Wow, I have broken the back of the bench work today. I now have 12 feet of bench work, with back scene (sky) boards, legs with self levellers an all completed. There is still some more work to do to get the legs for the other 2 boards that will give me the final length of 12 feet x 2 feet and the return of 8 feet by 18 inches.

After a combat tour in Vietnam, we wrote what are called "after action" reports so that lessons could be passed on for the future. The same is true for model railroading. As the "de-construction" moves forward (or should I say backward), there are some notable lessons to both be learned and passed along to the next generation. Here are some of my observations:

I constructed the "Marquette & Independence" layout from the Model RR Magazine's series that started in the Dec. 1975 issue. It has been in storage for a number of years and is in sad shape. I constructed the original design, in modular form as I had no place for a permanent set up. This was not a totally bad decision as I was able to move it to three different homes without problems. 

People always ask where are the new train kids?  That is a good question and I started to think about me being a kid.

Back in the 70's we did not have Video Games, Computers or the internet. The TV only had 5 stations and one of them was PBS, R/C cars and planes were still expensive and used fuels, not many electric R/C cars that worked well.

 to all

here is the switching action that i was asking about in my last post. i decided rather than pushing the empties back that i would drive the locos down the main to the east end of glendale siding & switch into the siding to pull the cars back home.

 some how a whole section of the video is missing. after switching the last cars to phoenix plastics, i drove the power to the east end of glendale siding & coupled up to the empties & proceeded down the hill to mobest yard.

here's the video

Andrew came by last night and we made a start on assembling the benchwork for Pembroke. I'm planning to do as much assembly as possible out in the garage to keep the mess out of our newly finished basement. So, while it's not a modular layout, it is being built in three sections - the town, the corner with engine shed, and the staging yard.