I had shared a sneak peek at my early efforts to conceptualize this structure over on my Merrill's Point thread but I've decided this structure and small tribute to a friend deserves it's own thread.

I once again started out with just an idea and some cardboard from a dog food box. My loyal basset hound "Henry" keeps me in a steady supply of those so it's become my method of choice for mocking up the core of my buildings.

It occurs to me that I almost blew right through the anniversary of my current layout again. Sometime in August, eight years ago, I started this journey. After years of N and HO layouts built to varying degrees of completion, I finally figured out what I wanted and set about achieving it. I had settled on calling it the "Blackwater and Blue Hollow" and with a nod to my favorite modeler, John Allen, the colloquial name was "The Black N' Blue".

• Building "Bunza's Boatworks"
• Celebrating the Eighth Anniversary of the railroad with a name change
• Michael Tondee's Blog/Journal Index
• A confluence of influences, how my freelance layout is finally coming into focus

This will probably be sort of a long and rambling blog entry but it's something I consider quite often and in light of some  random but sort of serendipitous coincidences it's been percolating in my mind lately. I've really been thinking a lot about the various influences on my freelance modeling and the sometimes simple events that sparked and shaped them. The most obvious influence on my work, I think, is John Allen.

I had mentioned on a regular post that I had finally gotten a large 75 gallon aquarium out of the office/shop here and the amount of space it opened up. Of course, being a Model Rail, my mind immediately turned to what I could be doing with that space layout wise. I fought those thoughts kicking and screaming because I have enough to do with the amount of pike I already have but here I am at the same place I somehow knew I was going to end up.

The creative wave continues although I sense it starting to die out a bit now and the pace of progress on my pike has slowed considerably. Still, I'll ride it as long as I can and keeping this blog updated with photo documentation of my progress tends to spur me on and keeps the motivation flowing so here goes again...

At it's heart, the Black N' Blue is a logging railroad. The mine has brought new prosperity to the little line but logging was the original purpose for plying the rails into the rugged countryside. Unfortunately due to space constraints and my "givens and druthers" of what like to have on the layout, there's not a lot of room to model sawmills and lumber camps so for now I'm just content to give a small representation of logging through this single scene.

It occurs to me that because of my recent hiatus working on the layout that I totally blew right by it's seventh anniversary in August. I also turned 58 in October.

I ordered a Blair Line loading dock and loading ramp kit and they got here today and I assembled them tonight. This is the idea I had for the area in front of what is now known as "Olroy Feed and Farm Supply Co." I had originally envisioned them arranged as in the first picture but I'm not sure that I don't like the long narrower version in the second picture. I could also use the docks somewhere else and do something entirely different here but I'm leaning this way. I figure a nice field of static grass, the docks and not much else.

I've had this idea awhile. So long in fact that said box actually changed packaging size and that change is now figuring into the overall layout of the building. I'm always looking at things from three viewpoints. Intended use, modeling use, ham radio use. That last one is especially troublesome anytime I'm in a hardware or "big box" building supply store. At any rate, I kept looking at these dog food cartons everytime I would open them and think, "that's about the right size for an  HO building". So the seed was sown.