What have I been up to? An update

I've referenced in previous blog posts that I was considering changing my modelling focus from the CN Pine Street Spur in HO (and before that the CN Waterloo Spur after which this blog takes its name) to modelling in O scale, or Proto48/P48 to be specific.  I've been quiet on this blog for many months primarily because I've been planning a P48 layout, and I'm happy to report also because I've been busy building a P48 layout!

My basement furnace/workshop area and a portion of the main living space is now the home to a depiction of the north spur of Ontario Southland and Goderich & Exeter Railways' joint spur servicing several industries on the north side of Guelph, Ontario.  The model is a sectional, 18" - 22" wide, 52" high shelf layout of currently 35' total length, with a planned extension of 20' down the long wall of the basement for a passing siding.  All of that and only 8 turnouts!  That's the beauty of O scale for you.  One might think that's an awful lot of layout length wasted or not used to its full potential, but I see it as a simplification that lets me model to the level of detail I desire in the time I have available for my hobby.

As mentioned, the track plan tries to closely follow the general layout of the ex-CN & CP shared lines on the north side of Guelph currently operated in a joint fashion by OSR and GEXR.  The latter are the two railways that I will be depicting in the 2000+ timeframe.  Here's a screenshot from Google Earth highlighting the length of track I am going to be deplicating.

The initial motive power consists of two Red Caboose GP9 models that I will be detailing to represent OSR (the ex-Chessie unit) and ex-CP GP9u 8325.  The GEXR engines to be started once I get the OSR units up and running will definitely include ex-RailLink GP35 4095 and a yet-to-be-determined GP40 or GP38 model.  More info on detailing and conversions to P48 and battery power to follow once I get a little further along on those.

This will be the last post on the WaterlooSpur for a while as I concentrate on the P48 layout for the foreseeable future.  However, the HO track remains on the Pine Street Spur benchwork in my office.  It may one day be completed, or it may be scraped up and replaced with an extension of the Guelph Spur. Be sure to check back here and on p48guelphspur.wordpress.com for updates!

First turnout takes shape

I pulled out my Proto87 Stores turnout (or is it switch?) kits this evening, anxious to get more than printed out template placeholders on the layout.  Two and a half hours later I've got my first two rails and the frog glued down.  It would have gone much faster except I made an incorrect bend in the diverging rail and had to pull it up just as everything seemed finished. That's what I get when I sit down and start a project right about when I should be heading off to bed.

After having struggled on the Waterloo Spur modules with using ACC glue to bond the rails to the tie strips, I decided to try Pliobond this time.  I had ordered some previously from Tim Warris' Fast Tracks.  After watching the video on his website on how to work with this glue I felt pretty confident that it would be an enjoyable rather than a frustrating process. 

And that's how it has turned out so far, aside from my own human error.  Following the instructions on the Proto87 Stores was straightforward, especially having built a few turnouts previously.  What a great feeling of accomplishment to look at an evening's handiwork that turned out in gauge and nicely detailed.  

Looking forward to getting the remaining rails glued down in the next day or two and testing out these hand-built turnouts with my switch mechanisms. 

Pine Street progress - Benchwork and Switch Machines

I've been working diligently on the railroad almost every day, sometimes for 15 minutes, often for hours.  The effort has paid off in that the benchwork sections are all mounted on the walls and the fascia has been installed.  I've also had a very successful trial installation of my manual switch machine method.

My office is roughly 11' x 14', and I was able to fit the original 12' long, scale length model of the mill trackage along one long wall.  The street trackage coming down Pine Street will be represented by a short stretch including tracks in the road and a hopefully noticeable grade replicating what I've experienced driving down the street myself.

There will be a lift-out section across the doorway, followed by the small yard and track feeding the spur from the  CN line along the Welland Canal.  Past the yard and across the other end wall will be a scale length representation of the railway bridge across Hwy 406, a chemical plant, and finally a connection to the mill trackage for when I just want to see trains run.

The fascia is made from black plastic, a method that I saw Trevor Marshall demonstrate on his modules on a Trainmasters.tv series.  I cut roughly 8" wide strips from a 4'x8' sheet and glued them to the benchwork with No More Nails.  It went on easy, allowed for adjustment of level, and dried quickly.  There is an overhang along the top edge that will be trimmed to follow the terrain contours once the scenery has progressed.  I'm very pleased with how the fascia came out.

The switch machines are going to be a combination of Southco's (www.southco.com) small E3 compression latches driving Bill Brillinger's (pdc.ca) Simple Switch Machine.  I've always wanted something simple to install, mechanically rather than electrically driven, and slow-motion.  Because the latches move axially as the key is turned, that movement can throw the switch machine, with the rod connecting up through the benchwork to the throw bar having some flex to hold the points tight against the rails.

Here are some videos and photos illustrating the concept:

In the photo above one can see both winghead and keyed installations of the latches; I will be proceeding with the keyed version as I feel it better replicates what happens on the prototype.  The operator playing the role of brakeman/conductor will have the key and be responsible for throwing the switches and "locking" them after each move.

My next step is to order the remaining switch kits that I need from Proto87 stores, assemble and install them with the key-driven latch/switch machine combos.  Then I will build the liftout, lay all the connecting track, and hopefully start running trains!

And so it begins

I put up a 2x6 rail along the long wall in my office today that will support the shelf brackets holding up the Pine Street Spur.  First mock-up of one of the three current sections:

I'll need to make some progress on adding buildings and scenery, but first impression is that the Behr Evening White is a good, neutral sky background shade.

Ready to move forward

Working on the railroad has had to take a back seat for most of this year to finishing the basement room that will become my office/train room.  After many months of working on the drywall, ceiling, and flooring as time allowed, the room was finally completed and moved into this past weekend.  Here's what it looked like prior to moving my office furniture in (and a whole lot of Ikea Lack shelves to hold my railway book collection):

What I've got is a relatively spacious 14.5' x 11.5' room with the walls painted a sky grey.  The room adjoins my furnace/workshop on one side and a roughed-in bathroom on the other.   The workshop is ready-made for staging, and I plan on leaving a connection through the bathroom to the main living area available for future expansion.

With this wonderful space now available, the question becomes what to do with it.  When we moved in a year ago plans were soon drawn up for the room to contain the terminus of the Waterloo Spur in HO, specifically the town of Elmira, ON.  In the meantime a 12' long set of modules recreating CN's Pine Street Spur in St. Catharines have been started, also in HO, as well as a good amount of O scale rolling stock collected for a P48 rendition of the current industrial spurs on the north side of Guelph, ON (joint operation between GEXR and OSR's Guelph Junction Railway).  Focus is not one of my strengths, obviously.

So which railroad will end up in the room?  I spent some considerable time trying to bend one of the industrial leads in Guelph (See link to Google maps below) into the room.  The desire for large radii, even in P48, and having come up with a track plan I like that fits the O scale rendition into my workshop, has opened up the office for HO scale trains.  The dilemma is that I have modules for both the Waterloo and Pine Street spurs already started.  Which one to go with?  Or is there a third alternative?

Having had the pleasure of operating on Bob Fallowfield's rendition of CP Rail's operations around Woodstock, ON, I've come to a better understanding of what I find enjoyable in operating, namely something featuring a small yard with mainline power moving through, but also plenty of realistically-scaled industries.  Throw in some late-80's mainline & branch motive power, and a relatively low train frequency that would support operation by 1-4 operators, and I find I'm drawn back to thinking seriously of modelling CN's Guelph sub in & around Kitchener, ON.

What to do, what to do?  Do I finish what I have started, or start on something new?  Seeing these words on the screen leads me to think that in consideration of my pocket book, limited modelling time, and overall enjoyment level, I would be better served by getting trains running sooner rather than later.  The quickest route would be to bring the three modules comprising the Pine Street spur to a level of scenicked and operational completion that would allow for operations, and give myself time to decide whether a larger HO scale railroad scratches my itch.

Perhaps I can gain sufficient satisfaction from operating on friends' layouts to allow myself the luxury of multiple, smaller layouts of my own.  I could with relatively little further outlay construct a one- or two-switch P48 layout in the workshop that will allow me the pleasure of working in the larger scale as a change of pace to the HO models.  Who knows what the future brings?

(https://www.google.com/maps/place/Guelph,+ON,+Canada/@43.5490546,-80.2914006,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x882b9ad0c3a9fb6b:0x5037b28c7231b60!6m1!1e1)

Hmmm, Proto:48

I've been bitten by the urge to go bigger.  Without having seen any P48 models in person, and with only the memory of the impressive physical heft and aural magnificence of an O scale modular layout at the Springfield train show a couple of years ago, I think I'm going to give P48 a try.  Dip my toes in the water, so to speak.

First order of business is of course obtaining a locomotive.  Browsing the web, in particular the P48 Yahoo group, I quickly settled on a Red Caboose GP9 model.  It's seems to be the perfect candidate for a kitbash/detail upgrade into either a CN or CP rebuild.  After some research the angled face of the CN GP9rm is perhaps more than I'm willing to bite off for a first try, so something along the lines of Ontario Southland's ex-Chessie GP9 #175 or ex-CP 8235 look more feasible.

The Red Caboose model as sold by Des Plaines Hobbies is the plastic body only, lacking trucks or a drive train.  That will be taken care of with Des Plaines' brass trucks and can motor drive kit.  My first goal is to complete the locomotive in standard O scale, testing it on a few lengths of flex track.  If the bug takes, I'll upgrade it to P48 with the kit from Protocraft and build a switching layout.

In fact, I've already determined that a good representation of Elmira, ON in P48 could fit along the side wall of my basement.  It's so hard to pick something and stick to it, there are temptations all over in model railroading!

Well, this summer will be about collecting those parts, building some models of the Fraser mill on my HO scale Pine Street Spur modules, and perhaps even getting out to watch some trains during our roadtrip vacation to Florida.

Mobile storage

I've been reading a number of blog posts recently, primarily on mrhmag.com, where people have detailed the various solutions they have come up with for carting around the flotsam & jetsam associated with building a layout.  There's electrical, tracklaying, scenery, and layout construction equipment that is useful at this end of the layout one minute, and down at the other end of the room the next.  There are some very creative ideas out there, and it spurred some thought as to how I might want to tackle this in my own basement.

So it was no surprise that as I found myself wandering the lower levels of our closest Target store a few weeks ago, I viewed the store shelving and racking that was up for disposal (Target is closing their Canadian stores) with my model railroading eye.  And I liked what I saw.  Here were some heavy-duty, mobile units with adjustable shelves fairly screaming out to me regarding their usefulness for my modelling needs.  After a quick internal debate, I rolled out the front doors of the Target with a 2 foot wide, double-sided mobile unit sporting six height-adjustable shelves.  The price was right at the time, and with the closing dates fast approaching my wife tells me the units are now going for half of what I paid.

Once the shelf unit was in my basement, the question became one of how do I best utilize what it had to offer.  Drawing on some of what I'd read and seen others doing, I purchased some pegboard and slid that down the middle in order to have a place to hang tools. I also cut a piece of plywood to fit on the base, upon which were placed several plastic drawer units that have been occupying various spots in my workshop, but never all in the same, handy spot.  Now I could have them all next to my workbench or roll them out to whichever portion of the layout I would be working on.

  

This is about as far as I've gotten so far.  How to best utilize the shelves, especially with respect to not having things slide off of them as I roll through the basement, is one item still to be addressed.  I should note that the rolling qualities of the shelf unit are not the best on the varying carpet surfaces I have loosely laid down in the basement until the walls are finished, and the unit is quite heavy without a good fixed handle to maneuver by.  A smooth, hard floor would work best.

Having said that, I now am one step closer to having the model-building tools I need at hand without having to search throughout the basement for where I last put them down.  A place for everything, and everything in its place, as they say!

Getting it going again

Reading blogs is addictive, don't you find?  Find a good blog and you go back just about every day hoping that there will be new content for consumption.  Read it, then go on to the next one.  How often does the content make you stop and think before going into your favourites tab and click on the next destination?

I surf for new blogs, mostly model railroad related, all the time.  There are relatively few thoughtful, interesting pages out there.  I think I know why.  It's quite difficult to write something new and refreshing on a regular basis.  This must be what journalists go through, having to come up with tomorrow's story today, day after day.

There are actually many things that pop into my head to write about all the time, but how many are worth keeping for posterity?  And if I took the time to document them all, well, I wouldn't end up doing much modelling, would I?

Actually, keeping my phone handy may just be the right thing to do.  You see, if I'm trying something out, perhaps writing about it will keep me focused enough to see the job to completion.  To meet my editor's deadline, so to speak.

And I say phone because the iPhone 6 Plus I picked up today is practically a tablet, and with built in HD video and camera, I have everything I need to out a blog out regularly.  Isn't that the idea of technology, to enable us to do more?

So tomorrow, when I put together a battery slug locomotive and switch some cars on Pine Street, perhaps I'll see it through to completion and there will be some documentation of it on my blog that just might be useful or interesting to someone else out there.  And that little act will help me to get the modelling going again.

First Model Railroading Clinic

It's funny how small, seemingly innocuous things can open up whole new experiences.  You never know what's around the corner.

Barry Silverthorn, producer of Trainmasters.tv, reached out via one of the Yahoo groups I belong to looking for someone willing to give a clinic or two on short notice, as he'd had a cancellation.  Despite never having given a model railroading clinic before, it took me about half a second to decide that I should respond to him and offer my services.

I've had so much fun, and learnt such a great deal, in creating the Pine Street Spur modules as well as implementing Dead Rail, that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share it with others.

Barry was gracious enough to take a flier on me, so I had three days to prepare my modules and models for the Quinte train show.  Walking through the genesis of the Pine Street Spur would be easy, and I quickly cut some wood to be able to demonstrate the various stages of building the lightweight, "waffle"-type benchwork that I had used.

The second clinic was to be an introduction to battery-operated, wireless control of my locomotives, also known as Dead Rail.  Being the perfectionist that I am, I decided to improve my battery car, but as things always seem to go, I also managed to short out my receiver.  It just stopped working.  Naturally, there was not enough time to get a replacement from Litchfield Station.  Nothing like a little stress test before the big day.

In the end, despite Duncan McCree's best long-distance troubleshooting efforts (thank you, Duncan!), we could not get trains moving before the clinic, so we ended up just having an audience discussion, with plans to go back to the Trainmasters studio once I've installed the replacement receiver.  I'm very much looking forward to it!

The show itself was everything I had hoped it would be.  It was an eye-opening experience to watch Barry orchestrate the taping, and a true pleasure to meet some of the folks in the hobby that I've admired, learnt from, and enjoyed listening to.  It was just plain fun to talk about what I'd created, how it had come to take it's present form, and to answer questions based on the experiences I've had building the Pine Street Spur.

If you ever have the opportunity, I would whole-heartedly recommend sharing your particular skills or accomplishments with others.  In fact, make sure you seek out the opportunities.  Getting out there amongst your friends and peers is the best way to improve your own modelling, help others, and experience that wonderful feeling that sharing with others gives.  You know it from when you help someone in need, or give a present to a child, and it's really not that different when you stand in front of other model railroaders and talk about how to weather, build, detail, or conceptualize a portion of this great hobby that you are comfortable with.  You don't have to be the best, because the simple fact of sharing raises everybody's game.  So get out there!

Now I have two spurs

It didn't take too long after moving in to our new home before plans were hatched on how to fit the Waterloo spur into the basement.  Not just part of the basement, all of the basement.  But one has to be reasonable and work in achievable chunks, so I started with preparing the pre-studded 14' x 12' room with electrical outlets, lighting, and drywall.  This would be where the end of the branch, Elmira, will be located.

I couldn't get too excited about mudding the drywall, so the spur was hung up and I now knew where I needed to cut in bridge pieces required because the existing modules were not an exact fit into the new space.

Next up, organizing all those magazines and hanging up the last couple of modules.  Once they're all set, I'll stack them in the middle of the room and finish the walls.  This will involve coving the upper portion of the corners and then completing the mudding and painting.  I also have to figure out the layout lighting, valance, and ceiling tiles.  This should keep me busy for a while.

A more difficult project will be going back to each module and re-laying the rail.  I've found that ACC does not do a great job of holding the rail securely.  There are stretches where the rail has completely popped out of the tie strips.  I'm going to give Pliobond a try, perhaps reinforced with PC board ties at regular intervals.  Certainly the turnouts are all going to be rebuilt the Joe Fugate hybrid way.  And I think I will add PC board ties epoxied to wood risers at the module joints, based on my experience with the Pine Street spur.

Ah yes, the other "Spur" in my basement.  It has found a home in the room on the other side of the wall from Elmira.  I built supports to hold the Pine Street modules over a bookshelf that I had built to hold my model railroading magazines.  Plans are to hang a stretch of drywall from the ceiling to form a backdrop, and to add lighting.  More details will be forthcoming in a separate post later. 

Starting up again - new home, second layout, Dead Rail experiment

It's been a while since I posted an entry, quite a while.  Once we decided in January 2014 that we would move this year, all work on the layout effectively ended.  Now we're in a new home in the model railroad mecca of Beamsville, ON (no, really, we have a fantastic hobby shop in town and some of the best modellers around), and work has resumed.

When we left our home, I had installed all the modules in our family room on a metal shelf bracket system and laid the track through most of Elmira.  A lighting valance hiding T5 fluorescent bulbs was also installed.  It looked very promising, as shown in this in-progress view:

However, I ran into problems with the trackwork, primarily related to the rail popping off the CV ties strips.  We'll get into that issue in another post.

We moved into a home with an unfinished basement, so naturally I was paralyzed again reconsidering how to best adapt the track plan to my new space, even my choice of prototype was up for grabs.  Over the summer I did make a set of three very lightweight modules to build a scale model of CN's Pine Street spur following an inspiration in Trevor Marshall's Achievable Layouts blog (http://themodelrailwayshow.com/LayoutDesign/?p=2070).  Three turnouts in 12 ft and I could model the mill complex in exact scale length.

I'm still undecided on whether to complete that concept, but with a Tam Valley DRS receiver and transmitter expected any day now, I can always lay the track down held together only with rail joiners and a few tacks, and operate and experiment to my heart's content.  I may still build this as something to take to shows, as Trevor suggested, if only to demonstrate the battery operation to the masses.

For now I'm putting up the drywall in the first basement room to be finished.  Nominally it will be a guest room, but practically speaking it will become the home of Elmira, ON on the CNR ca. 1988.  As it should be.  Questions abound as to layout height (I'm thinking high, i.e. 60"), room & layout lighting (LED strip vs. T5), duckunders, how much to intrude into the room space (i.e. along three walls or go for all four) and the aforementioned question of reliable track laying.  And I suppose also of whether to wire the layout for conventional DCC operation.  All things to be considered in due time.  If you have any thoughts and experiences to share regarding the above, I'd love to hear about and discuss them with you.

ttfn

Ideal (cottage) workshop

We are fortunate enough to be able to spend a couple of weeks as a family at a cottage near Parry Sound, ON.  With that much free time ahead of me, I seized the opportunity for some major catch-up on track laying.  Into the car went tie strips and switch kits from Proto 87 Stores, as well as a supply of paints and basic tools.

The first order of business was painting the tie strips. I followed the method Lance Mindheim outlined in his excellent book, How to Build a Shelf Layout. Before we left I had airbrushed the strips with Modelmaster light grey. At my outdoor cottage work table I tacked the strips to the sticky side of shelf cupboard liner and brought out a tube of raw umber oil paint and mineral spirits.

Lance's instructions are to thin the oil to the consistency of weak tea with the thinner. I washed the paint onto the strips, brushing in the long direction of the ties.  To my eye the resulting color was far too light, so I applied another wash. Better, but still too light brown.

Referring to pictures I took of the trackage in Elmira, even though the tops of the ties are all different shades of brown and grey, the underlying dark creosote brown is evident on the exposed ends and sides of the ties.  The question is, how do I duplicate that variety of color?  I can try another coat of the raw umber, but I'm afraid that the details in the tie strips will be covered too much by the time I get a nice dark colour. And selectively painting the sides and ends will be difficult, or at the very least very time-consuming.  Perhaps going dark and then dry-brushing the tops of the ties before gluing down the rail will be the way to go.

I'll have to figure I out, as I need the ties painted in order to be able to assemble the switches, which is the big goal to accomplish before going home.

More progress made than you'd think . . .

Quite a bit of work was accomplished on the layout shortly after my last post, it's just taken a long time to get around to writing about it. 

The first bit of progress was made with putting down the track support structure.  I chose to follow the advice of Jim Richards in the October, 2010 MR and use EasyMat, a foam underlayment available at Home Depot, instead of the more traditional cork strips.  I purchased a 4 ft wide roll that came in considerably less expensive than purchasing Midwest cork roadbed.  As shown in the article, I created a simple jog for cutting strips, but chose not to bevel the sides, figuring I could use caulking to more easily do that once the roadbed was installed. 

My original plan had been to lay the track directly on the foamboard base, but I was concerned about how I would accommodate the profile of the terrain at the module joints where the foamboard is level with the top of the end joists.  I was not looking forward to carving ditch profiles into the plywood.

In the July 2013 MR Tony Koester has an interesting article on using 3/8" thick foamboard to help shape the profile of the ground on either side of the track.  The pictures got me thinking and I decided to cut slightly wider strips of underlayment to place under the main support strips (which are basically as wide as the ties), thus increasing the height of the track profile.  This would give me the flexibility I was looking for in creating ditches on either side of the roadway to support the fact that the track usually sits above the surrounding terrain.  Roads will be able to come up to the level of the track at crossings and then go back down the other side, just like you see out in the field.  Where required, sidings could also easily drop down below the main.

In the pictures you'll see that I've laid the main and a portion of the passing siding in Elmira.  I've stopped short in the corner until I've proven to myself that I can build a reliable curved turnout. 

On the end closest to the steps I'm still undecided on the total length of the town.  To maintain a passing track length close to my desired 8 ft (which scales out to about 3/4 of the actual passing track length, accommodating 13 55' tank cars instead of 16), I might have to insert a 3 or 4 ft section between the end module and current end of track at the doorway.  This is necessary as I do not want every turnout on the south end of Elmira being on the curve leading into town.  That seems like it's just asking for trouble.

In future posts I'll add the current trackplan and talk a little bit about the genesis of the plan as well as the construction details.

Inertia is not on my side. Or, how to delay learning a new skill for a very long time.

It's amazing how long it can take to start something new.  Take for instance airbrushing.  Being shown how easy it is to spray track at the Nordel model railroad club in Hockessin, DE, I decided to finally build a booth to be able to put my Aztek to use.  I combined what I liked from the information offered by various people in the Model Railroad Hobbyist (mrhmag.com) forums and built a fair-sized booth. 

That was a year ago.  With my shelf layout's benchwork completed and a desire to paint my Central Valley tie strips prior to gluing them down, I needed to get my equipment set up and start learning to airbrush.  All that was holding me back now was fear of the unknown.  So this past weekend I positioned the booth in my basement storage room next to the window, hooked up some dryer exhaust tubing out the window, and plugged my compressor in.

And there it's sat for the last 3 days.  Not for lack of time for me to get out the Aztek and start practicing on some cardboard, but mostly due to that inertia that keeps me from trying something new until I'm 100% sure I've got all the angles covered.  I feel like I need to now do a bunch of research on airbrush techniques, and how to clean the tool properly, and which air pressures and paint-to-thinner ratios to use, etc.  You get the picture.  Manufacturing myself a to-do list to keep from starting.

Well, my plan is to just get some paint, a piece of scrap cardboard, and some Windex as thinner/cleaner, and start messing about with it on Friday, as one son has baseball games the next two nights.  Because after this airbrushing hurdle, there's several other things waiting to be tackled, including handlaying track and turnouts.  Time to get going on this layout-building thing!

Why I chose to model what I model, part deux

I believe it didn't take very long after I decided in my early teens that model railroading would be my hobby for me to start planning a dream layout.  You know, the one that would fill my parents' basement and then some, requiring an addition to the house (not to mention a Lotto 6/49 win).  I've been carrying that dream around from country to country, house to house, for 30 years.  Have I built that dream layout?  Of course not.

Reality in the form of a fairly nomadic professional existence, a wife and four children, and the lack of free time that all of that entails, has limited me to starting several roughly 5'x9' layouts.  Two ovals of track so that my sons wouldn't necessarily crash into each other all the time, and a chance to practice building benchwork, laying track, and wiring up a DCC system.  Good experience to gather, but nowhere close to a dream layout.

So when we recently moved back to Ontario, I found myself once again in a rented home, no dedicated train room space available, but this time with two advantages that allowed me to start what I would call a long-term, serious model railroad.  Firstly, I now lived closer to the prototypes that I've always wanted to model, which is  a huge source of inspiration.  Secondly, I happened upon first the blog and then the books of Lance Mindheim, and through his writings to other folks sharing many of the same thoughts.

Lance's philosophy that immediately caught my attention was that you didn't have to have a huge layout to enjoy the hobby.  I'm a bit of a lone wolf modeller anyways, so I doubt that I would ever be able to scare up a bunch of people to run a regularly scheduled operating session.  But I knew from being a member of the Nordel Model Railroad Club in Hockessin, DE, that operating was hugely fun.  Operating what is basically a switching branch, following Lance's inspiration, should provide the ideal amount of railroading to fit my budget, inclinations, and schedule..

Budget: there's never enough money available for a model railroad(er).  Narrowing my focus down to one branchline in a specific time period suddenly made it possible for me to shed all the interesting but now extraneous models that I'd collected over the years.  In theory it should also keep me on the straight and narrow should I wander into a hobby shop or show.  And the freed up funds would allow me to build a high-quality, highly detailed small layout.  Bingo!

Modelling inclinations:  I hold myself to very high standards.  I want to build close to museum quality track, have very detailed & weathered cars, locomotives, and buildings, and really believable scenery.  Frankly, the only person I trust to meet those standards is me.  If I don't, I won't have a problem ripping it out and doing it better the second or third time.  I'm a perfectionist, which means I frustrate myself and others as I strive towards perfection.  It's unattainable, but in the striving comes the learning and improvement, and for me, the fun.

Schedule:  I travel a lot for work and also have four small children, so my hobby time should be quite limited.  Only by grace of an incredibly supportive, understanding, and patient wife am I able to devote as much time to my obsession as I have.  A small layout means that I will better be able to balance family, work, and hobby, while living within my means and being more likely to achieve a certain degree of completeness in a reasonable timeframe.

With all this in mind, I was able to settle on a prototype (CN), location (Waterloo spur St. Jacobs & Elmira for now), timeframe (1988 - 1993), and layout style (sectional, around the walls on shelf brackets).  That's pretty much the hardest part.  30 years on I'm ready for some serious modelling!  Let's go!

A few words on how I ended up choosing this branch line as the subject of my modelling.  There were two main sources of inspiration for me: 1) having attended the University of Waterloo myself, whose campus the spur runs through, and 2) Lance Mindheim's (and others') writings on the play value and interest to be had in running a small, prototype-based layout.

The first point is pretty much self-explanatory.  I would venture a guess that most modellers are drawn to the trains they watched in their formative years, when they first had the freedom to go out into the world and could choose where to go to watch trains.  For me that was initially Canadian National's Oakville sub, running through my hometown.  I made many GO train trips to Toronto in the mid- to late '80s and '90s to scout out the track layout around Spadina and the CN Tower, and actually drew many trackplans to fit an expanded version of my parents' house.  I wonder where those pieces of paper are right now.  I'm pretty sure they've not been thrown away.  Looking back, one has to wonder how I thought I would be able to manage modelling a 3- and 4-track mainline, pre-DCC to boot!  We'll leave that to Jason Shron and others.

It was while attending university that I came to appreciate CN's secondary mainline through Kitchener and the occasional short local that scooted through the UW campus.  Unfortunately I did little to document it, and remained ignorant of the CP operations that were abandoned just as I graduated.  However, those times and trains have kept coming back to me over the years as I've planned layouts, started the occasional layout, and certainly as I've collected rolling stock in anticipation of having my dream layout.

There have been many distractions along the way, in terms of deciding on which prototype to follow.  Living in Germany, there was no shortage of small branch lines with healthy doses of picturesque scenery, steam and/or electric motive power, plenty of passenger trains that I'd actually had the chance to ride, and interesting freight operations.  

In Georgia an absolute gem of a prototype is the former Gainesville Midland RR, now CSX.  Multiple six-axle diesel consists pulling long strings of feed hoppers through the razorback hills between Gainesville and Athens, small-town Southern stations with big-time Amtrak & NS operations, shared switching of the local feedmills, and kudzu everywhere!  I might still come back to that one.

A move to Delaware introduced me to the former Octararo branch of the PRR, which was operated by a series of shortlines with interesting motive power pulling short trains through the beautiful countryside near Kennett Square, PA - mushroom capital of the world!  Just as Gainesville was chicken capital of the world!

Upper New York State offered the water level route of the NYC/CSX, but more interesting was Susquehanna's Utica branch.  The list of fantastic prototypes could further include the Delaware Lackawanna in Scranton, the Maryland Midland in lower Delaware, the Ontario Southland/Guelph Junction Railway, the Livonia & Avonville in the Southern Tier, and many more that would each make a fascinating history lesson as well as intriguing model railroad.

In the end, it always seems to come down to what you feel the most connected with.  Model railroading is very much an exercise in nostalgia, even if you're modelling what you see outside your window right now.  You are capturing a moment in time, and for most people that moment recedes into the past with each day that the railroad in the basement exists.  We look for ways to capture a favourite location/motive power/operation, or perhaps just the feeling we ourselves experienced at a particular time in our lives.

For me, that time was my university years, where the trains were captivating, not yet obsessively so as they are now, but where the adventure of being away from home was the larger picture.  Building a model railroad based on the CN operations of that era allows me to also think back fondly on the friends, cars, travels, and adventures of that time with each trip into the basement to work on the railroad.

More on narrowing down the choice of a prototype and the role my second source of inspiration played in the next post.

Welcome to my blog.  I am just starting an HO scale model based on late 1980's Canadian National Railway operations on the rail line from Waterloo through St. Jacobs to the end of the line in Elmira, Ontario.  I hope to post prototype information as I find it, get questions answered as they come up, and provide a means of documenting the hows and whys of building my modular railroad as it is created.