The trestle at Cougar Mountain

The trestle and scenery, on my layout, is mostly done.

A family of cougars enjoy the early morning sun, overlooking Stony Creek.

New trestle for my railroad.

Started building a trestle for my layout. Started by staining a bunch of wood strips of various dimensions. Glued up the roadbed beams and ties. Then I took a piece of code 83 flex track, and removed all the ties except for every fourth one, to keep the rails in gauge. This track was laid on top of the trestle roadbed, with the gauging ties in between the trestle ties, and taped it in place.

After adding the bents and bracing, it was installed on my layout to take a picture.

In The News: A short freight crosses the high trestle at Cougar Mountain (yet to be built). This mountain, which will rise several inches above, but behind the trestle. It will act as a partial view block, hiding the railroad behind it.

Works in Progress by Larry B.

My lighthouse was made using the lowest section of a brick chimney and a printed cupola by Dave H.

Distractions for Self Isolation

This is a classic shunting puzzle in British model railroad circles. Hopefully you can see the car colours clearly enough to see where the orange engine has to switch each car to its new lo-cation on the lower diagram.


Have a go!  I eventually did get it but I quit timing myself at 10 min. How did you do?












This is a screen grab that I had 
difficulties trying to crop so I left it as is.

The idea is to build your train from some of the cars in the upper diagram and leave the rest where they are in lower diagram. Give this a try, too. I didn't time myself on this one

Tuesday Night NOT at the Layout Again

What does one do in their self isolation situation?  First off, most model railroaders had stuff set aside that they always intend to build "some day". Some of the previous blogs are an example of that while others are simply showing projects already completed for home layouts so that the rest of us can see them. 
I am having fun setting up dioramas that show off some recent projects completed that will be going to the club layout as I don't have a real home layout any more. The left picture is showing some Rusty Stumps benches and Osborne picnic tables that have been sitting around too long. Both are laser cut wood kits that make up quickly and look good. The trees are from Woodland Scenic kits with both plastic and metal trunks and branches.
The right picture showcases a Sylvan kit of a 1957 General American Aerocoach tour bus that I drove around Canada and the USA as a 19 year old. The kit is painted exactly like the original including the name that I added in 1957. It was powered by an International Red Diamond 450 gas engine hooked to a 5 speed backward shifting transmission. The speedometer cable ran front to back and was usually broken which resulted in being clocked at over 80 mph near Windsor, fortunately by a friendly car driver at a rest stop. Trees are again Woodland Scenics.