A hobby adventure
This post began as six separate email updates with a few friends to share upgrade ideas and techniques for the HO scale Accurail USRA hopper models. Since everything worked out pretty well, and the images are decent, I thought I’d share it here. Most of the images on this post can be seen in a larger size after clicking on them.
While I have not started a new home project layout this past year, I have been able to operate on a number of interesting model railroads. One of these layouts is inspired by a stretch of the Baltimore & Ohio in West Virginia, and not far from where I lived in Morgantown, W. Va. Thomas Eckhardt has been building his HO scale B&O West End layout for a couple of decades. The main line is running, nearly all track is complete, and much of the scenery has been installed. On occasional weekends, a crew gathers to operate the West End.
With the holidays over and winter settling in, I’ve been organizing the spare room to set up a workbench and test track. It’s a tough puzzle as five boxes need to move before I can move some other boxes into the space the five boxes were sitting. If I move too many boxes, then I have a hard time weaving through the narrow openings to the door. I’ve already moved a couple of the boxes out to the storage barn, but the space is tight. I received a couple of emails to offer a welcome break from the unending movement of boxes. My friend John in Ohio is wrapping up room prep on his new 12×22 foot layout space and wanted suggestions for the area. I enjoy a trackplanning challenge! The image above was taken on his old layout.
I was reorganizing boxes of hobby materials and other ephemera the other day and I came across a box of old photographs. A few loose pictures caught my eye and I thumbed through a small stack. Among those were several images of my first HO scale layout. The image above shows the overall scope of the project. Click on it to see a larger version. My father had a 4×8 table built at a local lumber yard and we built a plan from an Atlas plan book of John Armstrong designs.
REPOST: originally posted in July 2010.
A recent summer weekday was spent in a library, specifically, the special collections room of the Cleveland State University Library. Upon entering, my eyes were drawn to several large images of Cleveland’s past and a large collection of O scale model trolleys positioned atop a long shelving unit. This is really one cool joint. Among the railroad archives collected here are documents from the Nickel Plate, Erie-Lackawanna, Wheeling & Lake Erie, and the Newburgh & South Shore. I went in search of W&LE maps and N&SS images. I did not find those specific items, but I did find and review W&LE images and N&SS maps. Reviewing these items were well worth the time.