Impressed!

Your blog is outstanding, the historical data, stories is great. Clearly, you have done a lot of good research in the area and time period you are modeling.

Also, as a side note, the lighting on your layout is spot on as far as blending the two light sources. If I understand it, you have 6 strips of LED lights, 3 are bright white around 5500K and 3 at about 2200K or less. How have you arranged the strips? One  5500K, then a 2200K from front to back.

I hope to visit your blog more often. Once again, great work!

Nice blog! As much as I liked

Nice blog! As much as I liked railroad the 2 rodeo shots were fantastic. Would you mind telling us a little about yourself? It's always fun to hear other's interests/occupations outside of model railroading.

Great layout & blog

I love the handlaid track and historical research you are including with your layout Darel. I am starting my first layout in 35 years, and have chosen the "Dark Side" of Sn42. I like the look and easier scratchbuilding of S scale, but have limited layout room and budget. So I am going with cheap HO track and locos (bashed into S ones) and scratchbuilding all structures. I would really like to do something as detailed and elaborate as your handlaid Sn3 mountainscape, but I decided to follow a KISS strategy and therefore am going with a quick and simple HO track Sn42 layout with a desert setting. This is something I can have operational in a few months for a few hundred $, I figure if I am still enthused with MRRing after that I can consider upgrading to something more complex and expensive. I am curious about your turnout servos. How is the rotary/ mostly vertical action of the arm translated into horizontal movement to move the turnout? From what I can see, you might have elongated the hole through the ply. Does this provide enough of a cantilever to produce the throw action? Or is there something else going on?

James Stoker

Enjoyable read

That really is a great blog. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Thanks!

Thank you all for your kind comments. You are correct; my LEDs are mounted on the inside of an 4" X 4" aluminum angle which makes up the light bar. Thus, three strips on top and three in the front, alternating colors. 

I believe the LEDs are 6500K and 2800K.

The servos seem to work fine with nothing fancy having been done other than reconfiguring how I mounted the bracket. The only problem was with the usual expansion/contraction of the rails over the winter which seems to have made me have to continually adjust the trim. I've used Sn42 in the past to model Denver streetcars ( :

As for myself; I've long been interested in Colorado railroads, specifically the C&S. My daughter competes in high school rodeo as well as professional jackpots, which all require extensive travel. When not working my day job, I occupy the hazardous position of team manager, financier and driver.

Darel

Great stories

Hang in there cowboy!