Hello Everyone,

It is good to be back. I've been in hiatus for about a year or two now. I had to get life back in order. Life gets on the way and interrupts the model railroad world. I just wanted to report that I still have my O scale switching layout and enjoying every bit of it.

Hello everyone,

I am starting this blog to show the creation and the beginning of my new shelf-type O scale, 2 rail switching layout. I am one of those O scaler's that would like to show that you do not need too much space to build an O scale layout. Here is a photo of the old layout. A few weeks back I removed this layout because it was just not working out for me. It had the old Atlas #3.5 turnouts and they were getting too old. I had code 148 which I also wanted to upgrade.

Here is the progress on my friend Jerry's O scale 2 Rail layout. Last night I laid the water on the pier/barge docking area while he was installing a sound decoder in my "Little Joe" Dockside.

The barge and the tower are all scratchbuilt by Jerry.

Here is a different view of the waterfront

Well, I am starting a new adventure. I have to dismantle my very small O scale 2 Rail layout in one of the bedrooms. My son is coming back from Peru and moving back in, also my daughter is moving back in and of course my mother in law is moving in. So the empty nester only lasted 16 months. So good bye to my train room.

But as a typical "Jarhead " I didn't give up. I told the wifey, "no problem" but you have to clean out the garage and sell everything to make room for the O Scale.

 As we have been talking about Palm Trees in a different thread, I just found this link on how to make trees, I thought it would be useful here.

http://www.sierrarailroadmodels.com/MAKINGTREES.html

I have an old Athearn SW 1500 that runs great and I am going to use to convert it into an On30 Diesel. Order the Centre Cab Diesel body kit from Backwoods Miniatures and I would like to know what kind of sound decoder I should install in this "Baby". I have the Digitrax Chief System on my home layout. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

"We all know that the print medium has been in steady decline in the last 8 years, or haven’t you been reading the newspaper? At any rate, does Kalmbach publishing project that MR will collapse in a flaming heap in exactly 15 years due to the rise of the digital era? Will visionary concepts like Joe Fugates’ groundbreaking Model Railroad Hobbyist trounce the printed competition?

I noticed that every time I return to this web page I have to log in. It logs me out automatically. Is this going to be a normal thing from now on ?