"Compromise is like the middle of the road; always safer to walk on than the edges." -Dwight D. Eisenhower- The north end of the modeled portion of The Hills Line features what I believe is the signature scene of both the prototype as well as the entire Iowa Interstate Railroad: The IAIS's deck-girder bridge in … Continue reading The Curve
A follow-up to the previous entry about the lift-outs used on The Hills Line. When we rebuilt the basement of our home, we had a new staircase constructed for the space. The old stairs were uneven, narrow, and as we discovered... structurally unsound. Considering we had lived in our home for the better part of … Continue reading One More Foot of Space
If you take a good look at the plan for The Hills Line, you'll see the oft-mentioned segments that make up the layout. Joining them together is a set of custom built lift-out sections assembled from whatever scraps were left over from benchwork construction. Since the sections are supposed to represented unmodeled portions of the … Continue reading Filling Gaps
I don't use spikes, so this will have to suffice. 18 months after the IAIS Grimes Line was dismantled and our basement reconstructed, and a year after the first piece of Ikea Ivar shelving arrived to serve as the base for the new benchwork, track is fully installed and wired on The Hills Line. The … Continue reading The Golden IDC
