Visitors, Visiting, and Beautiful Downtown Camden

It's been a pleasant couple of weeks. Got visited by NTrainz1, TimHar47, and his son (Tim P) who is one of the moderators on the Model Railcast (podcast) Show. Evening flew by fast with such fun topics as rich model railroaders compared to  poor model railroaders (we all fit in the latter category). The senior Tim kept noticing how long ago some of my buildings were produced (and I bought them new :-) ) and making me feel very old.

Also got to visit a friend who has recently switched from HO to N scale. How I would love to have his 12'x26' finished basement room. He will be doing NS in Virginia (oh, how I miss having mountains).

Spent time cutting and painting plywood. All the ground level plywood is in and attached to the bench-work. Now I am trying finalize switch locations to service the Camden Pavonia yard. Since I have difficulty visualizing the 3D effect of plans, I pulled out tons of stored buildings to do some mock-ups of downtown Camden (this section will be non-protypical). I just wanted to see how things would look and fit into the overall room scenery.

Now back to track-work (don't even mention that dirty word (ballasting)).

Happy Belated Birthday!

My birthday present finally arrived in the mail today. My birthday was in September and all my kids gave me money towards a NS Pennsylvania RR Heritage diesel engine (Fox Vallet models; due 4th quarter 2012 :-) ) Doesn't matter, It's Here! Didn't really expect it to be on time, but I have been looking forward to its arrival and now I have another modern engine violating my 1950s layout. So sue me!

We Should Be Revered!

I met a local N -scale model railroader last week and had him over for a visit. He noticed that some of the buildings on my layout were "classics" (1960s) that haven't been around for a long while. In particular a factory and tower that were marketed by Revell in the early days of USA N scale. He sent me an eBay link for a collection of buildings that had skyrocketed in price, primarily because of the aforementioned factory model.

(pictures from my old layout)

I told him we should be revered by his son and his fellow moderators on his model podcast show. After all, besides being around at the beginning of American N scale we were actually kids and young adults when the Great Northern,  CB&Q, Southern, D&RGW, Atlantic Coast Line, and the Sante Fe were all still in their full color glory. (I think the GN's Green and Orange streamliners were one of the things that hooked me on railroading.) Plus we had the music: Freight train, freight train goin' so fast,...

Instead we are probably the butt of jokes for our code 80 rail and DC power systems.

Those young know-it-alls! 
(Still wouldn't trade places with them.)

Phase 3 Begins!

I have sold off enough excess freight cars to get the money to begin the phase 3 construction. (Wow! Wood has gotten expensive!) This phase is targeted to contain a Schuylkill River/Manayunk bridge (Philadelphia) scene, a super shrunken Philadelphia 30th Street Station scene and the PRSL Camden Pavonia yard (unlike Westville & Woodbury, the trackage here is totally fictional, only the name remains).

Anyway bench-work is well underway. I had been "tunneling" through the bookshelves of the built-in desk (nicely divides the scenes) much to my wife's chagrin and have now built the L-girder framework for the yard. This pretty much consumes the 12'x17' loft (also to my wife's dismay, but within the "legal" framework of our pre-"house purchase" negotiations :-)  ). It will also probably limit me to an operating crew of about 4 people.