Saturday, January 9, 2010

Winter is Here in the Midwest

It has been a while since I posted to the blog. It has been a busy Christmas Season... family, food, and traveling have consumed the bulk of the last few weeks. With the turn of the calendar to January and the snow piling up outside, I am once again turning my free time to the model railroad.


I have been working on a few things. I have been building more structures. Currently I am working on the Standard Oil facility that will be in Walnut, Illinois. Once again, I have turned to a Walthers kit for the basis of this industry. I think I will end up using about 50% of the included buildings/tanks, mainly because of space limitations. I once heard a model railroader talk about how he placed buildings on his railroad. He would put it in a spot and leave it for a couple of days and see how he liked... if he didn’t he would rearrange the building(s) and try that for a couple of days. It was an on going process until he found what looked good and seemed believable. So with that idea in mind I will do that same thing. I have actually started doing that with Houghton Lumber Co. in La Moille. Time will reveal the final orientation for the buildings.

Another item I have been working on and giving some thought to is Ops. For me, this is why I am doing all this work and planning. I dream of having a prototypically operating model railroad. I am really interested in modeling the art of car movement and car operations. The model railroad itself is just one of the tools I am using to achieve this dream. I will post more on Ops as the plan develops.

I will post some pictures of various projects happening on the railroad soon.

Thanks for visiting,
Scott