To All: I painted and lettered this Steelers "What If" boxcar for my son James, a Steelers fan. The club's colors are black, gold and white. I did the art work. Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St. Louis Rail Group Layout

Today was the official start of track laying for the new Classification/Staging Yard for the JL&T.

As I'm adding detection & signalling to the layout I wanted to complete the north & south entrances to the yard as they are detected & have signals too.  This section also forms the layouts new wye, and we be the first section to have operating detection & signalling.

Hello all.

I've been posting here for a few years now and have decided that instead of starting separate little blogs for every little idea I have I should consolidate things a bit. So...

From now on, New and exciting things on the Ruphe and Tumbelle will be featured here.

(Insert trumpet fanfare)

To All: Today I present my scratch built C&NW Stanray sided boxcar. I modeled the car from a photo in a prototype rolling stock book. The decals were custom made for me by Ricky Rupp of Modern Rail Company. Having C&NW on both ends of the side was an unusual arrangement. Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St. Louis Rail Group Layout

It's 1968...and the Lehigh is trying out a new Alco 430 to replace it's aging 420's....

A move this summer effectively halted work on my recreation of CN's Waterloo spur running between Kitchener and Elmira, ON.  Since the basement in our new home would require some finishing, I started thinking about building an Inglenook switching layout to practice techniques and to hopefully retain the interest of my eldest son.  Somehow he doesn't understand how it can take months/years to build a layout.  Go figure.

I like Mike Fifer's 3D Control Panel and built mine based on his instructions.  So far I've created the panel with the 3D track layout - for the part that has remote switches only.  I built a wooden frame for it, slight angel back from vertical.  And I've begun to mount the terminal strips behind the panel using a left over bit of plexi-glass.  I'm still am waiting for six more terminal strips to arrive to complete that part of the projct. 

The winter weather has settled in up here on Schist Lake. Our lake has 10 inches of ice and enough snow to take the snowmobile out for a ride. Since I don't own a snowmobile, I have been out snow shoeing for exercise. When not in front of the tv or computer, I am up in the layout room working away.

I have been doing the yearly maintenance required to run the layout without too many issues. Several locomotives and cars have all been cleaned, greased and oiled as required.

This is the final video from Lou Schultz's C & O Allegheny Division.  Great owner, great people a true 64 year experience of friends and the true meaning of the hobby.