Progress Report #9

So if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been and why I went over a week not posting… I was on vacation. Sort of. It wasn’t one of those fancy “go on a cruise” or “go to Disney” or “take out a 2nd mortgage so I can take the family to Switzerland” sort of vacations. It […]

Progress Report #8

In spite of a hectic schedule, last week was quite productive. I mean that, relative to the previous few weeks. Elijah Eli’s softball season wrapped up. Sadly, his team didn’t make the final game, but for all that, he came away with solid hits every single game he played, and he only struck out at […]

Eliminating the 2nd deck (for now)

Oy vey, right? I’m revised this plan at least a half dozen times over the past 48 hours. By now I imagine you’re getting sick of it. Or maybe you’re not. At any rate, I decided to adjust my usage in the basement to get a better setup. The nice thing is it’ll also drive […]

Double Decker with Reversing Loop

Big thank you to Jørgen Tefke Kai from the Facebook group N Scale Model Trains World for some guidance on my idea for a double deck layout with a helix at one end and reversing loops. This gives me the ability to have continuous running trains, but still have that nice yard, industries spurs and […]

Whole New Direction

I was floored, to say the least, from the outpouring of great ideas for my new layout, but one thing that kept coming up was “racetrack layouts can get boring”. I agree with that. They really can get boring after a while. Of course, a part of the solution is to add more to do, […]

Layout Plan Tweaks

After a number of suggestions from a few people, I made some modifications to prevent… shall we say, undesirable operating conditions. Chief among the changes is a moderate sized passing track near the yard which will allow switching in the yard with fowling the main. Also, I swapped out a double crossover for a pair […]

In the shop after work

Well, after I get out of the office today (sometime between noon and 1), I will be back in my shop, finally, working on my tables again. This has been delayed so much by the hectic month-and-a-half surrounding the end of school and weather that was less than optimal. But with all luck, I’ll have […]

Playing with a layout plan

With construction starting next week on my layout table, I had to at least decide on a size for this project, and the final decision is to do two 4 x 6 tables for a total of a 4 x 12 layout. Some people over the years have said to only do 3 foot wide, […]

Progress Report #7

I think we all know the feeling – in some ways, the weeks tend to drag by… in other ways, you blink and one’s over. That’s what it feels like all the time, lately. Still, another week passes by and while I never quite feel like I got through everything I wanted to, a bit […]

Kitchen Activities #5 – White Bread (with Caidi)

This was less of an experiment for me and more of one for my daughter. Caidi made white bread with me today. It’s my second time with this recipe and only the 4th time ever that I’ve made a yeast recipe and not had a failure. I credit the Instant Yeast (something my mom introduced […]

Site Design Questions

I’m sure you’ve noticed it in the past 48 hours or so. Stuff has been moving around a bit on here. Some blocks of content have changed around a bit. My ads have disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? OK, I’ll tell you (as much as I know). Apparently having a […]

Progress Report #6

Getting right to it, I didn’t have much happen this past week in regard to shop, trains, or anything else, though I have to say it was a decently productive week on here with a few good posts (2 humor articles) that generated a fair amount of traffic to the site. So this is a […]