The ex-Rock Island depot at Atlantic, Iowa, now housing the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce, is a real landmark of my prototype, and the events of the last few weeks have led me a few steps closer to modeling it.  While I'm sure that completion is far in my future, I thought I'd document the initial planning steps and then come back to this post as I make progress.

More to come in the first post.

There's a long-running quote among railroad engineering departments:

"The basic rules of bridge building are:

1. Never build a bridge when a trestle will do,
2. Never build a trestle when a fill will do, and
3. God loves a culvert."

Unfortunately, even a culvert can't be accurately modeled when you don't even know it's there...which gives you a clue as to the quandary that I'm now attempting to address.

I've long been intrigued by the idea of adding working switch locks to the layout as Lance Mindheim, Trevor Marshall, James McNab, and others have done.  They'd slow down operations a bit, draw my crews and me deeper into thinking like our prototype counterparts, and prevent crews from operating on trackage that, on the 1:1 IAIS, is controlled by the Engineering (MOW) or Mechanical departments (diesel house/carmen).  Up until now I've always decided against them since I thought they'd be a hassle when operating alone, requiring both hands to unlock them. 

Now that Iowa Scaled Engineering is close to releasing their new ProtoThrottle, and since I've been blessed with the opportunity to beta test the PT for the last year, I thought I'd create this post and its accompanying videos with a few tips on configuring and operating it.

A couple months ago I was posting about my layout's signature scene, but this time, I thought I'd veer from that to discuss my favorite scene:  The crossovers at the west end of Atlantic, Iowa.

Details in the first reply.

With the completion of my final railroad bridge yesterday, I'm now in the home stretch on the layout's basic scenery (i.e. roads, backdrop photos, static grass, SuperTrees, and various foliage).  All that remains is the 4-5' from the Harry Langdon Blvd. overpass scene in the center of the pic below over to the backdrop tree photos on the far right.  This will include:

I had a goal of completing all my layout's railroad bridges in 2017, and while I technically missed that by a day, I'm going to call it good due to the New Year's holiday.  I was on vacation through January 1, and in my world, it's not officially 2018 until I have to go back to work. 

Three years ago, my friend Ole Pade from Sweden completed an outstanding kitbash of IAIS SD20 103 based on an Atlas SD24.  The prototype 103 had long been a favorite of mine since I once had a chance to spend some time in the cab way back when, but I'd never gotten around to modeling it, so I half-jokingly asked Ole to please give me first dibs if he ever decided to sell his model.

I recently finished converting my 35-unit locomotive roster from Tsunamis to Loksounds, and I've been so excited about the move, and about Loksound's Full Throttle feature, that I thought I'd share a video to demonstrate. Tom Klimoski asked me to shoot something showing the operation of the throttle in relation to locomotive performance in order to give a better idea of how Full Throttle's "Drive Hold" feature works, so this is my attempt at doing so.