I've got a home office that I'm going to use for now. The basement is years away from being available for use. My home office is a spare bedroom 11'7" x 7'10". I now have bracket shelving on three walls. So I'm going to do do a couple of little shelf layouts to experiment with. From all the reading I've done, I've come to the conclusion that my first layout is going to be a failure. No getting around that fact. The main reason is that I don't have the skills to pull off what I want to do.

I wrote this story several years ago when I lived in Mobile Alabama. At that time I raised German Sheppard's and one of my pups had an ear that always flopped over. The CSX branch line between Mississippi and Mobile was about a half-mile away. As the pup grew up, every time he heard a train he always howled at it and if they blew the horns (which they did due to a road crossing about a mile away) he would sometimes jump the fence and run up to the tracks and chase the train.

I've finished building all the extendable gates that bridge the gap between the chutes and the stock cars. I was originally just going to glue them on but I thought it might be nice to have them swing instead. so I needed to make some small hinges, but how.

Volume 053    Jot 'Em Down Daily News          April 20, 2005

      The World’s Greatest Railroad Modeler’s Advice Column

                        By the "World’s Greatest Modeler." 

I took my time deciding just which project of over 300 I have planned for My Rio Grande Southern RR Circa 1930-40 I wanted to start first. Some of the structures I have planned will take 1 to 2 years to scratch build others only a few weeks.

Volume 257                                 Jot 'Em Down Daily News                   June 23, 2012

Close Encounters of the Haunted Kind

Copyright 06-23-2012 by RFL

  Volume 254                           Jot 'Em Down Daily News               &

As part of the 120 day challenge I'm trying to complete the mountain on my railroad.  The section that I'm working on has a retention pond and I remember a overflow pipe in a retention pond near my old home.  I don't have a picture of it; however, the image is still strong in my mind so I'll be modeling from my "mind's eye".

This weekend I got around to finishing up the tail track so that I could run a train across the module and verify that all the feeders and trackwork was OK.  I found one loose feeder, possibly caused when the module set fell off the sawhorses in the garage.  The other problem was one turnout with a sticky point.  I got both those taken care of and shot a little video of the first train here:

Inspired by the GLW Freight House, I spent some fun hours building Rena's Tavern and Art. The structure started as a Woodland Scenes kit. Years ago, when I still had hair, I built a similar kit on my first layout. Building this one brought back fond memories. Hope you enjoy...