It’s been a good ten months since I’ve done anything model railroad related.  My daughter was born in September and my boy just turned two in March.  Needless to say, domestic bliss has pushed everything else to the back burner.  But now things are normalizing, sleep is becoming more and more consistent, and I’m starting to shake off the rust that my hobby life has accumulated.

Hi! Converted my analog Electromotive F7 engine to digital with sound and made a short video documenting the process.

This week's video is the start of a small series on paths and roads:

Do let me know any comments that you have.

Kathy

Trees came from SE today so worked on the layout this week to get ready for them. Did the major scenery work from Geldermans toward the the mountain, fences, flowers, trees, bushes, etc. Planted about 200 trees on the hill tonight, WOW a lot of trees, will finish up all the extraneous tuffs, bushes, etc I hope this week. Still have the foreground to do, part of an apple orchard, fence & horses from the old layout will move here.

As part of my continued avoidance of all things trackwork and electrical related I have started on a bulk modeling project.  My continuance down the backdating road requires that I add a significant number of 40 foot boxcars as these were still quite common into the early 1990's in northern Manitoba.  To that end I have started working on approximately 25 to 30 boxcars, predominantly Intermountain cars and Trains Canada cars and a smattering of Branchline and True Line Trains cars as well.

I have had some reactions to my plans for the new layout. This has caused me to restate the back story for the S&NE. Firstly, I decided to produce a better map, including the real B&M and New Haven.

I haven't had an update in a long time. It is a combination of me not keeping up with the updates and not really having much to update. Probably more of the latter. I was having a real motivation issue because I was never really happy with how well trains ran on my layout. It was a combination of poor track work and electrical issues. Additionally, my little corner of the basement got taken over as a spare bedroom of sorts. As I final death nail, I got a new job in Savannah, GA. The layout, which was always going to be a chainsaw, got salvaged and put in the trash.

I decided a while back that I would use rigid insulation foam to support the scenicked (non-roadbed) areas on my layout (at least in the flat areas). I later decided to use 2" thick foam to match my spline roadbed's height without having to resort to shimming.  I'd previously tried stacking two layers of thinner foam and assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that the thicker foam would provide a more solid base between benchwork supports. 

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I had 2 goals this weekend.  To get all the track laid and to fine tune my rolling stock. Added weight so now the average of the 14 freight cars is a whopping 9.6 ounces. Yes you read that right. Not to long ago, I read, I think it was on MRH, but it may have been Lance Mindheim, that if you give your cars some real heft than your loco will really seem like its working hard. I also added metal wheels and fixed any bad couplers.  The other project involved getting the track laid down the way I planned.