Confessions of a Model Train Geek
A model train geek, learning as he goes.
Nothing ever goes as planned It’s a hell of a notion Even Pharaohs turn to sand Like a drop in the ocean – Styx (from their great album Paradise Theatre) I had a little solo operating session on my layout a few weeks ago. It was really a positioning move for a “real” operating session … Read more
My oldest son Nick came to visit for Thanksgiving. He’s attending the University of Waterloo so it was nice to have him around for a few days. We did our traditional visits to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada and to Marway Militaria. Nick has a fair amount of N scale equipment (some from my … Read more
I was on Prince Edward Island recently for work. Shortly before I left Manitoba, I mentioned to Chris Mears and Taylor Main that I was headed for the island, and they invited me to join them for the Half Nuts operations group on Sunday evening. They meet regularly and operate on one of two layouts in the … Read more
Over the past few weeks I have held another solo operating session. This follows the CP operating session I had. I ran CN 404 and then CN 403 through the layout, doing some local switching along the way. CN 404 On my layout, train CN 404 runs east from Melville, SK to Winnipeg, MB. This train … Read more
After the last operating session, I had two more trains to run: CP 949 (Winnipeg to Brandon via Georgetown); and CP 975 (Brandon to Minnedosa) Both are fairly limited in the switching they do in Georgetown, so they were quicker than CP 948 in particular to run. CP 949 The instructions for CP 949 … Read more
After my first operating session with car cards, I made one significant change, then started running some CP trains. Here are a few videos showing the trains. Train Information Card I added a train information card to the front of the card packet. This gives the train number, origin and destination of the train, departure time, … Read more
This past Sunday, I spent 4 1/2 hours operating on William Brillinger’s layout. What fun! You may recall I operated there once already, so this was round 2. After I arrived at Bill’s house at 1 PM, Bill offered me the choice of operating CN 532, stopped at Letellier, or a BNSF grain train from … Read more
I did my first operating session on my model train layout with car cards. I took video with my phone and here are the videos. I broke the video in two because it was too long to upload and I wanted to edit out a few bits where I put the phone down to throw … Read more
I recorded a video to talk about the car cards I am trying out for my layout. I am going to use it to run through a trial operations session to see how well it works. In this video I show the car cards I am using, the card pockets I installed around the layout, and … Read more
Many model train layout designers try to have the maximum spur lengths they can, to maximize how many cars can sit at the industry, and therefore maximize their train lengths. There’s nothing wrong with this but you should consider how the industry actually uses the spur. I’ll give an example: the grain elevator spur in Georgetown on … Read more