To All: I painted. lettered, weathered and dullcoated an RS-1 in the Illinois Terminal RR green & yellow scheme and painted and lettered an RS-1 in the Chicago & Eastern Illinois RR blue & orange scheme,this week for use on the E. St. Louis Rail Group Layout. On the C&EI loco I need to find or make the logo that goes on the cab. Check out the attached photos.

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

PS: Excuse the color renditions as I did not correct for color. The C&EI unit looks yellow bit it is orange!

This link will take you to the page on the NMRA web site that down the right side has individual web pages, clubs through out US and much more.
Good way to find someone in your area that is into model trains.
http://www.nmra.org/directory/

I have been studying many examples of heavily weathered prototype box cars. Also, I have been reading some great "how to's" found on the website called THE WEATHERING SHOP. Jeremy St. Peter does fantastic weathering and he shares how he does each car. 

So here is my latest weathering job. 

I have two return lines coming back to one mainline Is there a "automatic switches control" to switch my Tortoise Switch Motor for the turnout of each line when the train approach's the single main. I watched a older video on this, what manufacture? Would like some input,

It doesn't seem too well known by modelers that turnouts and crossovers are typically laid differently on the prototype. Possibly because most of us grew up with RTR sectional track, which usually only has "shorty" turnouts in the limited track range. And those shorty turnouts were so handily designed to fit "heel to heel" to make sectional track crossovers without any further thought.

I just got back into the hobby after 25 years away from it. I'm looking for others in my area to exchange ideas,etc.

I live in Newport Pa

To All: Another of my scratchbuilt towers is Glen. It is responsible for controlling entrance to the east end of Pacific Yard located on the upper level of the E. St. Louis Rail Group Layout.

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

To All: The Vandalia RR was a subsidiary of the New York Central RR. The Vandalia RR had this standard plan for some of their towers. I scratchbuilt this one from a photo in a TRRA Historical Society publication. It controls entrance to two passing sidings and two main tracks on the E. St. Louis Rail Group Layout.

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

Jumped the gun a little bit on my last progress report since a styrene slab isn't much to write home about.  But I got around to finishing Millard Lumber on my IAIS Grimes Line layout.  It's nothing amazing but was a great first step in scratch-building and answered a lot of questions before I tackle the larger structures on the layout.

James