Wow I’m really bad about updating this blog. I sit at a computer all day so I guess I just don’t want to do it when I get home too, although I probably do spend a fair amount of time at the keyboard there too… Oh well.
So what’s new since February 09! For [...]

I have wanted to build a spray booth for quite some time, and I recently decided to actually make it happen. I have a handful of projects coming up that will require me to paint and I want to get more proficient with the airbrush.
After searching around on-line and consulting an old [...]

The inaugural SWOOPS (South West Ohio Operators) Op-Til-U-Drop weekend took place the weekend of April 17 – 19, 2009. 30 out of town guests were hosted by 11 layouts in and around the Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio area. This weekend followed the same pattern as similar weekends held in Detroit, Ft. Wayne (3 [...]

Things are cookin’ along. I have installed all 10 of the tortoise switch machines in lower / North staging (5 on each end). All but two are wired in and powered via the DS64’s. The last two are going to be powered via a “Wabbitt“. At the moment I have one [...]

Monday night was an historic night on the ICG. We ran trains from opposing staging yards and had our first meet! Several other trains were run as well. While not error free, we did have a good time and resulted in a good test run of the track and rolling start. [...]

I thought I’d post a quick update…
All of the mainline track on the lower level is now powered, including the helix block leading down to “North Staging”.
All of the turnouts on the lower level now are powered and running via throttle commands.
Some bad news is that I had a DS64 on the upper level actually [...]

Wow! Two posts in one month! It must be winter…
Since the last post I have had help laying some track and putting in feeders for recently laid track.
An historic event- Bob is the only one working!

I have also run bus wires and got my DS64 and SE8c “boards” wired up.
Detection for [...]

8 months since my last update… sheesh. Last April our local ops group CIRROPS along with the Central Indiana Division of the Midwest Region, NMRA, hosted an “op til you drop” weekend here in Central Indiana. We had layouts in Indy, Lafayette, Bloomington, Anderson and Muncie participate. It was a very successful [...]

Upper Facia
This past Saturday Baron helped me get the upper level facia installed. It is 1/8″ masonite. This was a somewhat tedious task of ripping the masonite (in the garage- oh yeah, it was about 15 degrees out!); take the pieces downstairs; clamp them up; trace out the areas that have variation in [...]

Unproductive?
Well I can’t believe it is almost Christmas. It seems that each time I go to update this journal, I am struck by how little I have gotten done. It is a recurring theme. But then I consider the other things I have done since the last update in May. I [...]