http://www.nscorp.com/content/nscorp/en/news/norfolk-southerncommentsonc...

Every so often one needs an absolute position detector, rather than a block detector. The best I’ve used employ their own light source, but older designs use Cadmium Sulphide (CdS) photocells and depend on ambient light in the room. Both have driven me crazy with their limitations. This article describes a new design, using ambient light “seen” by the detector in two places – typically between the rails and just to the side of the track.

Last blog entry I was dealing with a major setback.  The Hydrocal plaster building I was working on broke apart at the glue points with one end piece flopping over and breaking into three pieces. 

The cause, given the 12x24 inch footprint, was not having a stable base which would have prevented shearing when the building was handled. 

This week I got everything back together and added a 1/4 inch thick wood base.  I thought about going with a thinner piece of wood but anything under 1/4 inch had some give which risked another disaster.  

The Arduino is an open source hardware and software hobbyist platform that has huge grass roots support here on MRH and worldwide. It has such huge potential at a reasonable price that I couldn't stop thinking about how to implement or exploit this on my layout. Peter in NZ has encouraged me to get going with this and so, successes (I hope) or failures will be posted here along with links to other sites of interest. Please follow along and feel free to post thoughts, experiences, and links of interest. 

This is a follow up post in my quest to find a realistic as possible approach to replicating old, weather-worn ties on the Milan branch. Please forgive me for repeating the first two steps, but I believe I’ve got results that are worth sharing. 

Received the rest of the roads. so completed base work on the fist section around to the 2nd tunnel. I also got the fence done around part of the fuel depot.

Wife is calling... Take Care,

One of the benefits of maintaining mostly the same theme, is I can reuse nearly all my large buildings.  Some of them need altered somewhere to fit the their new locations.  Luckily I cataloged their construction, so I could match the paint. Also because some of them are sizable, I'm placing them as I lay track so that everything meshes properly.  Added bonus...they come off the storage shelves...allowing me to put other stuff on the shelves.

In the current series of weathering videos by Mike Confalone, has anyone, including Mike produced a list of the material needed to do all the weathering covered in this series? I've come up with seveal oil paint colors and the Pan Pastels, but not sure if I've got them all. 

Hi I am thinking about jumping on N-SCALE and moving to HO scale and I would like to know which locomotives brands to avoid. I am using NCE dcc and do know how to convert locos. I am a steam person and some early diesel. I have converted and repaired some N-SCALE locomotives.have been in model railroading for a while. Any help on this matter would be helpful. Thank you

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