Yesterday I asked students to first estimate, then calculate, the speed in miles per hour that this train was traveling with respect to the HO scale figure walking along the tracks (this "scene" runs along the whiteboard on the north wall of the classroom):

Jeff Allen

Things have been moving along smartly and we’ve got enough sections up and operational to run a switch job in the town of Park.

The Maker Faire is over and I’m finally able to set up the sectional layout that my students have been building for the past few years in our classroom.

A Mini Maker Faire is being held tomorrow on the campus of the school where I teach. I’ll be hosting a booth for stone cutting and polishing.

I’m looking for feedback on this plan for the terminus of an agricultural branch line on the freelance HO layout I’m building in a middle school classroom with my students. The period and region are not precise, but a 1930s flavor is intended with a theme of reefers and produce packing sheds.

Based on the material posted in this blog I put together a slideshow/talk and have had the pleasure and the privilege to share it at model railroad conferences and conventions over the past 14 months.

A couple of weeks ago, reading the Proto Throttle thread and contemplating the experiences that I’ve had and advice I’ve received over a couple of years, I finally decided to pull the trigger on upgrading my DCC system to meet the new demands I expect to put on it this year.

The school year began last Tuesday, and I welcomed back last year’s seventh graders, now railroad veterans in eighth, along with the crop of new seventh graders. The sectional railroad is still in summer storage but I have the Inglenook set up in a corner of the room, available as a teaching aid for learning the basics.

I’ve been “away from my blog” for too long! This was a tough year, but we did make progress on the railroad in my classroom and I’m finally able to devote a bit of time to sharing it.

Things got off to a bit of a slow start this year. My school hosts a “Mini Maker Fair” in October and my room is used for clinics and exhibits so I couldn’t bring the four existing sections down from storage until that was over.