WPMA-40 along Division Street.

Bruce

   

Not space for trains space is in outer space. I'm visiting my step-mom in central Fla. She lives within a few miles of the cape. We can stand out in her yard and watch the rockets take off. Just watched Musk's latest venture take flight. Always amazes me to see those boosters come back down and land back on the launch pad.

This will be the fourth wooden puzzle that I've put together. It is a 1980's style sleeper cab at 1:40 scale. There were 287 pieces, about the same as the 1910's era car, and physically just a bit smaller when finished.

Rather than post progress photos as I went along, I'll just post a few that I took from start to finish, since it is completed at this point. The only mods I made to this model was to add clear plastic to the glass openings. One of these days I might go back and detail the interior a bit, I think a wooden pillow and mattress might be a bit much to sleep on, as are those wooden seats uncomfortable for a long haul.

This is the intent on what it's supposed to look like when finished:
   

Steps 1 & 2 completed the chassis
   

Steps 3 & 4 added the cab
   
   

Step 5 added the sleeper
   
   

Step 6 the engine compartment and exhaust pipes added
   

I had to dump my 4x8 7 years ago when the kids were born.  I incorporated part of it as a shelf layout in my workshop, but that didn't work well.  Eventually I built a 3x4 foot HOn3 micro layout and have been working on detailing it.  Here are two photos from the layout, plus an HOn3 2-8-2 I have been building off-an-on from mostly junk box parts the past 7 or so years, and a 3-d printed shell gas station that I designed.

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My son sent me some photos of my old layout that him and his brother are remodeling. It is in a basement room that is 17x28 feet. We sold the house to him when we retired and found our place out of town. 
       
Charlie

Now that I'm well on the way to having a turntable on the layout I need an enginehouse to go along with it. A couple years ago I found that Juneco was re-issuing it's enginehouse kit:

   

It's a two stall enginehouse with an optional car-shed and rear office. I remember Juneco's ads for this in Model railroader in the eighties and wanting this kit. At that time I was in my early teens with no money so I never bought it. I also doubt I would have had the skills at the time to attept something like this.

   

Even though it was re-issued, it's still pretty old-school. The walls look like they are cut to size but I will have to cut the window openings myself. The windows and details are all white metal castings as well. Not that I'm complaining, I look forward to the challenge.
Another indication of how old the kit is, the instructions recomend using a solution of shoe dye and alcohol for coloring the walls and floor. I'll be substituting acrylic paints.

   

The kit does come with some very good instructions and schematics so I'm not that concerned that I'm over my head.

Lehigh & New England 0-8-0 Switcher (IHC) shuttles some cars around the station area with the new Ashmore Hotel in the background.

the last wanted was a dud and this one probably will be also, what I'm looking for is a box for a AHM Rico Station, i bought one several years back for a memento of times past as I bought one in the early 70's that got lost in one of our moves but the one i got i stored in garage and the silver fish thought the box was a free lunch . so what i'm trying to find is a box in fair shape to replace the shredded one.
Jim

Just a question regarding everyone's dedication to the hobby. Do you ever get what I'd call, "burn out"? That being when you loose interest in anything that you've done or need to do with your layout. Or have you gotten away from the hobby for other reasons at times, sometimes not touching your layout for a year or better. I'll leave this poll open, and you can check multiple things in the poll and comment as you would like, this is a topic for discussion.

I'm just curious, some folks go missing from Big Blue at times and come back, some never do. A few keep in touch but say they're too busy to do any modeling. So I ask, have you ever been burned out to where you've left the hobby, even if you've come back to it later?

OK, I'm a glutton for punishment, but I went and got a couple more of these wooden puzzle things. I'm kind of hooked, they are fun to build, require total concentration or you can screw up big time and so you shut out the rest of the world while you're working on them. Plus, when you're finished, you have something you can display.

This one is an old antique automobile built sometime around 1918. No particular model specified, but it looks close to what was sold back around then. It has a total of 298 parts and does not have any motive power, but that's OK. The steam engine did and the power train fell apart on it and so it wouldn't run. The machine gun however shot rubber bands and ejected "spent cartridges", and it did work.

I will try to remember to take progress photos, this one is of step one. There were nine sub-steps and 23 individual pieces for what looks like the beginning of the underside.

The goal:
   

The "how to":
   

Step 1 completed: