Recent content by kjchronister

I'm about to embark on my first-ever kitbashing project. Not been entirely happy with the 'plastic cement' I've used in the past. Wonder what others recommend?

NSHO is right. Your layout is too small for so much yard. Just do a simple ladder, or better yet use the space for a nice industrial siding.

I have a ton of old Rivarossi passenger cars with their original truck-mounted couplers... horn-hooks, even! Pretty much everything else on my layout is body-mounted kadee couplers. But I've never felt much urge to go to the trouble of changing the Riv's. They tend to run as units all by...

I'm with Lynn. More industries (or at least, places where you know you can add more industries) is a good thing.

Lynn - I prefer "unique"... But "strange" is not a word with which I take umbrage either. Strange is just-damned-fine with me :-)

Bits and pieces are where the magic lies, Lynn... I'm actually thinking of some reconfigurations of my own layout based on my own response to the trackplan posted here. How's that for 'circular' logic...?

You're most welcome. FWIW, you could easily extend that extension off the #1 yard track to a turnout on the upper-left mainline and have a two-lead, two-ended yard (now that I look at it)... In any case, glad if you find any ideas / value in it. Kris

oops! I killed your yard lead. An option to preserve it might look like this:

I like it generally. What I see is 1 small yard, 1 siding and a two-track mainline with a crossover. If it were me, one option I'd consider is making it more of a 'twice around' and adding another siding - both for more operational interest. Roundy-round tends to bore me after a while, and I...

Most of the shows I've attended have had 80% of vendors selling at-or-above retail. Those are the ones with New / NOS items, nice well organized booths. etc. Not sure what the dynamic is to allow that, but oh well. The other 20% are what I go for and where you find the deals - mostly by...

Afraid I'm not much help either for much the same reason: I own only one airbrush - a 20-year-old basic Paasche single-action, and it's never given me a problem or been taken apart for cleaning: I always run a thimbleful of water, then thinner through the moment I'm done using it (even for a few...

You're a better man than I, Wombat. My layout has a few dozen Atlas turnouts, and two Pecos that I bought because Atlas didn't have the high-radius curved turnouts I needed. Suffice it to say I'll never buy another Atlas turnout... But I'm not ripping the thing up to replace 'em all anytime soon...

The Man is King of his Castle...so long as he doesn't piss off the Empress. Seriously, I agree with the general gist of posts here. Sounds like moving is a done deal, and not necessarily a bad thing anyway. But definitely stake your claim that you're not moving YET AGAIN after this.

So, about a year ago I started my own business and subsequently took an unintended year off from model railroading and this forum... I don't recommend it, but being my own boss is worth it. Point is a friend at my MRR club started giving me grief about not showing up. So I came to an ops...

I find regularity trumps all else... I use 70% alcohol in a CMX car and that's really it. I don't clean wheels. I just run the CMX car around the entire layout a few times (maybe 10-12 circuits) every-other time I operate - call that bi-weekly. The wheels stay clean since they (essentially) are...