I consider myself a strict prototype modeler...and happily so.  I like the boundaries that this approach provides, as they simplify life, help me focus on contentment in building with the things I have, and keep my spending in check.  Without those boundaries, I have a tendency to become more of a collector than a modeler.

As I was finishing the placement of my abandoned concrete plant the other day, one of my T12 fluorescent tubes started going out.  I ran to my local Menards with the intent of just buying more fluorescents, but one of the nearby displays caught my eye:  Feit Electric 4' LEDs..."Replaces T12 fluorescents"..."Plug & Play"..."No rewiring - works with existing ballast".  At $12.99 for a 2-pack, and with Menards running one of their frequent 11% rebate deals, I was sold.  They were available in 3000k, 4100k, and 5000k, but since I'd p

Iowa Interstate SW1200 250 (ex-Texas & Pacific 1299) holds a special place in my heart since it was born just a month after me and was the only switcher owned by the railroad.  While it started out working in Blue Island (Chicago), it later moved to Rock Island and then, in 2003, to Council Bluffs, where it lived out its final years with the IAIS before being sold in 2007. 

My recent work on IAIS GP8 481 had an unintended benefit:  It provided a surplus IC orange, frog-eye-equipped nose from the Intermountain GP10 that I could use to model the scene in the Erik Rasmussen pic below, with the last remains of GP8 7976 languishing in the weeds near the Bluffs enginehouse:

An old Jimmy Soul song, "If You Wanna Be Happy" , tells us...

"If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you"

We often hear of the "transition era" referring to the final years of steam running alongside early diesels in the mid- to late-1950s.  As someone born post-steam and who prefers to model what I've actually seen, I've never had an interest in basing a layout on that period.  However, there have been many more transition eras since then, and I've found that the opportunity they afford to model the juxtaposition of old against new can add a lot of interest to our modeling.

As many of us adjust to the Coronavirus and its accompanying "social distancing", e.g. working from home, avoiding crowds, etc., I thought I'd post a reminder that occasionally taking a break and sitting still - whether we're talking about us as layout owners or the prototype equipment we model - can be positive too.

One of my hobby goals for 2020 is to make more progress on structures, and I decided to start by trying to fill the largest gaps between existing structures today.  Job #1 is the abandoned Ready Mixed concrete plant (later found to be Wilson Concrete, but in 2001 this plant was acquired by Lyman-Richey Corp., parent company of...Ready Mixed!) just east of UP's Pool Yard in Council Bluffs.  Here are a couple prototype photos from September 2001 and June 2005, respectively:

As I've developed my Atlantic yard office scene , it's become clear that the Engineering/MOW Department's boom truck should play a key role, as Atlantic is the MOW base for the west end of the railroad, so that truck shows up often in photos of the area.  While the present-day boom truck is a more recent Sterling purchase, during my May 2005 era, it was a Ford F800.  Nothing similar is readily available in HO scale, so I decided to kitbash it, and since other railroads had similar F800s,

I shot this pic the month before I model, with the lava rock hopper being my primary focus.