In a major milestone the JL&T Railroad has had its functional town names added.  I have to paint a little picture about how this came about so here we go...

Tomorrow I (start to) drive to Maryland for a new job as a fresh college graduate, and along for the ride is the layout. Even as small of a layout as it is, I manage to own an even smaller car, so about 20" got (temporarily) lopped off one end with a reciprocating saw, in what is probably the least straight cut ever.

Work on the scenery and DTC signs.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AB8dd_cng

When I first saw the articles in the April and May 2009 issues of Model Railroader by the late Dean Freytag, I knew I wanted to build it and I knew it would be right for Blue Island on my layout. It seemed like such a large project, I didn't get to it until 2014 after retirement, and it was a dead-of-winter project taking 150 hours and over 1,300 pieces of styrene sheet, strip, and structural shapes.

I have an old Bowser Interurban kit that I just got out.  It's going to beloing to my freelanced "North Central Railroad" as part of their standard gauge (or, per the line's slang, "Broad Gauge") division.  (Most of the company's track is 2 foot gauge including the old SR&RL and WWF as the main (or Maine?) part of the line.

I got these from my dad awhile ago and can't identify them any ideas?

Atlas released their HO scale C420 and RS36 in factory Iowa Interstate paint nearly six years ago.  In that time, I've often been tempted to buy them, but resisted, since the prototype units were no longer on the roster in the 2005 era I model.  My willpower finally met its match earlier this month when friend and fellow IAIS modeler Scott Thornton offered to sell me his IAIS C420 850 and RS36 900 models for next to nothing, both with Tsunami sound and working beacons already installed.

We will be following along the progress of the two helices for my N scale ARZC.  The helices are each 18" radii with Atlas code 80 track nailed to 3/8" plywood.  Each turn of the helix will be constructed with 8 chords of the 3/8" plywood, each chord will be joined by a biscuit and then 2" tall blocks will create the space between levels.  One helix is 6.5 turns next to the classification yard and the other is 5 turns in the corner where the branchline starts.  The branchline will be on 0.25 turns of the second helix, above the mainline.

Jessica's Gap - named after my lovely daughter who stuck her finger into the 'water' to see if it was wet... it was. I had only poured it the hour before. My daughter is 28!