Alkem Scale Model announces our latest products: concrete tunnel portals.

Last week, after spending way too much time reading about DCC, I took the plunge and purchased a DCC starter set (Digitrax Zephyr). The cost of the starter sets is not that steep and neither are the decoders. For me, the greatest amount of frustration I have had is with decoder installation.

A few weeks ago my brother-in-law indicated that he'd like to bring my three nephews over to see my layout - it had probably been at least a year since they'd last been out to the house, and since that had been during my 40th birthday party, although trains were running, they weren't exactly a priority. I begged for a couple of weeks delay, both for conflicting events but also so I had a chance to clean up the house and fix a couple of outstanding issues on the layout.

The layout room that I have been working on, seems like forever, is finally finished. I finished up all of the final touch-ups this evening. I still haven't taken any photos yet. I'm not too sure that if I did that everyone can see what it looks like because it is small by alot of peoples standards. Still, I'm very happy to have the space and am very pleased that it is finally complete. I will be starting benchwork next weekend as I haven't completely blown this months budget yet. I figure that I'll be able to purchase all of the needed lumber for my benchwork.

The thing I enjoyed most about Railmodel Journal was the layout tours.I wonder if MRH is planning to do layout tours and if so how.I think there could be interesting ways to visit layouts in a online venue like MRH

As you know I have been working on a benchwork plan for my under construction layout. I am going to move it over to 3rd Planit but I thought I'd show you the last hand drawn version of the plan and discuss it in a bit of detail. So here is version 3. As you can see, I've made the aisles wider on the right side of the peninsula and at the top of the peninsula. I've also written some appropriate dimension information on the diagram as well. You may not be able to read it but don't feel because sometimes I can't either.

BLAST FROM THE PAST ... This was originally posted in 2008, back when MRH was still just an idea in formation.

One of the trademarks of Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine will be our virtual reality images that go with our modeling project articles. Here's a little example to show you what one of these VR images is like:

I model the Willamette & Pacific Railroad (the prototype currently uses the name Portland & Western) in the central Willamette Valley of Oregon. As such, my prototype uses a version of the orange & black paint scheme used by it's parent company, Genesee & Wyoming (GWI).

A week ago, Joe Fugate hosted the first operating session on the Siskiyou Line in nearly a year... if you don't count the one he held earlier that day for the National Narrow Gauge Convention. 

Remarkably, there really weren't all that many operators that showed up (so Joe got to run trains), and several of the ones that did were first timers or visitors from distant lands. One even brought a trio of DRGW SD40T-2's that we used as the helper set that night.

 I'm a real fan of Helicon Focus since it takes care of the biggest issue we face when photographing miniature trains, especially in N scale - depth of field. 

I've been toying with this scene - it's incomplete - the building needs to be moved (I took this shot to locate the best site for the Jake's Gas), I need to add some details to the crossing including planks and crossbucks (actually, I just did that a few minutes ago!)