Not only did I get to visit Michael Rose and his awesome layout while in Florida I also got to make two visits to Tom's wonderful layout!  My first visit was a private tour to let me enjoy the experience and get the "lay of the land".  He also took me over to his friend John's house to see his great coal hauling layout.  My second visit to Tom's I arrived early to get pictures and then got to operate on the railroad.  Tom is a great host, ops guy, and a skilled artist.  I made a little video about the experience shown below.  Thanks, To

While I was in Florida recently Michael Rose was nice enough to allow me to tour his excellent railroad, the Georgetown & Allen Mountain Railroad.  As wonderful as his railroad is I must say that my favorite part was listening to Michael talk about his long years in the hobby and his outlook on modeling.  Thank you, Michael! 

I made little video of the tour:

Athearn Division of Horizon Hobby has recovered its product tooling that was impounded when one of its Chinese manufacturing partners went bankrupt last January (for background see February 2012 MRH, page 103). 

Every now and then someone shares their work and is surprised (and perhaps disappointed) to see that there have been numerous people reading but nobody replying.  I know, I've been there.  I'm also guilty of not posting, even on a thread which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.  Sometimes, it just seems pointless or generic to post something like "great job," and you wish you could come up with something a little more personal and creative.  Especially when someone before you has just said the same thing.