Eventually I'll launch a blog for this. But I've chosen Andy Sperandeo's San Jacinto District theme and track plan for the new layout. Been acquiring era-appropriate HO scale Santa Fe equipment. And, of course, I've turned my attention to planning and design.

As to the latter, I've enlisted the services of Byron Henderson's LayoutVision.

I'm still toying with the trackplan after the suggestions by Trevor Marshall, but my mind has been wandering to more esoteric things. Namely, the name. Westhaven was the district I lived in as I was growing up in Montreal. I remember the 4x6 layout my dad had made for us that slid under his bed. We named that Westhaven RR and I had some idea that it was like the New Haven railroad.

Hello everyone

I would like to ask for some advice, please. The May 2002 Model Railroader has a good article upgrading a MDC 2-8-0, the picture at the beginning of the article shows the Loco with valve gear but there's nothing in the body of the article that explains how this was done. On another forum someone suggested that the author used the Bowser H9 valve gear kit, it seem that you would need the cross heads and valve gear hanger as well? I have three MDC kits that I'd like to do this conversion to so any help or advice would be very welcome!

Hi all,

   So, as noted in my blog here, I've been scratchbuilding freight cars. Lots of fun, very theraputic. Anyway, trying to build a passenger car now. The frame is done, the sidewalls are good, but I'm trying to figure out how to make arched supports for the roof.

  My current plan is to take some stripwood, boil it for a moment to soften the wood fibers, and wrap it around a piece of PVC pipe until it dries. In theory, the boiling water should make it easy to bend the wood, and when it dries, it should stay curved.