Designing and planning the model railroad layout and the beginning steps to create it.
I recently visited Altoona PA with my daughter Erin. We were there for a family reunion with the Wolf family, from my mother’s mother’s side of the family. While there I took the advantage to check out a train museum and the famous horseshoe curve. The museum was fantastic and I learned the history and…
I attended the train show in Greenville SC several weeks ago. It was a great show and I learned a lot. I attended a couple of great seminars and had some great discussions afterwards about signaling and block detection. I realized that I did not have enough blocks and all of the turnouts needed to…
Yeah ! finished laying the final track tonight. I was waiting on some Hardboards to finish up the side spurs. I finally got everything finished and laid out. Everyone keeps asking me when I will be finished and I tell them in about 3 years and they don’t believe it. Laying the track is just…
I have selected 2 ways I want to control my locomotives on the track at the Peachtree City house. One way is radio control using the RCS system with battery power and the second way is using DCC via track power. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and my intent is to install both in…
My plan is to have one bypass for the main line and 4 spurs. Two of the spurs are on the main line and one for each of the city loops. The exact use for the spurs will be determined in a later phase but I needed to lay the track and bed so that…
I finished the last city loop this weekend. This city is slated to be the Notre Dame city for the Kalamazoo Toy Train Notre Dame Locomotive and cars. I found this set in a local model railroad store that was used. It was a fantastic buy and since them I have bought additional Kalamazoo Toy…
One of the sidings that I wanted to create was a place for the trains and locomotives to be able to go and be covered from the elements. Because the back yard slopes down so much and because our basement is finished, I decided to create a siding that goes into the pool area.…
Well this weekend was Easter and a lot of people were home. Chele was home for the whole week proceeding and she had some time so she made up a lot of curves and helped to bulid out the layout. I had Tony and Brandon working on Saturday building out the Circus City. The mainline…
Well being the engineer that I am here are my phases for builidng the railroad: 1) Measure the space and elevations of the area for the layout 2) Design the layout on the computer using tools that acurately measure distance, track sizes, and elevations 3) Run some test on the track radii and locomotives to…
Well the Peachtree City layout was a hit and I decided to build that first. I worked on many different layouts and options. Once I knew the basic requirements I started to order track and other items. Ebay was my favorite stop to try to find used equipment. I was bidding on different items 2-3…
papa carney 