The wife and daughter of the owner of the Hotel California stopped by to see the progress on the yard work. She is seen here asking the foreman where the water pool is that she saw on the drawing plan. The answer she got was, "No Speakie Englass."

When I was looking though my Great Northern In Color Vol: 1 Lines West I came across a picture of an unusual train sitting at Spokane taken on a summers evening. The captions states "On June 20, 1968, Train #5, the Piggyback Special, is serviced in twilight... The train's consist included an RPO, and storage mail and express cars as well as TOFC flats." The photo shows a A-B-B consist of F units, followed by a storage mail, then RPO and 6 TOFC flatcars with a full load of GN trailers I decided I needed to model this train.

I had wanted a really impressive truss bridge to cross my canal but after buying a kit and trying to work it to fit I decided that it was just too darn long. If i shortened it to better fit the space it would look odd. So what to do? How about a simple girder bridge? That would work. Buy one or build one from scratch. I found some plans and it didn't look too hard. Had the materials on hand so why not. First step, the girders. Some .080 styrene. Then I cut 2x10 strips into 2" long pieces and glued them flat every 8 scale feet apart.

Model Railroad is friendship, fun & party!

After receiving my NMRA bulletin this morning and reading president Charlie Getz's discussion of Caboose Hobbies closing, I felt compelled to write a response.  First, here is a summary of what Mr. Getz wrote:

I hope to document the building of a class A Illinois Terminal locomotive in the following blog.