I've chosen to completely demolish (nicely) my current layout for many reasons. First, it took most of the basement when my boys were infants. Now that they are no longer "afraid" of the basement, they venture down there to play hockey/soccer when some winter days are too cold in the small amount of space available, it was time to increase that. Secondly, I discovered that there was just too much layout for the time that I could dedicate to it as well as inconvenient places around a few high usage doors and hallways.

Here's my random post of the year.

Aloha all,

Here's the nuts and bolts. Summer means very little indoor model railroading (especially in the Northern climates where summer means the outside is finally celebrated with less than 5 layers of clothing). 

Sooo. I must have/make this crane. I've done some preliminary searches and have not yet found a reasonable model that can be used as a starting point for a kit-bash. Any ideas out there or am I going to have to scratch build this thing?

... And now for some low quality (taken by phone) photos of the layout. They'll be replaced with better quality photos when I get a chance. The looked so much better on the phone than they do on the computer. 

I'm in the process of setting up a web-page (exploring google sites, just out of curiosity), but will cross-post here if there is interest (and I'm capable)....

[update: Okay, low quality photos have been replaced with... Well, I suppose, mid-grade quality photos taken with a real camera.]

Since I spent more time than I'd like to admit researching my universe, I thought I'd at least post my online sources of inspiration and (perhaps) save a few people some time in their own investigations. If nothing else, I can cause some other people to waste their time as well looking at all the nifty info. 

So, this is my first attempt at... Well everything... I've had a few aborted attempts at blogging as well as a few goes at model railroading. However, let's give'r a go and see if I can keep things rolling. I'll first give a bit of background (I started the layout last fall, so it's on it's way).

The "universe" in my basement (sounds very "Dr. Who"):

Style: Proto-Freelance (prob. more freelance than proto). DCC from the get go.

Setting: Canada in 1944(ish)