We all  love our little people, and no layout can have to many too many of them.  Recently I discovered two companies in Great Britain, selling 3-D figures in several popular scales.  I ordered just a few from each company to see if I would like them.  Here are before and after photos.  Let me know what you think'.  I must add, I received them from England, in just a few days after ordering them...

I have three relatively recent HO Bachmann Spectrum 4-4-0s.  In each I removed the factory decoder and put in a TCS WOWSound decoder and speaker.

Two of the three run fabulously well.  The third is very jerky, particularly at slow speeds.  I encountered the gentleman from TCS at a recent meet and he suggested the problem could be a capacitor across the motor terminals.

Retail in the US has been going through a transition for awhile and will continue to for the foreseeable future. There are quite a few mall construction projects that have been put on hold or are in the “rethinking mode” across America, even in this so called great economy. E-commerce has had a major part in this decision making. 

  I notice that one of my  spur tracks has about a foot of flextrack that has popped loose from the acrylic caulk. I've never had this problem before and usually have to use a knife blade under the ties to get flextrack loose from the caulk. I weighted it when installing and it looked fine at the time so I'm wondering what went wrong. Anyone else seen this happen? I'm wondering if the caulk was old or perhaps the flextrack had some mold release or other slippery surface contaminate?