Good afternoon all,

I was going through some "old" ( 2009 ) images that were taken while on a historical group's safari. These images were taken while watching a crew operate a remote engine to switch cuts of gondolas. The unused (and  VERY rusty) track on the right hand side of this picture and other details were a pleasant discovery when viewed afterwards!

I have added a downloadable copy of my timetable planner MS Excel spreadsheet to my web page.

If you want to create your own timetable, you can enter a start time for each train, the running time between stations and the dwell time at each station and the spreadsheet will automatically generate a schedule.

Entry grid:

Time Grid:

Strength and health of the hobby, or lack of, is a very popular subject on this site.

One area connected to these discussions I have not come across is how the hobby is doing by region.  For example, based purely on obsevation, it seems like north central and northeast regions of the country have a strong model railroad following and support structure, (Hobby shops, clubs, shows, Etc. ), compared to say the south central region.  

I can’t believe it.  Last Thursday night, after 15 years of being married, I asked my recently retired wife if she’d like to “help on an arts and crafts project on the layout”.  After a moment’s hesitation, to my surprise, she said, “sure, why not?”  Well, my intitial idea was to build some trees with her, but the next thing I knew she had completely rearranged my town (for the better!), and then dug into trees with a vengence!