I have been doing a lot of reading lately from the " One-town layout " topic to " Operations " and " Is Model railroading too expensive ". I did a search of the posts today here on MRH on Virtual Railroading and found quite a bit of information, a lot more than I would have thought. This topic got me to thinking:

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh2016-12-dec/reverse-running

The walls are all painted, part of my bench work is now in so it is doodle time. 

I have tried CAD design for my layouts in the past, but I enjoy doodling ideas.

i have modified that technique by using my template and further modified the process by doodling on plexiglass over top of the scaled drawing.

The plexiglass technique I got from my wife who Doodles on quilts as she designs quilting patterns.

But enough about quilts.

Here are a couple of photos of some doodling.

I present the three most critical things just about all of us need now to preserve our model railroad harmony:

One of these:

Some of these:

and one of these:

I recently purchased a Con-Cor EMD MP-15 (DC) locomotive.  The locomotive ran pretty well right out of the box but was rather noisy.  The documentation said that it was lubed at the factory but greasing it with LaBelle grease made a big difference in the running characteristics.