I have been plodding along on a shelf-style test-track for HO.... mostly to install and test decoders in my existing fleet of lokeys, but also perhaps to try out the "latest" scenery techniques that have come along since I started building layouts in the early 1960's!  Wanna get ready for the "retirement layout" that hopefully will be abuilding in 2014.

  This is my first offitial blog entry, so bear with me....

        I am writing this to tell the long tail of how I discovered a small regonal railroad, the Tallulah Falls Railroad.

I told these guys in a video awhile back, that I wouldn't allow those engines to pull another freight train, and so far, they haven't, in fact, I now have five, thats right, five streamline passenger cars to pull behind them, I didn't feel like pulling out some heavyweight headend cars, so am just running the streamliners.

Things have been pretty busy around the layout since I got back home. I've completed my staging yard at the start of the layout and also the staging yard on the upper shelf. I've gotten the casting bug lately and have made a lot of molds and castings. Now I just have to get them installed.

Day one:

Here is where I'm at with the Arcata & Mad River all-door.

I started readng this new book a few days ago and I find it to be a very interesting story. Why, you might wonder?

When I came into the hobby in the late 1970s I started reading Railroad Model Craftsman and it was edited back then by none other than Tony Koester. Tony wrote abotu many things back then but most of his editorials had to do with tw subjects: The V&O and his own model railroad which eh was then building. Thsoeeditorials were great and I learned alot from them.