I recently bought some Walthers drill bits (#77-79) at a LHS and they were very poor quality with no apparent point and packaged differently than in the past. The shop owner had no comment and I immediately placed a Mc Master Carr order for some high speed steel bits. Has anyone else noted this?

I have essentially done nothing on my layout so far this year.  Got a great track plan that you all helpfully commented on, but it is feeling overwhelming, too much to get started.  Glad I didn't design a multideck plan!  

So.  Next steps?  

Hey everyone, here's the February update for my little shelf layout. Thanks for taking a look!

Stay safe and be well,

Sean

One of the regular members here had asked about muddy water for a module they are working on.  I had taken quite a few in progress shots doing a similar scene. Rather than hijack Dee's thread with all this I will just do a separate thread.  Maybe it will be of some use for someone here.  

The basics: My module is on a piece of 2" foam. For the terrain changes I used 1/2" foam board.  For the rock outcroppings I used accoustic ceiling tile broken randomly by hand. 

The UWT-50 development team had a debate recently about encoders vs potentiometers. My favorite has always been the potentiometer, and I didn't really care if we had an encoder version or not. But I know there are people who would prefer the encoder version. So here is my question. What advantages do you see with the encoder version over the potentiometer version?

After 11 days without power, I am finally back working on the railroad. The prototype has a huge silo used to load two dry bulk trailers at a time.  Mine has to be seriously compressed but still turned out to be very tall.  I've completed the conveyor that runs from the mill building to the truck loading silo, but I didn't appreciate how steep the angle is from the mill building on the left to the top of the silo until I put it all together and got a look at it.

Not a very safe job when you are a shovel operator. Manefay slide April 10, 2013 was the largest nonvolcanic landslide in history.

It took weeks to cut 6 hrs of video to less than 20 mins. Hope it works.

Trying to create realistic Brick look on the Swap Meet buy