A couple of days ago, politics blew up on a thread on this forum. I got to it and, frankly, my already shortened fuse over politics and 2020 in general went off. What I said was quite likely beyond the bounds of decorum. For that I apologize. 

While my job has been keeping me quite busy, the covid lockdown has kept me around home. The good news is the railroad is progressing.

It’s been a while since my last construction update. I was trying to finish up installing the lighting and that turned into a bigger adventure than originally planned.

Here’s the story in two parts. The first part is the why, the second part is the how.

I found the MRH site accidentally a few days ago while searching for Track Plans for a very small HO switching layout that I've decided to build while away from home working. Kind of cool that a Google Search got me here via a picture of a track plan on Pinterest! I have a tiny room/office at my away place in Vancouver where I stay with a family. I'm hoping by documenting this, it might inspire other space challenged modelers to get building.

I've never built a multi-deck layout, so I've only read discussions about whether to build top-down or bottom up. In reading these, the problem of bumping one's head on the deck above seems to stand out to me as a bigger objection than some of the others. The problem in building bottom up that resonates the most with me is dropping stuff on the laid track or scenery. 

So my questions are, A) are these really the two most significant issues, and B) how much of a problem are they? Assuming you know dropping stuff is a problem, how well can you mitigate it? 

Back to the Modeling Projects here is part one of a Taco Shop in West Sacramento

I have issues consisting Kato locomotives. I just received the brand new SD70m flat radiator in N scale. It is a new release by kato. Two of my engines run fine in and out of consist. The other two run so differently at factory set I can't believe they both are the same brand.. Consisting  makes them run so poorly. I use NCE pro cab . They act like they are pulling each other along . Any suggestions on what is wrong let me know. 

Finally have some free time with all my lumber bought and my new drill and impact ready to go...and need to have my car looked at. So I'll make another post while I wait for that before I go home and start building.

The layout will go in the living room, as I am in a one bedroom apartment. AND my fiancé is on-board with it, if for no other reason than that my train stuff takes up her side of the closet right now so I have to build it so I can move that into the cabinets the modules will sit on lol

This is a great color for aged concrete if you don't feel like pulling your airbrush out everytime. I've used it on several different things, you can use light washes of India ink to age it even further.