Recently, my friend Jared Harper told me that he found a nice sign for the Standard Oil terminal on his layout.  Jared and I both have Standard Oil terminals on our layouts and the terminals were very similar, and we have often discussed how to model them. Jared models an AT&SF branch in Kansas, circa 1943. Here’s the cool sign (below). The small Standard Oil terminal at Ackley was located on Sherman Avenue across the tracks from the Marshal Canning Co. on the east side of the tracks.  The terminal consisted of a “standard” Standard oil building with at least four tanks.  I … Continue reading No. 17: Ackley Layout: Standard Oil

We were fortunate recently to travel to Malta for a long weekend. Malta is a not-your-typical-American place to visit. We went to have a last summer blast and hit the beaches and snorkel spots, and we also spent a little time downtown shopping and checking out the local history, which is impressive to say the least.  In case you’re wondering, there was once a British meter-gauge railroad on the main island but it was gone before WWII.  Here are a couple of off-topic photos of our trip.       Now on to RPMing. In my work life, capturing “Lessons Learned” … Continue reading No. 16: Ackley 2.0 – Laying Styrodur

I began construction of the “Ackley 2.0” layout on Fourth of July weekend, 2016.  The family went up to Hamburg for the weekend and left me at the house specifically to get this job done. The visible layout is 16 x 2, with a 12-14-foot staging “wing” on each end.  The main part of the layout will consist of two 8 x 2-foot sections (16 feet total).  On each end, there will be an additional 2-1/2-foot section that serves as a lead to staging yard.  The lead–one on each end of the layout–conceals a 24-inch radius curve to a staging yard.  Each staging yard will be … Continue reading No. 15: Ackley 2.0 Begins Construction

Pictures make blogs more fun, so here are more pictures of the Ackley layout built at my Illinois home before it came down last fall. Below is a view of the main town site under construction. I used Micro Engineering Code 70 on the main line and sidings, and Code 55 everywhere else. All the turnouts were built using Code 70 rail and were kitbashed using Central Valley tie strips with Proto87 Stores parts and scratchbuilt throw rods.  I laid all the track on two layers of cork on top of wood subroadbed. I used HO or N scale roadbed where appropriate … Continue reading No. 14: Ackley 1.0 Layout Photos

This post is a photo essay of the Ackley layout built at my former home in O’Fallon, Ill. We built that house in 2010 and left it in 2015. In that time I was able to get most of the original Ackley 1.0 layout built.  Here are photos of the basic layout and layout room construction process. Above.  This is the original drawing of the basement. The layout was built in the bottom center room, what might be called the mechanical room. Dimensions were 31 x 14 feet.  The garage is on the right, bedroom on the left, and downstairs den at … Continue reading No. 13: Ackley 1.0 Construction

I am often asked why I am modeling a little town in the middle of Iowa when there are so many other great places to model. The answer is simple, but the process to get to that answer was not. Background When I retired from the military, I bought a house with a basement and all the trimmings and was planning on building a medium sized Seaboard Air Line-theme layout. However, I started a second career and still had kids at home, and life was busier than ever. I didn’t expect to have the time or resources to devote to … Continue reading No. 12: Ackey Layout: Why Ackley?

Last week I took one of my daughters for a hike up to Frankenstein Castle in Frankenstein, Germany, which is about 25 minutes from my house. The castle is a ruin and there’s not much to see, but the hike up the mountain is nice.  The ruin is on top of a mountain and a busy rail line between Kaiserslautern and Neustadt tunnels through the mountain. I saw several trains that day; the photo below shows an S-Bahn (local) train about to enter the tunnel.  It’s cool but it’s not Ackley–not even close! Since I have writing about Ackley I … Continue reading No. 10: Ackley, Iowa – The Prototype

My buddy Clark Propst and I have been going back and forth for a month or two online about my new layout plans.  When we moved into this house in December 2015 I convinced myself that I could not rebuild the M&StL in Ackley, Iowa in the space available–about 16 feet–so I began planning to model a smaller location, one that was even smaller than Ackley. I looked at a number of locations and once again the B&O line thought Rushville, Indiana was high on the list. Rushville, Indiana is a little town in eastern Indiana where secondary lines of the B&O, PRR and NYC … Continue reading No. 9: Ackley Layout: Back to Ackley

My kids had a swim meet in Berlin recently and before the meet we visited the “Tropical Islands” indoor resort, which is about an hour south of Berlin.  The resort is housed inside a gigantic airship hangar that was built around 1989 by an airship company that went bust.  The airfield itself has a ton of history–it was originally a Luftwaffe airfield, then a Red Air Force field during the cold war, and now it is a vast parking lot.  The word HUGE does not begin to describe the Tropical Islands airship hangar.  It is the largest “indoor hall” in the … Continue reading No. 7: Layout Considerations for 2015

We moved to Germany in November 2015.  On December 17th we moved into a rented house in a little village called Albersbach, about 15 minutes north of Ramstein Air Base where I’ll be working.   The house is pretty interesting.  It is a three story house, but each floor was originally built as a separate apartment.  We rented the whole house, so we have three kitchens, eight bedrooms, and two dens (or living rooms).  The main den and “winter garden” (what Americans would probably call a “Florida Room) and kitchen, and a few bedrooms are on the middle floor, and our three kids claimed the upstairs … Continue reading No. 3: My Stuff Arrives in Germany