I decided after I bought the add on silos for the Walthers Cornerstone ADM Concrete Grain Elevator to give me a 2x8 configuration, I wanted to represent a local company known as Riceland. Riceland's HQ is located in Stuttgart, AR and served as a major industry on the St. Louis Southwestern or formerly known as the Cotton Belt and still in service by the Union Pacific today.

It is interesting how much work you can complete when you have two weeks off from work.   I'd spent several months working on my track plan, but these last two weeks have been almost dedicated to it,  And i'm calling it done.

Done in the sense I now know enough to start buying track and turnouts.  Need to still work on the actual benchwork design.  Trying to decide between box frame or L girder.  And actual track placement may well change when the tracks hit the plywood.  (Like slightly increasing the runaround in Lynnsport.)

Been a while since my last post. I have been settling into my new job and dealing with the whole covid lockdown thing. While the lockdown has impacted a lot of things, the good news is that the layout is progressing.

Before I get to the layout, there is one change I want to talk about first. The MB&W is undergoing a name change and from now on will be called the Fidalgo Island Rail and Sea Transportation Company.

It is almost December so time to put up some Christmas decorations on my HO layout. This past year I got the last of the lamp posts up. So many towns and communities decorate their posts so why not do it in HO.

The process is simple, just need some time. 
Tools used include a hot wire cutter, knife, cutters. 
You need some extruded foam, couple of washers, craft paints, glue, fine turf, “dots” for decorations, thin wire.

Last week Roger Kujawa posted (https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/41200) a great video tutorial on painting freight and passenger car wheels with a paint pen. Roger used a Woodland Scenics Track Painter. I haven't found one of those locally, and they're over $10 on Amazon.

Oddly enough, about the same time Roger posted the video, I was buying a Testors Craft paint dark brown paint pen at a local general goods store named Bi-Mart. According to my receipt it was $5.19. I tried it out this week, and it's kinda dark, and a bit glossy. Good coverage though. 

Weekend WIP! Tearing up the tracks to the downtown area on my layout, Trenton Subdivisionin N scale. The area was too crowded, removing some of the sidings, opening up some space and adding additional feeder wires. Less is more!

Larks connection with the Bingham Canyon mine.

I've decided to try and get the last of the layout "heavy construction" finally done. I'd been wanting to "box in" New London staging since it's the only part of the layout that's in an unfinished part of the basement and subject to dust. And I figured this would be a LOT easier than dismantling staging to finish this corner with studs, sheetrock & dropped ceiling. This photo and the next shows the first stick of "roof & valence support" going up.