I got inspired after reading a number of recent posts on LED layout lighting.  I spent several hours overcoming information overload on Amazon and eventually settled on a strip of 5000K SMD5050 LEDs.  Saturday morning the postman delivered the goodies and I got to work.

I was watching a video of a Marquette Rail train, and at one point they had to stop at an industry and shuffle around some tank cars without setting anything out or making any pickups. If you wanted to add interest without adding rolling stock to trains this would be a good way to do it.

One of the disadvantages of building an HO multi-deck layout in a smaller space is that you end up with a lot of attendant support track. On my 14' x 20' layout I have a staging yard that spans the long side of the layout and 4 separate helices. 

When I'm operating solo and switching in the yard, this support track works to my favor because it dramatically increases the length of the mainline continuous loop. If I put a train on the mainline and let it circle at prototype speeds, it passes by only once every 15 to 20 minutes of actual time. 

When I converted my DCC system from Digitrax to NCE in September, I decided to completely do away with the LocoNet system, which included my Logic Rail LocoNet fast clock.  I don't have any signals or anything else connected to LocoNet, so that was an easy decision.  My idea for the fast clock replacement was to use something else that wasn't dependent on or linked to my DCC system.  At first, I was planning to use the JMRI fast clock on my computer and eventually purchase the Iowa Scaled Engineering fast clocks.