I see a lot of interesting loads out on the railroad. I always thought it would be cool to depict some of these loads on my layout. One day I happened to come across a website dedicated to producing some of the most realistic loads I have ever seen. After contacting David Ward with Protoloads I sent him some of my cars to weather and add loads to and also purchased some of his that he had for sale. So far I have managed to accumulate a lot of these fantastic looking cars.

I'm still toying with the trackplan after the suggestions by Trevor Marshall, but my mind has been wandering to more esoteric things. Namely, the name. Westhaven was the district I lived in as I was growing up in Montreal. I remember the 4x6 layout my dad had made for us that slid under his bed. We named that Westhaven RR and I had some idea that it was like the New Haven railroad.

I live in the San Jose CA area and would like to find a shop or a person that can take an out of the box FED HOn3 Brass 4-4-0 American Locomotive and repair, upgrade and detail it look like 1887 version that ran on the South Pacific Coast Rail Road that service the Santa Cruse Mountain route. I currently have two FED HOn3 brass 4-4-0 Locos that are 1910 versions that can me modified to look like the 1887 versions.  I would like to buy the FED 1887 all brss version of the 4-4-0 American Loco and tender. Mike Seixas

Hi all,

   So, as noted in my blog here, I've been scratchbuilding freight cars. Lots of fun, very theraputic. Anyway, trying to build a passenger car now. The frame is done, the sidewalls are good, but I'm trying to figure out how to make arched supports for the roof.

  My current plan is to take some stripwood, boil it for a moment to soften the wood fibers, and wrap it around a piece of PVC pipe until it dries. In theory, the boiling water should make it easy to bend the wood, and when it dries, it should stay curved.

Been wanting to try Lance Mindheims photo laminating process and figured this was a good place to start. First structure in the layout. Still needs a bit of tweaking and some additional details. The walls are brick jpgs printed to scale. The big doors are paper. The roof is printed tarpaper. The glass door is from Lances website. The door was cutout first and glued on. Then black construction paper was cut around it. Then the window section was placed on top of that and then the brick on that.

You will have to experiment with the photo viewer software to see if you can zoom in and if it will focus for you.  I do know that Microsoft Office Picture Manager will work for this. 

So here is the La Junta to Pueblo (middle level)  I will try to post the Pueblo to Denver later tonight.

First I will update all of you on the layout design. I am modeling from Denver, CO to Albuquerque, NM (ABQ) in 1990 to 1996. In the center of this North-South run is La Junta, CO which will be the main classification yard. I am designing the layout so it will have a La Junta to Denver run (1/2 of the basement) and a La Junta to ABQ run. This is a double deck design with staging and a couple of short lines on the lower level.

Did not have to work the 4th weekend, wew..... So got some of the bridge locked in...Also my birthday month and the wife was so kind as to allow a new engine (kicking & screaming)  all the way. Also she came down stairs and leaned on the light switch, green LED's sure make for some cool pictures. Got to run, working on her kitchen tonight..