So this all started about a month ago when a message was left on my voicemail at work by the owner of what was the best hobby shop in Salem, OR before he retired and closed it. We also have a relationship through my current job as well. Suffice it to say, he knew I was into model railroading. 

You know that point where you get done to the point that the rest of it just seems to go into overdrive? 

Yeah, normally me neither. 

But this time... about two days ago I looked at the layout and pretty much went, hey, this is finished enough to show!

Okay, so I'm now to the inside of the track when it comes to scenery - outside the track was pretty simple, but going inside meant I had to decide what Lone Hill Park actually looks like. 

I decided to start with the walking paths in order to define sections to the park - a large field for kite flying, smaller sections for picnic tables, and of course Lone Hill, with it's path to the top. 

Okay, the "Portable Display Layout" now has a name - the Lone Hill Park RR. 

Once I decided to build a portable layout like this, I also decided that I was going to use it to do a few things I've not done before - such as making a major terrain feature out of foam and Celluclay. 

I've used Sculptomold before but have been told that Celluclay is superior - it does appear to be more fine grained a product. However, I've also discovered that at around 65-69deg F. it also takes forever to dry/cure. 

Okay, it's not going nearly as fast as I need it to - partially because I was too afraid of making a mess. I forgot how much diluted glue doing something like this takes.... 

So, I've carved a hill that I'll hit with Celluclay and put in a parking lot and the start of a "woodchip" path:

I was asked to help find some portable layouts locally for a display (incl. handing over the throttles) at a local retirement home. I've gotten some responses to it, and I'll definitely be getting back to them about it, but I also thought that this might be a nice opportunity to build something of a throwaway layout. 

In Z scale. 

Mea Culpa.... I completely forgot to finish off my series of layout photos from the 2012 Grand Rapids NMRA Convention. 

Skip's layout is the Arcadia & Betsy River RR, a two level standard gauge timber oriented layout. 

As soon as your walk in the door to Skip's layout you are greeted by this dramatic gorge scene:

Okay, I went over to ExactRail before the show closed so I could get some photos of their new wheelsets - they come in brass, nickel-silver (which is plated brass, I believe) and blackened. 

Now, the whole idea was to get a more prototypical appearance out of the things. That's it - and according to Blaine, the machine they got to both make the stepped appearance on the axle as well as the curves on the inside of the wheel was a whole lot more expensive than one that they could have gotten to just make them in the regular shapes. 

Joe Fugate flew into Grand Rapids on Friday for the National Train Show - and since he hadn't seen Bruce Chubb's SVOS since it was an empty basement and a plan just prior to the Valley Forge Convention in 1993, we went over there on Saturday evening.

Bruce gave us a tour of the layout from beginning to end - I still think it's a bit sobering to realize that most of Joe's Siskiyou Line is modeled in one stretch of the SVOS.

One of the advantages of being a member of the LD-SIG (ldsig.org) is going on the LD-SIG layout tour each year during the NMRA convention. This year there was a list of 20 layouts on the list - even discounting the Sunset Valley Oregon System (SVOS) which was open all week, and another layout(s) that was by appointment only, that still left us 18 layouts that we could credibly see in one day. Gentlemen... start your GPS's.

We got to 11 of them, leaving the hotel at 9:30am and finishing up with the last layout at just after 8:30pm.