I want to try scratch-building a small 5 inch long deck/plate girder bridge from styrene I am going to draw up a plan for this and wanted to see some examples of what people have done. I was likely going to do styrene but are there other methods that may be better? I was also considering using laser cut thin plywood but was wondering what would look best along with some examples of these on peoples layouts.

I was recently inspired by a video that Tom Klimoski posted on his YouTube channel showing operation on his Georgia Northeastern RR. In the video, Tom had a conductor figure placed where appropriate for the train moves. 

My small branch line is still far from full operations, but Tom’s video got me excited about the possibility of incorporating an actual conductor into my eventual operation. How could I use a figure in a way that was realistic yet not cumbersome for my operators? I decided I would figure out a way to make it work. 

I and some friends stayed at Haeckmaens flat for an operting session on his Great-britN modules. We operated the modular layout from Saturday to Monday morning. We started with era 6 and 7 on Saturday and continued with era 8 and 9 on Sunday and Monday morning.
Here are the pictures.

https://flic.kr/p/Z66t4V

https://flic.kr/p/Z1Uyw9

https://flic.kr/p/Z3nTM9

https://flic.kr/p/Z66scp

https://flic.kr/p/Z3nT5h

https://flic.kr/p/Z66rB6

https://flic.kr/p/Z66rov

https://flic.kr/p/Y4VG4i

There are a lot of reasons why we would want to electronically detect the presence of a train. This series of posts will cover a simple method of doing that using a classic circuit published by Richard Schumacher in the NMRA Gateway division website. There will be at least three sections, covering

I spent some time drawing up a Tie Plate from real engineering drawings. I noticed some flaws later on so a better more accurate one will be coming soon but here is this one for now:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2566305

You can do whatever you wish with it as a note it is drawn full scale.

Download this podcast at: amodelerslife.com

Episode 83: NMRA President Charlie Getz & Company

Trying to see if I have the photo posting thing right....

To see how I built these, check out this thread: http://mrhmag.com/node/31280

Thank you for your interest.  Here is details for the DCC mobile decoder. 

Probably the result of staying up too late:

I had a few wheel sets to paint.  Rather than remove the wheels from their trucks, I thought there might be an easy way to spin the wheelset while holding a loaded paintbrush to the wheel.

I took a practice hockey puck, and drilled a hole in its center for a press fit on the shaft of a Switchmaster stall motor switch machine.  The Switchmaster was connected to a variable DC power supply.  The contraption is strapped to an L-shaped bracket made from scrap plywood.