My Grain Fleet

I recently gathered all of my grain fleet into one place on my layout, at the Cargill elevator tracks at Helene. It turns out that I have a lot of grain cars! A grain elevator would never get this congested “in real life” but it was interesting to see all of my grain hoppers and … Read more

Lighting the Peninsula

When we were finishing the basement, I negotiated a portion for my train room. I think my wife accepted that there was going to be a train room in this house.. she knows me. We had drop ceilings installed with recessed lighting. This is handy as the lights can be directed, so I can point them to … Read more

Ballasting

I ballasted the peninsula recently. It took me a long time to get started because I was pretty nervous about “doing it right”. Eventually I convinced myself to “just do it”. Watching a YouTube video or two helped. I had three packs of fine gray ballast that was supposedly the same colour. Two of them looked … Read more

Track Plan Evolution

Like most people I like to draw up track plans before beginning construction. Now that all the track is laid on my layout, I’d like to show the evolution of the track plan for this layout. Remember that I model in HO scale. My train room is 20’6″ by about 10′ but is not quite … Read more