Now that I have assembled the various components of my grain train I need to get on the framers who appear to be dragging their feet on the construction of the elevators...

Guys I don't want to sound braggadocios but I think this is one of the best structures I have built. It's a combination of photo laminating, sheet styrene and strip styrene. The sheets are actually 8 x 10 For Sale signs you can buy at your local big box store for 96 cents. Submitted for your approval.

As promised, and that made me get it done, the photos show what I meant by an upgrade. Still not connected fully together yet, since I have to remove it again to do gardening work at the base and the road crew needs to finish up their area. Anyway, wood was nice, but brick is better for this soon to be a High Class place.

I’ve been a reader of MRH Magazine and its blogs for some time but this is my first time posting. 

I want to take this opportunity to share the progress of my scratch built Grain Elevator and receive your comments in the process.  I would like your thoughts especially in the realism aspect.    This is still a work-in-progress so I will be adding more stuff in the near future.    

It was another busy weekend on the layout. Several areas were worked on:

The most time was spent finishing the Alabama Hills. These iconic rocks were made from a custom mold that was made from rock samples from the hills and this weekend I finished painting and ballasting around them.  We picked up more ballast last weekend, which when sifted has a slight but noticeable contrast to the surrounding soil. The first test train is shown above. More:

Hi all...as promised I have some in progress photos of the 2 On30 steamers that I've been working on lately, as well as the beginnings of the scratch built through truss bridge I alluded to earlier on this blog.

So my C.H.I.P. $9 mini-computer finally arrived. It's not quite as powerful as the Raspberry Pi, but at a quarter of the price it's a straight-up bargain. It comes pre-loaded with a Debian flavour of Linux which can have a bit of a learning curve, but within an hour or so I had it set up to boot right into JMRI and then automatically launch a WiThrottle server. I'm using a Sprog as the interface with the layout. Within two minutes of turning the power on, I can whip out my phone, open Engine Driver, and be off to the races. Now I just need to make everything look presentable.