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