I've been reading about Shays again, and it got me thinking..

After digging through the piles on my workbench looking for a part that I KNEW was there somewhere, I finally got frustrated and did what I've been meaning to for quite a while now.  I cleaned up my mess!  It didn't take anywhere near as long as I thought.  One tip, if your workbench is this bad:  Get a card table and move all your crap over there, so it's easier to sort.

Before:

My beautiful, wonderful, amazing wife has outdone herself again.  Today is my birthday, and her gift to me this year is the brand new Southern Ry. combination depot kit from Nick & Nora Designs.  In fact, it may be the very first one they sold, since she called and special ordered it before it was available on their web site.

http://xkcd.com/1095/

Here's the goal (though in standard gauge, instead of narrow):

And here's what I'm starting with, an older Bachmann 0-6-0 tank engine:

I've been thinking.  Rivet counters, scratch builders, operators, prototype modelers - we have a bad reputation, or at least are perceived less than favorably by some.  Why?

It figures.  You go and build a model based on your best guess of what the prototype was, and then you turn up new information to prove that you got it all wrong.

The prototype:

And my original model:

Okay, it's nothing special, but this is what I'm working on this morning.  I bought one of the new MKT outside braced box cars from Athearn/Roundhouse yesterday, and I really like the Sloan Yellow paint scheme.  I found out it's not quite prototypical for my era (I model ca. 1940, Sloan paint came in in '47 or so), but I like the way it stands out against my brown rolling stock.

The trouble is, the car is not yellow, it's YELLOW!!

I finally got around to doing a little more scenery work on my layout.  I'm extending it railroad west a few feet at a time.  Maybe one of these days I'll even plant some trees instead of looking at a barren desert!  There's nothing especially unusual about what I am doing, but maybe it will be interesting and/or useful to somebody out there.

I'll make this post short and sweet, and then add another meaty one with description and photos.

If I knew a little more about aviation, I'd try to make a good joke about that title..

Anyway, I've decided to see if I can make an Atlas HO scale roundhouse work on my layout.  The difficulty is that my tracks are already laid at 10 degrees, whereas the Atlas model is designed for a 15 degree angle.  I had planned on scratch building, but when one is given a nice kit, it's worth investigating good ways of using it.