We get a lot of questions across the webspace from people just starting their first railroad due to the aquisition of spacious quarters or pleas for help halfway through an expensive and time consuming ordeal that will end in what will be a rather painful chainsaw railroad.  I've been trying to find answers for the intermediate person who is beyond the forest stage but not yet picking out the trees.  I've now returned to the article that truley provides a firm footing for every man, woman and child to pursue this hobby.  Yes, I said pursue the hobby - not JUST build that

I have sharing my idea for a summer modeling project on various forums and user groups.  I thought I would capture what I have been sharing and what others have been sharing with me so far.  

Any insights or advice would be appreciated. . .

Enjoy!

Preface:  This piece is in response to Joe Fugate's Editorial, "Is the Hobby Dying?".  While a comment is perhaps a couple paragraphs and an article is a couple short pages, this piece is a full-fledged thought easily landing it in the length neighborhood of dissertations and science research journal papers of the 1960's.

     Its day five of the new project and all the old track work on the Eerie/Lackamoney has been removed. I completed extending the old grainary siding into the new yard lead for my staging area. The lead is configured so that it can also be used as a passing track on the single main line.

Okay, after three days of working out how the track was going to bend and cutting, laying and gluing (and sanding) cork roadbed, I got the track laid tonight. Since I'd been fussing with it all week, it went quickly with only a couple of last minute adjustments.

The view from the north end - before I'd laid (but it's not glued) the boxcar track:

 Well, I go back to work tomorrow, and its six more days until my daughter shows off her diorama at school.  We're pretty close to finished.  Not everything worked out exactly, but she is much, MUCH happier with the current state.  We took a few pictures tonight to give you a sneak preview.  There are a couple more things to do yet, in fact, we just finished adding some fishermen and bears to the scene, plus poured some more "water."  Yes, the water colouring didn't turn out quite like we had hoped, but she is still OK with it.

No, I am not thinking of that old Glen Campbell song from the 1970s.

Today I finally got the spare cash to order the wood for what will become the carfloats for the Hudson and Hartford. I ordered them from Micro Mark so you can tell them one of your readers bought something from them.

Now that Model Trains Video has a new Ops Live video volume for sale, here's a preview ...

Picking the Middle

  Tweaking has two popular definitions - the first relates to methamphetamine use, which I have nothing to do with.

  The second refers to making minor modifications and improvements to something, in search of a theoretical optimum of performance or design. I'm dealing with the second definition here.