I was able to get a good start on scenery this past weekend including laying down a base of ground foam as well as weathering and ballasting the yard tracks. Say goodbye to the Plywood Pacific!

I've had that model railroading bug in me again lately so I put that motivation to good use and I'm rather happy with the amount of laboring I was able to get done on my railroad this Labor Day weekend. Let's take a look at what I've accomplished. 

I've finally gotten around to creating a new layout progress video to show off what I've been working on lately.

I've started using an iPhone 4s with the iMovie app to record, edit, and publish the video.  It's a bit quirky to use and I haven't had an HD video successfully published to YouTube yet, but It is very convenient and will hopefully encourage me to produce videos more often.

I spent the past week painting a backdrop for my model railroad. I was nervous going into the project, but the process was pretty simple and straight-forward and I could not be happier with the results.

I mentioned in a recent post that I needed to address the lighting on the layout. I don't have a great great camera and the lighting was just not bright enough in the room to compensate for my lack of skill at taking quality pictures. And so I decided to replace that old light bulb hanging from the ceiling with something that might throw a bit more light on the layout. I ended up getting a cool looking track lighting fixture.

What did you do on your Thanksgiving break? I finished my staging yard.

So, looking back at my previous posts I see that the last major construction push on my layout was back in February of this year when I completed laying and wiring my track-work.  That was ten months ago. Progress has been terribly slow.

I haven't made a ton of progress over the last few months, but I have finally completed building and installing all of my switch machines, and It's been an interesting experience.

The MFTR is proud to announce the purchase of new motive power for our little railroad. Former Burlington Northern GP15-1 #1391 (soon to be patched to reflect new ownership) can now be seen making daily runs between the towns of Newp