Personal journal (editorial or commentary)

The construction crew of the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad has been busy installing the train order signals, The railroad uses a telphone system and track warrents. We have been using a PA system if the dispatcher needs to get hold of the crews. Now with the train order signals going in hopefully no more PA system. The second reason is with the telphone system and train order signal we will hopefully be able to do remote dispatching . We have already tried the phone sytem with by friend about a 100 miles away. Keep tuned!!

MRH attended the RPM meet in Salem, OR this last weekend - and we had a great time.

I love RPM meets because of the fantastic modeling that's present, and an RPM meet in Oregon is especially fun for me because there's generally lots of Southern Pacific equipment present. The SP, of course, is the prototype I'm modeling on my HO Siskiyou Line.

Well, I was not disappointed!

Dale Kathrein, a young vet who spent time in Iraq, had a fabulous display of SP power.

On my station module I'm having a passenger depot with a platform. The platform is a low platform with its top of the deck at the same height as the top of the rails. The deck will be gravel with stained wood to surround the platform.

You never know what you are going to find when you go through old photgraphs.

My wife, who is in the process of emptyng her mother's apartment, was going through some old photographs when she found the photo below:

All as per a couple of recommendations from fellow MRH members I have started a new blog for the construction phase of the J&L.

As previously mentioned I now have the timber sitting in the layout room ready to go, the drop saw is warmed up, the radio is tuned in for continuous music, and I have stocked up on coffee!

I have one little house keeping job to finish off tomorrow and then it should be all systems go...

Cheers,

Jason...

All aboard! 

We just got our household goods delivered yesterday, and it looks like all the hobby supplies made it safe and sound.  I need to check through stuff, as the models I shipped have spent 3 months inside a very large metal box, in the hottest part of the year, to what is one of the hottest places on our planet.

I was reading a bit of a commentary in Jason Schron's Rapido Bulletin from last month or the month before about riding the train.  Its not something we often do, but I enjoy it when I get the chance.  As part of VIA Rail's summer "kids ride free" program, my wife and I decided to take our kids on the train.  We drive out to visit my family in Alberta and then one of us rides the train back with one of the kids while the other drives.  Last year, my wife and daughter went home on the train, but this year it was me and the boy's turn.

Hollywood has been know to do some incongruous things in films - either they don't know, or figure the audience doesn't know, or they just don't care enough to do things proper like...

Well, where I live it is county fair time.  The neighboring county had it's fair last week and our county fair is this week.  For the last number of years I've volunteered as an advisor to a local 4H group that is solely focused on model railroading. 

 And yet again, on a Saturday afternoon I find myself at Dana's, running one of my trains, I do so enjoy running on this layout, even more so than the one at home, of course, at Dana's, I'm in the air conditioning, something that is non-existent at home, sure I have an AC, in the house, but the train room isn't temp controlled, so during the summer I go to Dana's to run trains in the AC, likewise, in the winter, I go to Dana's to run trains when its cold outside, because just like AC in the summer, I have no heat in the train room in the winter either!!!