Well, three years in and my layout is starting to look like something more than the plywood central!  The layout isn't large: a 12 foot by 40 inch rectangle with a 4-foot staging yard tacked onto one end.  One side is a massive paper mill inspired by the Cascade mill in Berlin, NH, and the other a pretty much freelanced town with a station model of the big station in St. Johnsbury, VT, a transload business, and a siding for a yet-to-be-determined business.  Operationally two railroads rule the iron: the St.

Looking for a match to Guilford grey and orange, ideally in an acrylic paint.

Thanks!

Geof

I am thinking of running my layout using motive power of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railroad, and am very much aware of the tragedy that occurred in Lac Megantic, Quebec.  I want to be respectful: would modeling this railroad be insulting to my Canadian friends?

Just stumbled across the website for this short line. https://sopor.ca/en/   Has anyone considered modelling it?  It seems an interesting candidate for a small layout.

Geof

After what felt like a constant tug-of-war to make a prototypical representation of the Washington County Railroad in northern Vermont more operationally challenging as a model railroad (it currently only runs one train a day), I've chosen to surrender to making the layout proto-freelanced, running a prototype railroad over freelanced land.

In the following post you'll find a crude drawing of what's being built.  At this point all the track is laid and about 1/3rd of it is now wired.

Although it’s the aspect of the hobby I dread the most, I’m pressing ahead with wiring. I’m taking it slowly and deliberately: testing each connection as I make it, and then disconnecting it to add the next one.  So far so good,

EXCEPT

I'm finding some of my Insulfrog turnouts seem to be unresponsive electronically unless I hold it together.  My guess is the need a good cleaning and then maybe some persuasion. My question:  what’s the best way to clean and tune up these beasts?

Thank you! 

Geof

A friend visited with me several weeks ago.  He is building a magnificent N scale model of the Montgomery, Alabama Union Station and train shed for his 1950's based layout.  His work is museum quality, and his attention to prototypical detail amazing.  As I looked at the photos of his work thus far, I had to ask him: would he be modeling both the whites-only bathrooms and the colored bathrooms? 

Does anyone have a track diagram or photos of the interchange point between the Central Vermont and Canadian Pacific in Richfield, VT?  I'm thinking it might, together either the Webster feed mill, make a neat LDE.  Thanks!

Geof

Whether it be something we saw in childhood, the pages of Model Railroader, the blogs on Railroad Model Hobbyist, or some other source, we see something, and we say, "Oh, that's something I'd like to see on my layout!"  For me, one such scene is one I saw on Mike Confalone's Allagash Railway:

 With all of the track and electrical work done, I've been running trains just to see where I may have installed a switch that isn't working right, or where I need to add more electrical feeders.  At this point it seems all systems are go and so now I'm transitioning to creating the scenery and buildings to populate the layout.