My grand plan of using Google Streetview images for photo backdrops on The Hills Line has, so far, been somewhat successful. To date I've been able to use or modify existing photos from in and around Iowa City, saving me the hassle and issue of traveling east to get what I need... which considering the … Continue reading Something Borrowed
I'll let you in on a secret. The best hobby shop on the planet is Home Depot. The Atlanta-based home improvement warehouse has just about everything you need to completely build a model railroad... minus track, locomotives, and freight cars. That limitation nonwithstanding, I've found that if you wander the aisles with a prototype-modeler mindset … Continue reading Tanks Fer Nuttin’
All model railroads involve tradeoffs. The supposed logic for smaller setups is that we trade size for detail. So while I'm running five cars trains instead of 50 car lineups, I can take the time to detail the scene to the Nth degree. But as I've mentioned numerous times before, I'm lazy. For me the … Continue reading Watching Paint Dry
Whenever a guest operator would visit my former IAIS Grimes Line layout, I would always include a quick briefing ahead of starting the session. Each time, I opened with the following statement: "This will take as long as you want it to." That somewhat cryptic comment wasn't meant to serve as some sort of Dante-esque … Continue reading Bespoke Operations
