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I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to making mockups on a model railroad. On one hand, it annoys me to spend time on something that I know will end up in the trash instead of on The Hills Line. On the other, I really hate redoing things I've already done, so taking the … Continue reading The Case for Mockups
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
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
The Hills Line 