Before & After:

My passenger cars need some people so I ordered and received a couple packages from China and was pleasantly surprised that the figures are not badly done.

It’s Birthday time coming around and my son appears to want to see me get back in the shop by sending me some new (used) books for inspiration. A journal post by Rene Gourley has me inspired to get down to practicing more and these books are filled with projects and instruction. 

I would be interested in hearing from others with experience fabricating parts for locomotives or rolling stock. My time is so limited for working on the layout that this may take a while to get in the estimated 20 hours required to learn my way around the equipment. 

Week 2 - 20 weeks remaining

Week 3 - Finishing trackwork

Week 4 - Continue working on Week 3 stuff (eat too much and cycle while the sun is shining!)

Building model trains is, and has been, a lifelong passion.

By definition my hobby is a pastime and not done for income or to please anyone other than myself. That sounds selfish and self centered but really true.

On the other hand I really love to share my efforts with those who understand.  This forum has been that community.

I have been wanting to explore what can be done with 48" sections - module style without fixed end connections - or The One Module Approach or TOMA.

Now that I have actually started to create sawdust it is clear that some more forethought would have been benifitial. Not too late though as this is a chainsaw. Some of my concerns may be no big deal but I thought I'd post them here for your imput. 

AprilI have been thinking how difficult it has been to represent the really large industries that the railroads served here in Hawaii.  The other, sort of never ending compromise, is the all too short distances between towns. If I could have at least a scale mile of track the. It would really seem like running a train.

Give me some space for scenery to put our trains into context with the world and that would be over the top! 

Since Rick and others began posting their videos here It seemed a good idea to have a placeholder for using video in our models. My layout is far from complete and the scenery often varies from roughed in and painted to snow looking foam shapes or just plywood. Regardless, it is fun to see the railroad from a hum perspective. 

Please join me and post your trials and tribulations, YouTube links and set up's for the camera(s), and how you "produced" and edited the video. 

I've been working working on a full size building project where we have our Inn. While not a railroad project I thought this would be a good place to document the progress. Today is my 57th birthday! The following will be some progress shots to overcome the "weathering" that, along with deferred maintenance, needed to be addressed so I can get back to building in smaller scales! 

Aloha!

My interest in building a pier has led me to some exploration locally as well as digging into my roots. This started rather benignly with an interest in having a waterfront wharf similar the Craftsman models type wooden pier. At about the same time my office was asked to help review some plans for the local pier and former sugar warehouse.  I posted a mockup of this on another post but have subsequently been to the site and was able to talk with the harbor master who shared some vintage photos.

Umauma Railway & Navigation

The Umauma (pronounced Ooma ooma) Railway and Navigation along with the subsidiary, the Umauma Plantation Railway, is a common carrier on Hawaii Island. It draws inspiration from the Oahu Railway & Land Co., the Hawaii Consolidated Railway, Ltd,, Hawaiian Ag, and the many, many Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii plantation railroads. 

The Arduino is an open source hardware and software hobbyist platform that has huge grass roots support here on MRH and worldwide. It has such huge potential at a reasonable price that I couldn't stop thinking about how to implement or exploit this on my layout. Peter in NZ has encouraged me to get going with this and so, successes (I hope) or failures will be posted here along with links to other sites of interest. Please follow along and feel free to post thoughts, experiences, and links of interest.