I've been busy building landforms for Ophir Loop, now that the photo backdrops in this area are complete.  Have a look:

http://rgsrr.blogspot.com/2013/09/ophir-scenery-work-continues.html

Not presentation quality but you get the idea. Thanks to my wife Peggy for shooting it and putting up with me - LOL! The Greater Nickel Plate lives!

On schedule and as promised to myself, the Greater Nickel Plate rode the High Iron today. Not a production video but thanks to my wife, Peggy, and her patience with me the railroad lives! Now to fine tune the track, cars and engines so that everything runs smoothly. 

I am in the middle of a new project that focuses on the alton, IL area railroad. I am having a hard time finding any images of this area or history. This seems like a fairly reasonable area to model as it has a large mill, and steel mill. But historically how has this area evolved?

Thanks,

Steve

I am working to improve the rolling characteristic of my HW sleepers built from Branchline Trains kits. I have rebuilt the first ones I did to insure they were square and did not bind the wheels. I have modified the bolsters and cut the center sills to allow for an adequate truck swing. I run  these cars on the club layout which uses primarily PECO track and turnouts( code 83).

My next step is to replace the wheel sets that came with the kit.  I am considering Reboxx (.088). Any advise on this? Any suggestions?   Thanks for the ideas.

Finally thought I would share with you what I have been up to over the past year beside's helping a friend build his TH&B Railroad. These are the track plans that I have come up with for modeling the C&NW in 1989. The layout starts in Mitchell yard, heads East to St Francis then South down the Old Line to Oak Creek Wis. Most of this is plan is set in stone (sort Of). I'm up for some input and any type of improvements'. The plan is based on Fast Tracks switch's but I'm not sure About going that route, I'm really liking the Proto87 stuff they have.