This is a picture of the Matthews Yard as it exists today on my layout.  The picture was taken by my friend, Bob Wheeler.  I built the yard as a "newbee" and made some serious mistakes including putting 6 of the 9 tracks at the back of the yard instead of the front.  The good news is that the yard section (30" wide by 13-1/2' long) is built as a section.  I can build a new yard section outside of my train room and switch it out in a few hours.  I'll probably use the buildings over.

For the first year or so I was a loner on building my railroad - not by choice, but I just hadn't connected with other model railroaders.  While the hobby was fun, I knew something was missing...and that something was other model railroaders!  I had a friend invite me to a meeting of the Piedmont Division  of the NMRA in the Atlanta area and I was at first hesitant as it was a 1-1/2 hour drive.  I attended the meeting, and to my surprise there were over ninety other model railroaders there!  I had a blast and made some new friends.&nbs

A few weeks ago our operating group had a tree making clinic at one fo the member's home.  We tried our hand at making many different sytles of trees using a number of methods.  I took a "shining" to the wire armature method.  This method uses florist wire (28 gauge) with twisting and forming the wire to make the armature.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any gesso to coat the bare wire armatures to continue the process so I couldn't create the finished result.

When Coalfinger Ken was over with the NCIOG group he was running his steam engine on the layout and discovered a REALLY bad track area on the uphill side of the plate girder bridge. Notice below that there is a big gap between the bottom of the level and the rail.

I've recently joined an operating group, the North County Interchange Operating Group and Friday 2/19 was the first time they were at my house for the Friday night work session.  Most of the guys are in the building stage, so we've yet to do any actual operating.  One of the guys, Bob Wheeler brought along his camera and tripod to shoot some pictures and the shot below is my favorite.   Besides taking pictures we also starting the early planning of the expansion of the railroad into a 15-1/2' x 29-1/2' unfinished area of my basment.  Th

Not a lot happening lately on the railroad, but a few things. The picture below is the "after" shot of my ceiling repair from the water damage.  The dummy return air vent covers an opening in the drywall that I purposely left open for future leaks (an optimist?) Although my drywall mud work isn't very good, it will pass the casual glance test. Besides, who should be looking at the ceiling anyway..... look at the railroad!

If you would like to see more of the scenery in the mountain area, please check out my video on YouTube:

Thanks for looking!

Rick

Welcome to the Richlawn Railroad.  The Richlawn Railroad is a HO scale freelance layout set in the 60's & 70's in the Kentucky area and features the Louisville & Nashville railroad.  I grew up in St Matthews, Ky, a suburb of Louisville with the L&N tracks only 200ft from my house.