In my last post I mentioned that my friends Lonnie and Mary Bathurst were visiting Europe, and last week they came to visit us in Kaiserslautern.  My wife and I met them at the Hauptbahnhof and took them to our favorite German restaurant in Hohenecken for lunch, beer and conversation.     After a hearty German meal we went over to Ramstein Air Base for a pre-arranged C-130J tour.  There was no rain in sight until we made the long walk out to the ramp.  Despite the weather the boys from the 37th Airlift Squadron gave us a first-class tour.   They even wheeled … Continue reading No. 102: More Details for Ackley’s South Side

My friend and St. Louis RPM co-host Lonnie Bathurst is on a trip through Europe this week and I met up with him and his wife at Rudesheim, which us about an hour drive from my home.  That’s Lon on the left.  We had a nice dinner and caught up on things.  After dinner we went out to the main street–where our photo was taken–which faces the railroad and the Rhine River.  We set ourselves up at a nice German restaurant so we could have a couple more frosty brews and watch trains.  The weather was magnificent.  Deutsche Bahn did not … Continue reading No. 101: Building the Carver, Minnesota Grain Elevator

I’m not a streetcar guy but I was in Milan, Italy on Monday and was surprised to see a whole bunch of old trolley cars running around downtown.  I managed to get one halfway-decent photo shown below.  I read online that these cars have been around since the 1920s and were built to an American design.  The most interesting thing about these cars, apart from their cool early 20th Century design, was that they are loud!  Modern trams running nearby are quiet and comfortable, but these cars clank along and with every turn of the wheel there is a creak … Continue reading No. 100: More Southside Scenery Work

I came home from St. Louis RPM full of motivation to finish up some important things on the layout. The primary area of concern was the south side of my 16 x 2-foot layout.  I was unhappy with the photo backdrops I was using so while I was in St. Louis I took a couple of hundred pictures out east of the city in the farm country around Litchfield, hoping that some of those photos would work for backdrops.  Below.  Here’s what I started with when I came back home.  I removed all the trees, buildings and detail parts from the layout and got to … Continue reading No. 98: New Scenery for Ackley’s South Side

Back in February I took two of my kids to Metz, France for a day of indoor skiing.  I thought it would be a low-cost activity (it wasn’t) and a good way to keep our “ski-legs” into the spring (it was).  It was like skiing in a giant refrigerator, and it was actually a whole lot of fun.  The runs weren’t too long but there were all kinds of jumps and moguls and things to keep one interested. Anyway there is a single tow-bar that takes you back to the top of the hill.  Any disciplined skier knows you’re supposed … Continue reading No. 91: Inspiration for an M&StL 2-6-0

The final light fixtures for the Ackley layout were installed last weekend. You may recall that the layout is built at sit-down height under a sloped ceiling.  I placed LED lights in a triangular-shaped valance and installed the fixture on the sloped wall above the layout.  Then I installed a 4-1/2-inch Masonite fascia in front of the valance to clean everything up.  I still want to paint the fascia green to match the rest of the layout fascia and will get to that as time permits. Looks like I’ve got a little bit of “mission creep” above the fascia on the valance … Continue reading No. 83: Lighting Up – Lights on the Ackley Layout

Being broke from ski trips, swim team trips, car repairs and Christmas expenses, I tried to stay home in January to “decompress” and recover the bank account.  My son managed to get away for a week in Prague for a school event, but apart from that we spent a much-needed month at home. Photo Backdrops During January I got a lot of modeling work done.  One of the last great hurdles remaining on the Ackley layout is installation of photo backdrops.  Inspired by a photo sent by Jim DuFour, I printed off a number of photos and cut them out … Continue reading No. 79: Ackley Layout – South Side Scenery

Happy 2018!  I’ve always found the New Year to be a great time to reorganize and reprioritize life goals.  Getting organized and setting goals within the hobby is important too, so I always take a little time to set new hobby goals and priorities for the coming year. Getting organized is the first step to setting goals, so I spent a few hours on December 31st and New Year’s day doing a lot of cleaning, organizing, and goal setting in the layout room.  Below is a photo of what the layout looked like a year ago.   Thanks in some … Continue reading No. 76: 2018 Projects and Renewal

The Douglas Street crossing, or “center road” as I call it, was started last December during the Winter Offensive. I wanted to model Douglas Street as a dirt road since I expect the real road was hard-packed dirt in 1950.  Below, here is a close up from the 1970 aerial photo of Ackley that has been shared previously.  It kinda looks like a dirt road… I began construction of this road the same way I did with the other roads on the layout, by first building a subroaded base of HO scale cork roadbed (below), and then covering the subroadbed … Continue reading No. 75: Douglas Street Crossing at Ackley