This week half of my students, the eighth graders, were on a trip to Mexico so we conducted a week of special elective courses for the seventh graders. Eight students signed up to spend two days with me making progress on the model railroad.

As I redo the layout, I'm also reorganizing my equipment and supplies. 

First off, I am creating separate tool boxes for my track, electrical, and general purpose tools . Each box is a different color, and each tool is color coded to that box. I found this box at Home Depot the other day for my track tools and supplies. There's a divided tray, I used to organize my track nails, replacement ties, rail joiners, ect.:

Here's a couple of shots of a KO&G GP7 I stripped and painted for the prototype.  The locomotive is a Bachmann DCC Sound unit. I tried several model paint stripers and the only thing that worked was 91% rubbing alcohol.    I added sun shades, lift rings and the wire hand holds up the nose on the front and back. The  3" stripes are from Microscale's white decal set for 3" and 4" stripes and the KO&G logo is from Odd Ball decals.

Because I'm only using a 12 x 12 space in my basement, I've decided to make the layout a pure switching layout. Basically, a single industry covers the entire layout. I will have staging tracks at one end, with a small section of "main line" leading into the actual industry.