For about 30 years I've wanted to attempt to build a turntable from scratch.  I read an article by Bob Hayden where he built a narrow-gauge turntable for Dave Frary's layout using a 1/4" phono plug as the pivot, and I thought that was a great idea.  It's taken me several decades to get to it, but I'm finally giving it a go!  I'm documenting the story here, rather than in an article, because it's really Bob's idea (thanks Bob) and because I have no idea how this will turn out!  Wish me luck.

Ordinarily I wouldn't get much done in the summer as golf would get all of my time, but a knee injury has led to much more time spent modeling than usual.  After several false starts, I finally have Highfield starting to vaguely resemble the prototype.

Doing Highfield right is important as it was alway important junction between the Hanover sub and the East sub of the Western Maryland.  It has always been very popular location for rail fans.  Later, it became the Eastern interchange between the Maryland Midland and CSX.  

Noting ever changes tell you look at the way back machine.

Looking at an old video of the layout I operate on from over 8 years ago,  I forgot how much has changed during that time.  Compared to what we have today it is a different animal.

Progress can be seen every place compared to over 8 years ago,  If anything it reminds us how important it is to document your progress to see what changed over time.

It's been a while since I've done an update. I got married, so there hasn't been a done of progress on the layout. I do have all the turnouts I need finally! (ME turnouts are fairly hard to find right now, especially if you're trying not to pay 2x the cost for them)

Gday all been reading these blogs and articles for years and never really posted much. Both My son's layout module and my own have been at a standstill for a while and we are now working to get things going again in the train room...

I just had a massive cleanout of the spare room to get the floor space cleared out just so we can walk into the room without needing life support and a day pack...lol

All that aside, here is Old Ply industrial getting the love it deserves. I will post in Youtube feeds just to make as little reading as I can for everyone. 

Got moved into our new home. I am looking forward to getting started on the layout,  but have a few things I have to take care of first. One thing im working on is putting in a split air conditioner. Does anybody have any experience with these? 

Another concern I have is running 2 air conditioners and what that will do to my electric bill. So Monday morning I have a guy coming to give us an estimate on putting in solar panels.

We talk about and show you pictures of this unique track machine that was widely used at the mine. With miles of rail constantly on the move they needed a fast way to pick up the rail and move it closer to the level after each shovel pass.

So at the end of today's little experiment I've managed to get all three signal colours into seperate 0603 SMD LED's.  I couldn't find anywhere that offered single LED's that were the correct colours for use in HO scale.