Uncategorized

I’m not a very sentimental person. I don’t tend to keep a lot of keepsakes, and when we travel, I usually don’t buy souvenirs. I rely on my photos and my memories. However, this box means a lot to me.

I purchased a few HO scale model railway cars at an estate sale recently. They will be worthy additions to my fleet once I check them over and maybe tune them up a bit. The locomotive, CN 4109, is a dummy GP9 that appears to have been renumbered. The numbers are way too small. I’m … Read more

I’ve made some decent progress on the layout since my last update (Fits and Starts). All of the track in the CN area has been laid and wired. I ended up buying a new Dremel, since the battery on my ancient Dremel had died and I couldn’t find a replacement battery. I ran another operating … Read more

I’ve been making progress on the Central Prairie Railway… in fits and starts. I’m trying not to beat myself up about the (lack of) progress. It’s a hobby, after all, and it shouldn’t feel like work. Every now and then, I get the urge to work on the layout and I do a bit of … Read more

As many people have found out, fitting the available space in a track plan doesn’t always mean that the real track fits the available space. Switches in particular can mislead you – they take up more space than people think. For the Central Prairie Railway, I’ve resolved to sketch it out in the track plan … Read more

I’ve always been challenged on how to store rail cars and locomotives when they aren’t on the layout itself. I’ve acquired most of my fleet from train shows and therefore I don’t have original boxes for 80-90% of the fleet – or any boxes at all for most of them. Over the years, I accumulated … Read more

I decided it’s time for a change. Time for a new layout. There have been a few issues with my layout that just aren’t fixable. The two major ones are: Duck-under at the entrance to the layout room / my office Grades to second level staging yard were too steep I was really starting to … Read more