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Moderator 5,796 posts Neil Erickson NeilEr Moderator 5,796 posts
Neil Erickson NeilEr
After months of trying to shoehorn Richard's surviving pieces of his HO railroad I gave up. Rather, I gave in to my narrow gauge bug. A layout design in a publication got me thinking. What if I salvaged as much track as possible and us it for an On30 layout? The switches and flex track were not coming up intact anyway so I thought I'd relay them on longer and wider spaced ties. A sample of may little staging in progress are is attached. The overall plan was photographed on my iPhone and dropped into a scaled drawing of my train room in SketchUp. A little scaling up to O scale and some tracing of the favorite elements led to a branch line of an industrial/mining line from a terminus of the "flatland" spur. In addition to the mines and stamp mill, I hope to model a hotel and small town (similar to the Dolly Varden). The wye at the end is a rip off of Lizard Head and will be forever late summer and the cattle chutes in full swing. Maybe a little snow. I really like geared engines and have my Shay and Climax simmering in the wings awaiting a trip up the line. Local shuffling will be done by one of the porters and connections serviced by a 2-6-0 and Forney. I don't have many cars in the rolling stock fleet but enjoy building kits and and scratch building.

Neil Erickson, Hawai’i 

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Joe Brugger Prolific poster 1,014 posts
Joe Brugger

Help us out

You're allowed to mention other publication's names here, if it's information readers might want to find. Can't sell stuff, though.
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Neil Erickson NeilEr Moderator 5,796 posts
Neil Erickson NeilEr

Design Source

Thanks. It was for MR years ago and reprinted in "48 Top Notch Track Plans". I was looking for a mushroom design but had to be honest with myself that it is mostly just me running trains and building. I like having something to do when I hook an engine up to some cars and could care less about seeing it make laps. As you might be able to tell from the pic, I am tryi g to salvage some switches as well (something I've never tried) and hope to solder them to som PC board ties. My efforts at making my own ties has been a disaster so ordered some from FastTracks. Hoped they would arrive today but, alas ... I want to build a frame wall between the two sides of the peninsula and will post my success or failure later this week. We have a small inn that has been taking a lot of my time. For y'all that are sick of the cold - e' komo mai!

Neil Erickson, Hawai’i 

My Blogs
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