Well, we finally found the house. It'll take a couple weeks for all the formalities to finish up, but it'll probably go through. In the meantime, here's what I've got for a trackplan. Control will be Digitrax radio with a few UP5's scattered around for the yard crew and hostelers to use. The area across the road from the roundhouse will be the GE lightbulb plant in Logan. The black lines across the layout represent the section joints.

It would seem that scale modelers have been given a reprieve from the trade war.  An email I received from Broadway Limited told of their MSRPs being rolled back to pre-July status, when barely a week ago they had jacked those same prices to cover the "Last 10% tariff" announced earlier.

We live in fun times.  I'm watching my retirement accounts going straight into the crapper, courtesy of CNBC's barking heads coverage...

I’m modeling the Upper Appalachians and would like to represent both the Stag Horn Sumac and Alanthis (Tree of Heaven). Not sure if I spelled Alanthis right. The Sumac is a native tree and the Alanthis is a non-native, invasive. Both of these trees are similar to one and another and the difference would not be seen in Ho Scale other than the “stag horns” of the Sumac. Do any of you think if I pruned an N or Z Scale Palm leaf and carefully glued it to a really thin and short, home made armature that it would work?

The problem:

I'm pondering how to build an industrial switching shelf layout.  What I want to start with is a plain flat surface on which to lay the track, because I want to be able to go through a few iterations moving things around a bit before I get the track layout exactly the way I want it.  Once I get the track layout "nailed down" so to speak, I would like to be able to carve drainage ditches and other minor variations in ground level into whatever it is I've laid the track on.