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Hey everyone, I finally got my bench work done and just have to belt sand the plywood. I reused as much of the old layout as possible so it needs to be cleaned up a bit. I'm sticking with the Midwest theme on the bnsf, and have to come up with a name for this layout. The space will essentially...

Good morning guys. I've been thinking about my layout build and losing sleep (literally) over this one. Does anyone make beveled cork road for going from the cork down to the plywood base (bench work)? I read that you can go from the cork to the plywood without any type of support. Just back...

I've never done a photo documentary of my work but I did with this car, at least with the graffiti. So here's the run down on this covered hopper and LOTS of pics to follow! I bought this car new probably 10 years ago now when Athearn released it in their ready to roll series. I had weathered it...

I've been working the last few weeks on getting some freight cars weathered since most of mine haven't been. I got one CNW boxcar completed and one BN covered hopper still in the works. Plus a few others but I don't have pics of those yet. So here's what I've been up to! The weathering was...

Figured I'd throw up a few pics from to UD tower in Joliet. This tower is being taken over by the Union Pacific next month and will be closed for good. There are rumors that the city of Joliet will turn the tower into a museum. But there's nothing set in stone. The machine is all pistol grips, 1...

Figured it was time to post a few pics of my layout progress. The old milwaukee road one was good but didn't do exactly what I had hoped for. So after some serious research and thinking I came up with a new plan. This one will be a modern industrial switching layout but also have some country...

I was thinking about this earlier today as I was getting ready for work. It came to mind as I was reflecting on my layouts successes and short comings. The reality for me is that the perfect layout probably doesn't exist. My current layout functions well and is exactly what I want as far as...

I've got a decent sized chunk of empty space on the layout and can't think of what exactly do use the space for. So here are my thoughts. The lead to the grocery distributor is rather long and could support another industry of some type. Something small depth wise but it could be rather wide...

I don't think I had mentioned this before in the thread about my layout so I should mention it now. I had bought bought some Peco #4 turn outs for the layout, got the track laid and ran some temporary wires to supply power to the layout to test the track and such. Things ran fine until I threw a...

This may be a rather silly question, but how does everyone stick to just one era or location? I've been doing some reading on switching and point to pointy layouts and see a lot of them are modern day era. So this got me thinking... I have a bunch of BN and Santa Fe rolling stock at my dads...

Only at Metra can a guy get hurt changing a light bulb lol. We get these accident reports over the fax and some of them make you scratch your head and wonder.

This week I decided to pull out a section of scenery and will replace it with a cement company and transloader. There will be a gravel pile near the cement company's main building that will take loads of gravel. What kind of hoppers would be used for gravel service in the 60s and 70s? The 70 ton...

Can dcc engines run on a dc layout without any issues? Bachman has a few engines they've released that come standard with dcc but my layout is dc.

I started a layout back in 2012 in n scale modeling the bnsf in Colorado. N scale is nice but wasn't something i was super fond of. So around December 2013 I tore up the track and everything down to the bench work and drew up plans for a new ho scale layout using the existing branch work. My...

I've got an interlocking tower and farm that both need some type of dirt road to access them. Woodland scenics makes "dirt" but it's a bit too dark for my liking and I'm not aware of any other manufacturer who makes a similar product. My layout is based on the Milwaukee road D&I division in the...

Hey everyone, it seems like haven't been here in forever. Took some time away from the hobby and focused on other things for a bit. I finally got all the track laid and wired up for the most part. So now I'm kind of looking for something to do while I've got time/ am bored. Are the Walthers...

Can I get away with just laying the track directly on the plywood? My layout is rather small and will be a point to point operation at slow speeds. So I don't think noise would be an issue but I don't want to lay the track then find out operating trains is unbearable because of noise. I've gone...

Hopefully there are some Milwaukee road guys here! I found a set of milw f units for sale in the maroon orange and black scheme. The only problem is, I'm modeling the Milwaukee in the 1970s and can't figure out when the maroon orange and black paint scheme was changed to just orange and black...

I'm starting to build a new ho scale layout and am planning on going the dcc route. I found a a dcc starter set that looks promising but need to know if it will work for my purposes. It's called nce power cab complete dcc set, 524-25. My layout will probably have 3 engines only so I'm not...

Another new guy here. My names Jim. I'm a tower operator for Metra, in Chicago Illinois. Trains aren't anything new to me, models or the real deal. Currently I'm taking apart my n scale layout and will be going back to ho scale. Hopefully by the end of January I'll have the bench work all fixed...