While wandering about my local Hobby Lobby last week I found these military sandbags in the model car aisle. They are about 1/35according to the packaging but can be used for bags of cement or flour and they make an excellent pallet load. The labels were download from the internet and printed on thin linen paper. I made the pallets from coffee stirrers using a homemade jig.

I have a certain amount of LGB track, and I just acquired some Bachmann hollow steel alloy track.  It looks like they are somewhat compatible, but I wanted to check. It seems the Bachmann track (which is flimsier I know) has a pointy little thing on each male end (which inserts inside the female connections).  It looks like in order to transition from LGB to Bachmann, I need to cut off the little male Bachmann pointy part on one section of track, at which point I should be able to conn...

There's a prototype for everything (though it's appearing a bit after ours).     Wabtec Putting EV Locomotive on Rails

I will admit that, until now, I have shown no ability to keep plants alive (I once killed a cactus by underwatering it, for example). Given that the Durango & Jasper is meant to be a garden railroad, this clearly needs to change.   Starting from such a stunning position of ignorance, I've decided to take advantage of a lucky coincidence and hire Nancy Norris, the gardening editor for Garden Railway magazine, to plan, install, and teach me about these living things that I will be nurtu...

Hey folks  I thought I'd get a conversation going about waybills. I've been unable to find a good tutorial on how exactly to set up two- or four-position waybills.  Every page I've found so far basically says "Now fill in your waybills with the desired car routing," but not what that means exactly.  I'm assuming some giant table of all your industries and in/out cars?  Are there any Excel, or other, tools that assist with figuring out routing? (I've been unable to find any)

It's probably been 2 months since I've used JMRI to create a switch list. During that time, no thanks to LSC & Facebook, I have acquired quite a few more cars.  Being a mostly rainy day today, I wanted to run a train on the indoor division. JMRI refused to build a train with more than one car. A quick look at the build logs showed why: There is only one open car spot at each end of the railroad. JMRI has tons of cars wanting to move, but no where to put them!   So, it's time to a...

On these trucks sideframes used on Aristocraft 100-Ton coal hopper cars  and Evans 53' Boxcars, I need to replace some worn out brass bushing in which the Aristo plastic wheel or ART-29111D wheel axles are rotating. Does someone have found a direct replacement for these bushings? Where can I get these? Did Aristo-Craft have a spare part# for these? Thanks in advance for your help.

The majority of my construction projects have mostly been getting the Outside layout working.  Any work on the inside was basically done to make the freight yard for the outside operations..   Since the weather has turned cold, efforts have been spent on working out the track plan for the upper level inside portion of my layout.. I had previously created my industrial switching portion of the layout and it is against the further most north wall..   For the past few days, I ha...

Aloha,   2021 is fast upon us, and I am busy evaluating options and budgeting the casbh for the main push in 2021, the "Rehabilitation of the Missile Sponges," the upgrading to near-model status of cheaper motive power we acquired to let the youngest visitors and crew interact with the Triple O.  To that end: Has anyone tried / used the motor blocks from Smallbrook Studio (link)? Will they hold up to the elements, namely rain, high humidity, high temperatures, and proximity to th...

Following the examples of many people I respect, I am going to start keep a written log of our move and the rebuilding of the headquarters of the KVRwy, here. Those of you that have been at our house in Carlyle and at Train Shows like the East Coast Large Scale Train Show each Spring, know that the "Timesaver" and "Inglenook" switching puzzles, that were part of the basement division of the old KVRwy are and have always been my "retirement railroad".  Well Jan and I "officailly retired" De...

I have six pair of Bachmann couplers.  Unused but taken off to be replaced with Kadees.  $25 includes shipping (which is around 9 bucks, from what I can tell)  

3 January, 2021  - Ridge Live Steamers, Dundee, Florida . And we start a New Year with Car Card / Waybill Operations here at the Ridge Live Steamers on January 1 -3, 2021.  Ran the passenger train to the hourly schedule, yesterday (Saturday).  Early runs today are annulled do to rain, but traffic should pick up as the weather moves through this afternoon.  We start putting  the 116 pieces of rolliong stock away at 2 pm.   Jan was the Conductor and Bo provided Secu...