The Railway Modellers Meet of BC was held this past weekend in Burnaby at Simon Fraser University. North of 100 registrants took part in 3 days of operating sessions, layout tours, clinics and camaraderie.  I was part of the organizing committee so it was really nice to see everyone's hard work pay off.  A few of my personal highlights in the following post.

Third time is a charm?

After an abortive effort to build a layout in a shared playroom space I’m excited to say I’m going to have a dedicated layout space to build something that's here to stay

Hi all

Looking for some feedback on the lower stagging design below, I want the two ends of the upper level to drop down to stagging and then be able to return again by using a reversing loop, this means using two, one at each end so to utilize space I have the left running at 4" below the upper level and the right running from the Helix at 8" below the upper level so in effect I have two seperate stagging areas.

Thoughts?

I recently seen this from an ad on MRH:

http://lights4models.com/index.php/signs-billboards/large-model-pabst-bl...

And Shorpy site has been posting the images below.

A lot of us tend to buy just engines, and just cars... we build our collections, and layouts, and maybe it started with a train set, and maybe it started different, but how many of us really think about it?

I felt the desire to share here, as well as ask other folks, why they collect as well.

What got you into the hobby?

A bit about myself (this gets a bit personal, and long winded)

Progress is coming along on the Burbank Branch with a new scratch build, this time of the Oroweat Bakery that was once active in the San Fernando Valley. This build is my modern take on the actual buildings, and while I had previously built the same structures to be near identical to the prototype, I wanted something that filled out the space a bit better. Without further ado...

First, The Prototype (photos by Terry Guy on flickr)

Having fun playing with lighting and the fact that many of my structures have yet to be fixed in place... www.petercgraham.com

Lately there has been a large amount of railroad maintenance in my area taking a look along the platform I have found tons of spikes and some fishplates to. What I wonder is if I am careful and check to make sure no trains are coming first is it OK for me to go and grab one? I would assume as they are the leftover old ones it would be fine but just wanted to check. One thing that I did grab this time that I found near a crossing was after doingn some research a mounting for the lights on a crossing gate this was sitting on the grass nearby and to me I would say is a pretty golden find.