To All: My goal in painting and lettering freight cars is to do some of the small roads. One of these was the Columbia, Newberry & Laurens, a short line in South Carolina. It was one of the "Golden" roads of that state. The decals are by Gerald Glow, a fine maker of decals. I need to add a Tichy roofwalk, #58 Kadee couplers and metal wheels. The CN&L became part of the Atlantic Coast Line RR in 1924 and later part of CSX.

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

Moving stock on western railroads has always been big business and no less on the narrow gauge. When a large block was to be moved off the Rio Grande Southern to market the RGS and the D&RGW worked to move the stock with in the time set by law. Law was animals could not be in the cars for more than 24 hours, the shipper could make 30 hours at his risk. When the move was to be made the railroads had it set up so the cars would go from loading to transshipping point in this time.

In between working in the yard this weekend I was able to finish up some smaller projects on my IAIS Grimes Line layout.

First I finished up the switch stands on the Millard Lumber and PharmTech spurs. DW #916 is a close approximation and will work well when I need to modify the targets for the former MILW switch stands in Clive.

A Note to Scenery Manufacturers - Please have your on-line descriptions identify items with tree nut-by product. 

There are many children that are highly allergic to nut by-products.  I have just found on the Woodland Scenics Ballast label - contains tree nut by-product.   

Going forward, I will pay more close attention to scenery product labels.  

When I decided to put some scenery along a two track staging area along one side of my room things got a little out of hand, as usual. I added another track for a small stockyard left over from a previous module. And I needed a place for a recently retired (it’s 1959) coal and water stop. All of this required a simple backdrop. The scene I had in mind stretched across a narrow band of two slides taken from several miles away. Just zooming in and splicing would not have left any ‘photo-realism’. Besides this is a layout, it’s a representation, made by me.

 To All: A  freight car project I recently finished is a 50 foot wood automobile boxcar by Ambroid. I picked up this car at the Feb. Jacksonville, Florida train show for $2.50! It had the body assembled but unfinished and unpainted. That was it. I supplied the materials to add grab irons,stirrups, roof walk, underbody details, including brake rigging, coupler cut bars, air hoses, paint, decals trucks and brake wheel. I weighed,painted, lettered, weathered and dullcoated the car. I will use it on the Cotton Belt's Blue Streak Merchandise train.

I made a video showing how to program a Tsunami Diesel decoder in JMRI
Decoder Pro or Panel Pro. Goes through all the steps on how to do it and what
my sound setups are. I am not a Decoder Pro expert but have programmed a
number of Tsunamis this way. Demonstration of sound changes with Reverb and
Equalizer plus all the basic sound and control CVs. Take a look. Video is
long and thorough.

Bob Helm

   My layout is called the Kanunda and Emu Flat railway. The K&EF is 25' x 10' and takes up one side of our double garage. I started building it in 2000. The layout uses Lenz DCC.

I have finally begun construction on my HO Scottsville & Carlynton Railroad layout.  This is a fictitious ex-CSX branchline in the foothills of eastern Kentucky.  This will be my third layout in as many residences.  My first layout was a plywood prairie, a 12' x 4' bent dogbone loop; I managed to get to the scenery stage with that one.  My next was a little 10' x 6' loop in a shared spare bedroom/hobby room.  That was my first L-girder construction attempt; managed to just get to the track-laying stage when we moved again.  After intense

Pulling out the remnants of my old N scale layout  and trying to get the room prepared for the new HO venture. I keep asking out loud to no one in particular.... "who built this dang thing?!!" Of course it was me who decided to glue as well as screw everything together. Anyway, moving forward, slowly but surely.

Michael