Many years ago I stopped model railroading, mostly because I joined the Navy and wouldn't have room. My parents gave away my old HO scale train components, although my 1971 vintage Lionel train set still resides in their attic.

To All: Another recent Bobber Caboose I assembled is this Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
offering from Virginia Foundry & Model Works by John Canfield. He sells craftsman
kits of early rail equipment. It will be added to my collection of cabooses
(about 120 in the collection). Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St.Louis Rail Group Layout

to all... i need some input about running a stack train. this is an "N" scale layout. i am using micro engineering code 55 track. my well cars are from different manufacturers ( walthers, deluxe innovations, mdc / roundhouse & kato) most have 33" metal wheels & i have weighted all the containers. the problem i am having is they derail at various spots on my layout. i don't know what else to do to keep these guys on the track. does any one have any suggestions???? help !!!!

vinny..aka..bnsf6951

About 10 months ago I wrote about our club (US Model Railroad Club of Western Australia) having to demolish our old layout and moving to a new location (see http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/6216).

To All: The latest addition to my layout is this bobber caboose assembled from
a Virginia Foundry & Model works kit by John Canfield. I heavily weathered
it to represent many years of hard service.

Yours, Elvin Howland/E. St.Louis Rail Group Layout

So, I have not had any time to model this week, or last week, or the week before, or ever since my shop found out I can build stuff.  This quickly turned into "Hey Ben, I need a corner desk" followed by "Hey Ben, I have this stone Chess set..."  I swear, this is the last "For Hire" work I do!!!

I now have most of the background rocks carved and coloured but I have to tidy up a bit as we've got an operating session this weekend. It would probably mess up our timetable if we had to get out the rotary plow and push through piles of pink "snow".

At any rate, I couldn't resist plugging in a few temporary trees to get a feel for what the scene will look like. I'll say this, planting trees in foam rock is EASY. Just jam em' in.

I've gotten to a good point. I've got 9 whole feet of track down. Two six foot staging tracks, a switch, and a three foot tail. I've been working on the electrical the past couple of weeks. BTW, this is all DC, for now. The three sections are divided into blocks controlled from a temporary panel. I've got a couple of LEDs to indicate the turnout position.

The next two things I'm going to work on are playing around with the Ir Tx/Rx LEDs to display whether the turnout is fouled from either the two legs.

I'm curious if there are any members in N-scale from Wisconsin on here, specifically the east central region around Sheboygan who'd be interested in a round robin type group for weekly work sessions & future operations? 

You know when you are cutting corners - well I do - and I was definitely cutting corners when aligning the track across the two boards. I knew what I should be doing but thought 'well, I know it is a bit fragile, so I will go carefully'. Some chance of that - inside two days the ends of the track on both boards were so mashed that running trains across was impossible and no amount of straightening would solve the problem.

This is an example: