I'm dipping my toes into the ocean of operations and struggling some with car forwarding. I have played around with JMRI Ops in the past but thought I would explore car cards and waybills. This post will explore some of the questions and (likely) misconceptions I have about how they are created and used. 

Here is a photo of what I've created to this point. My observations and questions in the next posts. 

I got a pretty good deal on a P2K VIA E8 unit some time ago and figured it would eventually be a project to learn more about re-motoring and detailing locos.  I've never really done all this before, so this will be a great learning experience for me and hopefully will get some tips and assistance from the group here.  After assembling some parts, pieces and decals (from Bill at pdc.ca), I dove in today.  I'm already asking myself what I'm doing.  Here is what I started with after cutting wires and stripping the weight off (it's going to get milled down to

Hello All,

Below is a link to my 2018 Layout Tour video. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/FMqFhjNUmNs

Tim Garland

Short shots of video that were not enough to make one video. Contents include

Ok from what you gave me,  Your are building this in the 3rd bay of a 3 car garage.  Door to house on the right and another door and W/H will be on the south wall. The Garage door is on the left.  I looked at your plan with the "E" shaped bench work.  Not a good use of space, tight quarters etc.  So let start to build up a base idea and work from that point.  

The stud wall that will form the main layout room will be built with 2x4 on 16" centers.  

This week was a small point of celebration as I completed the CN enclosed watertower from Kanamodels that I have been working on intermittently for the last three years. Looked pretty simple, really. But the two part side panels and the need to taper the sides precisely to get the octagon to stick and adhere to the resin base and top was far more difficult and persnickety than I expected. In the end, I cut a center octagon out of blue foam to provide support and dug out behind the windows to provide a dark interior.

First full update in over a year and a half...

Enjoy!

In the past I had resigned myself to the fact that I'd never get the opportunity to run big, modern road units on my home layout. I was mostly fine with this as my interests in the hobby at that time revolved around short lines and small switchers. Thing changed however, when I started watching railfanning videos on Youtube. I found myself more and more wanting to replicate even just a little bit of the big time railroading I was seeing on my own model railroad.

Luckily I was able to work some mainline operation into my new layout and so, being too excited to wait, I went ahead and splurged on a pair of Athearn Genesis ES44ACs in both UP and CP Liveries.

The Second North Country Trains photo contest is now accepting entries.

You can see episodes 1&2 here and here.