In October I moved from our big, old house in Albersbach to a smaller, newer, more efficient house in Ramstein-Miesenbach. I took an entire week off from work, rented a large moving van and moved almost everything myself.  I hired a moving company to move the big stuff.  Then I had to completely clean the old house, to include patching holes, painting, and doing other routine maintenance I had put off over the years  The process took 12-14 hours a day for nine straight days, but I got it done.  Whew! Here’s the crew from the moving company, having a … Continue reading No. 132: Ackley Layout – Last M&StL Ops Session

With our upcoming move to a smaller house in Ramstein village, which includes a much smaller train room, I’m considering options for a new, smaller layout.  The Ackley layout will be stored in the garage and hopefully survive the move … Continue reading No. 131: New Layout Considerations – SAL’s South Richmond Industrial Line

I had an unusually tough summer, but despite all the challenges I managed to get some good modeling done. At the end of March I had some unexpected trouble with St. Louis RPM planning, and after a lot of praying I resigned from that whole thing.  That hurt, and I was bitter for a while, but it was the right thing to do for a lot of reasons. In April I broke my shoulder playing soccer, and that caused a whole basket-full of problems.  The worst problem was that I couldn’t sleep, so I walked around like a zombie for … Continue reading No. 129: Three New Engines for the Fleet

Hi Friends!  I hope you’re all doing well and are enjoying a nice back-to-school weekend. In April or May I ran an ops session on my Ackley, Iowa layout using New York Central equipment.  I joked to one of my friends online that I should run a Seaboard session, and then thought “Hey, that’d be a cool idea!”  So a few weeks ago I pulled out all the Seaboard equipment I had left, and all my southeastern freight cars, and ran a “Montgomery Line” ops session.  It was a lot of fun. The SAL Montgomery Line—sometimes called The SAM (the … Continue reading No. 127: Ackley Layout Ops Session (Seaboard Air Line)

Last week I got the layout plugged in and running again, and after cleaning track and polishing up a few wheelsets, and testing operation of all the switch machines and points, I ran a little ops session.   While I was at it I took a few photos with my son’s iPhone 10.   I ran this session with New York Central equipment.  Power was provided by a single Kato RS-2 with Loksound and DCC installed by my friend Mike Christianson in Albert Lea.  And old Alco Models NYC caboose was on the back end carrying the markers.  The engine … Continue reading No. 124: Ackley Layout Ops Session (New York Central)