In Part 1 I discussed the old Ackley layout and how the Marshall Canning Company plant was planned and operated. Here in Part 2 I’ll cover progress on the canning plant for the new layout, along with operational considerations. Meanwhile…Doug Harding sent along a wonderful photo of the plant from the mid-1930s (see below). There are a lot of interesting revelations in the photo. First, this is a pre-WWII photo and despite my research it is obvious that a large addition has been added between the plant and the long husking shed behind the building. Second, there is a sign on the … Continue reading No. 47: The Marshall Canning Company of Ackley, Iowa, Part 2

I was fortunate to visit London recently with the family.  We did a lot of tourist things, and walked around downtown a lot.  I made a deal with the family and said “Everybody pick two things you really want to do, and we’ll do those things!”  My two picks were to see a football match and visit the RAF Museum in north London.  Of course we rode trains everywhere so I got an extra treat.  Anyway my son Jacob and I broke away and went up to Highbury one evening to see Arsenal play West Ham in a league match.  … Continue reading No. 46: The Marshall Canning Company of Ackley, Iowa, Part 1

A lot of work on the Ackley depot has been accomplished in the last 10 days.  Part of the success is due to getting my workbench partially rebuilt, so now I have a well-lit, organized place to get some heavy work done.  Another reason is the guys on the Proto-Layouts list, who have motivated me to get back to work on my depot.  More on that in a minute. Above, here’s where we left off last time we were working on the depot.  Below, here is where the depot is today.  I have painted the depot and the brick platform, added trim, painted and … Continue reading No. 44: Ackley Depot Construction, Part 3

Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, was a major industrial, ship-building, manufacturing and transportation center into the mid-1960s. The best known manufacturers in Camden were Campbell’s Soup and RCA Victrola, both of which had large factories downtown served by PRR. When I lived in southern New Jersey in the late 1990s I often drove by an abandoned factory near Camden that was just north of US 30, near the corner of 16th Street, 17th Street and Mickle Ave. US 30 is now known as Admiral Wilson Boulevard. I finally stopped and photographed it in 2016 and thought you might … Continue reading No. 42: Industry Series – The Keystone Leather Company

The Roosevelt Brothers Flour Mill was a longtime shipper in Ackley, Iowa and it’s one of those places you just can’t model using something off the shelf. There are very few photos of the mill.  In fact I only know of three.  That’s the mill on the left in the distance.  It consisted of one large mill building and a couple of other smaller buildings, and a coal bin. Below is an excerpt from a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1930.  The mill structure, the coal bin and the grain bin are the significant structures. The photo below is a screeen … Continue reading No. 41: Roosevelt Brothers Flour Mill at Ackley, Iowa

I began applying ballast on half the layout last month. Before adding ballast I added detail parts to the track, such as joint bars and turnout details. I like to detail turnouts but not to the point where the details will get wiped out by the first pass of a Bright Boy. Below is a view of the a part of the layout before I started laying down ballast.  I painted the sides of the sub roadbed black to keep any other colors from showing through the ballast just in case.  The dirt road at left has been installed and painted. The … Continue reading No. 39: Ballasting Sidings at Ackley

Remember slide film cameras? Last Saturday morning I drove over to Kaiserslautern to photograph a German 2-10-0 on display at the Kaiserslautern freight railroad shops.  I have had a lot of trouble finding the right time of day to photograph the engine because it never seems to be lit properly.  On Saturday the light was exceptional.  I spent 20 minutes cleaning up all the garbage in front of the engine and then shot about 25 photos. I used my new Canon digital SLR and tried shooting through the viewfinder for a change.  I never bothered to check the settings on the camera.  Turns out I … Continue reading No. 38: Ackley Depot Construction, Part 2

In an effort to gain a little more space for operations, I tried adding something I call a “bump out”. I saw a photo of such a “bump out” on Warner Clark’s Proto48 Nickel Plate layout in Indianapolis (seen below).  Warner has several of these extensions into the aisle to create space for structures or other features that–without the additional space–would’ve been off the layout.  Thanks Warner for the good idea. The photo below shows the area before I installed the bump out.  The track at the extreme left is the track being extended into the aisle.  That’s a beautiful, ice cold La Chouffe … Continue reading No. 37: The Bump Out (Ackley Layout)

I was e-mailing with Frank Hodina in early December and I mentioned to him that it was miserably foggy and cold and rainy here in Germany.  I had just been through Bastogne, Belgium a few weeks before and I said it would be a good time for a Winter Offensive on the layout. We both had an “LOL” moment and then I thought, hey, that’s not a bad idea. I talked to my wife about it and she approved my plan to take a few vacation days so I could start a Winter Offensive on the Ackley layout.  The objective was to finish up most of the big work on the … Continue reading No. 34: The Winter Offensive (on the Ackley Layout)

The Deutsches Museum While I was in Berlin in November I had a chance to visit the Deutsches Museum downtown along the River Spree. The museum is beautiful, clean, and well-lit and the exhibits are stunning.  There are many models throughout the museum, of ships, trains, vehicles, and other things. There are paper models on display that are over 300 years old.  There is a Dutch model ship on display that is about 250 years old. Whenever I see models in a museum, I always wonder who built them.  I wonder “Of all the models out there, why did the museum select this one for display?” … Continue reading No. 33: Painting Track on the Ackley Layout