After a couple of years I have finally built into my spare room for the Lipakovo line, a Russian TTe narrow gauge logging line. Discussion about the track plan is HERE.

The first TOMA competition was the impetus for actually building a layout rather than just thinking about it, and the modules I have designed are very lightweight (the subject of another blog post to come...)

The main requirements for building into the room were:

Railroad crossing Canby, OR

My main production building is finished.... well sort of...

I am really happy with achieving the look I was going for. All of the walls are Evergreen styrene sheets with various angle strips for corner flashing. 

The roof is made out of balsa wood, covered with 80 grit sandpaper, and spray a flat black. It looks very convincing in person but way to "new" for this building. It still needs some weathering.

In between ongoing room preparations and refining the plan for The Hills Line, I've been able to setup and test out ISE's ProtoThrottle for future use on the layout. Others have already sung the praises of this product, but I wanted to offer my own observations and give a little insight to how it will be implemented on The Hills Line.

To begin, here's my current setup...

Suddenly I'm just a little distracted...!

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We had a great time at the July 2018 op session running the layout(s).  Track work is almost done on the Inside Gateway section which will hopefully be fully operational for the August Op.  We also had a literal blast for the 4th of July, a wood chopping contest, and some of the guys got to run the narrow gauge too.  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFGCpK3EU90

I've been operating on the CR&N for a while now, and have experimented with different ways to switch my cars around.  I started out just randomly picking places to move cars, but that gets old pretty quick.  I moved on to the Switch List Generator available here at MRH.  That Excel-based generator works well, and I like it. 

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to own a full size  passenger car?? We found just the man to answer all your questions, Kevin Moore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been playing with full-size railroad cars for decades.