Hello gang, I have not worked on my trains in a very long time. The boss told me to get working on it or get busy selling it... I decided to set some goals and work a couple of hours every couple of days on it. Worse, she said if I don't start working on it, I can not go looking for precious junk at any more train shows. Damn... anyone live with a woman like that? I am just kidding. I mean she does have a valid point. 

As I was trying to organize the layout a little and start doing some things to get parts and pieces of the track running, I was forced to come up with a solution to mounting my Digitrax system. You can see by the Velcro pads on top of four of the units, the extent of my system was a DCS100 and a DB150. My brother, had G scale and decided he was no longer interested. He gave me an 8 amp DCS100 and an 8 amp DB100+. The other ones have been acquired in various auctions or train shows. 

Well, gang. I haven't posted in a long while, mainly because I haven't worked on the layout a lot. I am now sometimes envious of someone who builds a small switching layout ! 

Oh well, I took the bite and now I have to digest it. 

I spent a few hours today welding up some more wall brackets for the layout. Someone had mentioned wanting to see what I used to hold the layout, so here they are. I need to grind some of the welds, drill the mounting holes and shoot them with primer and then they are ready to go onto the layout walls. 

Okay, 

It is not exactly the lyrics or the meaning Pink Floyd had in mind. 

Yet, I still have a hole in my wall. It is a hole that goes between the finished and non-finished portion of the basement. Don't worry. My wife will think it is just fine, as long as she doesn't know it's there. 

I like building sprawling complexes and using structures that dwarf the trains and really seem to provide the railroad a reason to exist.  I have my last eight feet on one level that needs to be filled. One of my concerns is taking up too much real estate with large footprint buildings that do nothing but "sit there". 

I have started working on the layout again. I decided to post this to my blog because this is the start of what should end up looking pretty cool and being an area that provides A LOT of operation potential.

My creative side will simply not allow me to formalize a plan and follow it... I have an idea what I want but that is all.  The thrill of the hunt is the junk I find at trainshows and figuring out how I can clean it up and put it all back together again.

In this recent discussion board post, I was looking for pictures of Nolix setups as I depart somewhat from my original plan of a ridiculously huge helix in the unfinished area of the basement.

I imagine it was going to look something like this one I picked off the internet:

Well, I haven't worked on my layout for a while, busy working and helping others with their layout. You guys know how poor I plan a layout out... I just kinda pick a subject and roll with it. That brings me peace and happiness, even if I end up tearing stuff out. Slowly, it moves forward and frankly, I am pretty happy with the way this latest addition looks !

This is the beginning of the first staging yard ! Yeah !

As you can see, there is a standard ladder on the right hand side of the module. The left hand side has a compound ladder. I really find that the compound ladder does not look like it should, but the real estate cost is A LOT lower. So, I going with it for now.