A cafeteria tray has been the most useful addition to my workbench.

For me the most difficult part of any project is not losing any tiny screws and keeping track of the tools. The 5 items below have been especially useful for any project. The total cost was less than $15 (2018).  

In order of importance: 

The project loco is an HO scale PRR 4-8-2 Mountain type, it will get wheel wipers on the insulated drivers and insulated tender wheels. Any electrical pickup length is only as long as the shortest unit. The drivers’ contact length was less than 3”, the tender about 4”, so 3” contact length. After adding pickups to both sides of the drivers and tender trucks, the contact length was slightly more than 9”. That has to be more reliable.

Note:  This single blog post has been edited and split into several posts.   I made too many posts under one title and it became hard to follow.  I don't post often and just figured out how to properly maintain a blog.

The NCE USB interface board is necessary to connect a computer to your NCE Power Cab.  NCE suggests you screw it to framing under the layout.  Knowing my clumsiness, I would pull on a cable and snap the board in half.   A small, strong enclosure seemed like a good idea. 

The first step is making a sketch of the desired piping.  The drawing below is not to scale, it simply shows the routing of the new piping.  Existing pipes are not shown. I will not measure the wire exactly.  Instead, I will lay it in and bend where appropriate.

Materials:

The old cast zinc Roundhouse 2-8-0 runs great, but it really suffers from lack of interesting detail.