I was on the way back from a work trip to the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco a few weeks ago when I wrote this post. The travel day back home to Germany was an epic adventure and not in a good way. I expected a 10-hour travel day but got a 22-hour travel ordeal instead. Lufthansa gave me an extra present at the end of it all by losing my luggage. Anyway the extra nine hours I spent in the airport in Rabat, sitting and waiting for a flight, were used to write this post and a couple more. … Continue reading No. 135: Almost Perfect – Modeling the Milwaukee Road in Albert Lea

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)

Last week my friend John Barry was visiting Europe and he spent a couple of nights at nearby Ramstein Air Base.  John is a well-known Santa Fe modeler and historian, and he maintains an interesting blog.  We met a few years ago at the Virginia RPM meet and have kept in touch ever since. John and I had dinner last Friday evening at one of my favorite local restaurants, Berndt’s Blockhouse–up on the hill in Weilerbach–where we enjoyed a couple hours of dinner, beers and conversation.  John is a former C-130 pilot and instead of talking about trains we spent … Continue reading No. 121: John Barry Visit…and Rebuilding the Marshall Canning Co.

It’s been over a month since my last post.  I’ve been very, very busy with work and family stuff, and whatever time I had left went to planning St. Louis RPM.  We also, during that time, took an eight day trip to the Canary Islands.  We visited Lanzerote and Fuertaventura and we had a wonderful time.  We went for the sun, seafood and beaches and it didn’t disappoint. Below. Here’s a pano of the area around one of our favorite towns, El Golfo, in the Timanfayo National Park.  Spectacular black sand beaches are a favorite spot on this side of … Continue reading No. 120: The Ackley Layout – Coal Bins on Carstens Siding