on my UPS, with another surge protector between it and the computer. It is still possible, however, for a hard, fast spike to sometimes get past both.

At any rate, the bottom line was I had to buy a new computer. The new one is much faster, much better, and actually cost less than the one it replaced. Fortunately, all my data was intact. After the usual brain damage of re-installing programs, etc., I'm back to normal on my computer. At least until the next thunderstorm season . . .

[pwillard]

And people want to know why we don't just whip up a complete project in a few days... The universe has other plans for us sometimes.

[R. Steele]

Yep, Pete --- it seems like this hobby is actually a couple of hobbies rolled into one...computer tech and software "awareness" and train simulation...although I think it may be easier than carpentry, electrical, painting, modeling, wiring, and the many other skills required for real "Model Railroad" in the garage or basement setup.