Website News Archive: 2009

23 December 2010

Helping other modelers with track planning continues, and I've posted a few new track plans. I hope to have some big news early next year, so stop back again in 2011. Happy holidays to all!

15 November 2010

As I'd mentioned back in July, it seems my "services" helping to develop track plans for people was really taking off. That has not changed in the last several months, but what has changed recently is that I've finally connected with someone hot to build a small layout who has actually started building it. For most of the plans done up to this point, the modeler either dropped the project or moved on to other things, for whatever their reasons—acute indecision ("waffling"), loss of interest, inadequate time or money, greener pastures, or whatever. While I understand this is all normal real life stuff, it's been just a bit disappointing for me to have been investing all of that effort in dead-end projects. That's changed! Dave Foxx from the Railwire is now building the Aberdeen & Rockfish, which I helped design for him based on his original sketches—which in turn were based on an old Model Railroader plan. What makes Dave's A&R unique is its shape: a parallelogram. And since it's being built on a door, it's been dubbed (by Lee Weldon) a parallelodoor.

28 October 2010

Yikes, has it been almost four months since my last update to this website? Embarrassing. Still, considering the layout doesn't exist any more, and I don't have any current N scale projects, there's not all that much I have to say. Lately, nearly all of my modeling time has been dedicated to my James River Branch Z scale layout, which will be on display at the Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium, MD on Sunday, October 31. Then it will be on display at Rick Spano's in Trenton, NJ on November 20 and 21 during the 2010 MD-DE-NJ-PA Model Railroad Open House.

That said, I've not forsaken N scale by any means, and I do have a bit of interesting news to share. I'm quite delighted to report that I'm on the cover of the November/December issue of N Scale magazine—in a manner of speaking, that is. The layout on the cover is Lee Weldon's Western Maryland Lines; however, the photograph is mine. When N Scale bought Lee's article, they decided to feature his layout on the cover. But Lee didn't have a suitable image. After some discussion at The Railwire, I agreed to take the photo for him. I also rendered the layout plans included in his article.

I must say it was a distinct pleasure meeting Lee and photographing his well-known layout—it made the nearly-600-mile round trip worthwhile. As an aside, this marks my debut in N Scale magazine; previously I've only ever been published in Model Railroader. The editor is quite interested in getting me to submit articles to them, but since I'm not currently doing anything in N, I don't have much to offer at the moment. That may change in time; meanwhile, I'll be making myself available to help others get published as well.

For those interested in how I captured the cover shot, here are the particulars. The camera is a Canon 40D DSLR with a Canon 20mm ultra-wide-angle prime lens. The camera was positioned in the river using a custom-built tripod. Lighting was a single 500-watt quartz-halogen fixture. About a dozen shots were taken at different focal points and processed with Helicon Focus. Smoke effects were added with Corel PhotoPaint. Finally, the track plan was rendered in CorelDraw.

4 July 2010

Seems as though my track planning work has taken off like wildfire—I've been making plans left, right and center. At some point the collection will likely explode with scads of new plans, but for now here's a first-timer door plan.

10 June 2010

My services as a track planner have been called upon again, and so there's a new plan in the collection: the Arkansas Midland Railroad.

25 April 2010

It's the return of Frankenshay! After nearly two years of sporadic restoration work, I've finally brought No. 6 back to its original unfinished glory! Yes, here's a most unusual N scale beast: a Shay built in the mid-1970s. It's sat in pieces in a drawer for the last decade or so. But rather than toss it, I decided to restore it to the condition in which it was last run, which was sometime in the 80s when I'd upgraded the wheels with the intention of finishing it. Though it remains unfinished, it nevertheless remains of interest, so I created a detailed account of its construction. Please enjoy this three-part series.

4 April 2010

Shay lovers, take note! I've added a new video to my railfan video collection. See some great footage of Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Shay #15 in action.

3 April 2010

Following on the heels of the Online Resources revamp, I've added a new page of Handy Gadgets. This is the beginnings of a collection of helpful tools, including a scale dimension calculator, a scale drawing size converter, and a resistor decoder.

1 April 2010

At long, long last I've finally gotten around to wrapping up a very big, very old round tuit. I've consolidated and updated all of my Online Resources (a.k.a. links). Ten pages of them, not counting resources devoted to other scales, which are located at their respective websites. Now, all of my other modeling sites point here so I'm not maintaining duplicate lists.

NOTE: Be sure to refresh every page you visit in the Online Resources section; otherwise, you may see outdated or even unrelated information.

28 February 2010

In the process of researching the Pine Creek Railroad, I've been catching up with my links lists. The problem is that I've got clusters of them scattered across multiple sites, so while I'm still actively building the lists, I'm struggling with how to consolidate them. In other (entirely trivial) news, I've updated some of the site's graphics.

12 January 2010

It may not N scale, but it is my next modeling project: the Pine Creek Railroad in Z scale. 36-inch narrow gauge (plus some dual-gauge thrown in for good measure) should be quite a challenge at 1:220...

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