Saw this unusual load at Conway Yards the other night. It appears to be a narrow gauge industrial engine. Might make an interesting subject to model.

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Here is a very interesting movie, both for content, and for the rolling stock and right-of-way.
I remember 10 MPH mainline track with passenger trains too.
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Charlie

Hello Everyone---Like most women,she dosen't come cheap,but she sure is pretty---If you're interested in making an offer,send me a PM---Thanks,Nutbar

A time to wish all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year, and let's hope that the latter is possible, considering the current economic conditions.

Hopefully, the new year will see me more active here, as I haven't really gotten into things here yet.

When Mikey and I decided we needed to go back to our roots and revive the intimate and friendly train forum that we once had, we talked about what we might expect to see over the first few months. We thought maybe we'd get 50 to 100 old friends to sign up, we'd have a few mods follow us and we'd see just a few posts every day, with these things growing over time. Well, we initially though we might be a bit over staffed, but we couldn't turn away from the fact that just about all our mods wanted to join us here. Then, none of us expected the rousing success of opening day. We officially opened two weeks ago today. By then we had over 100 members signed up during our "soft" opening. We've had around 150-200 posts over the holidays, but we've averaged over 300 posts a day and we've now got over 160 members, not counting our staff. We are in fact, busier than we were on our "former" forum. There we were averaging less than 200 posts a day, and that included those in the card modeler's forums and a lot of spam junk as well. We saw a steady decline in posting on that forum, each time a new change came about, and we knew that wasn't healthy.

Well, as you can see, we are not overstaffed, and to be sure, we are super pleased that we not only have most of our old mods, but we now have staff with us that we previously lost because of changes on the old forum. to top that, we have many old friends returning that left us because of those same changes. To say that we're delighted doesn't cut it, we are ecstatic over the reception we've had here. This proves three things, less is better, you don't screw around with the basic things that brought people together in the first place, and lastly, we know now that we did the right thing.

We thank all of our mods for having the confidence in what we were doing to come along with us, we thank our many friends and members for joining us as well, and we thank the new faces we see here, all of which tells us we are on the right track. We look forward to this coming new year to us once again having the best train forum on the Net. We had it once, we will have it again.

Yeah, I know the ball hasn't dropped yet, but it is not terribly likely that I will be near the computer much for the next few days.
I hope everyone has a great new year.

Matt

I recently asked about this topic here (<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=257">viewtopic.php?f=17&t=257</a><!-- l -->) but now have a similar/related question ....

I've recently been having some success mixing different grades of ballast. I purchased a container of pink/beige coarse HO Woodland Scenics ballast and mixed it with my fine gray WS ballast and started applying it. I was immediately pleased with the results. I really liked how the coarse bits mixed in and stood out with the fine gray ballast -- I thought it looked very realistic.

Then I suddenly ran out of the fine grey ballast so I bought some medium grey ballast and mixed that with the coarse beige ballast. The mix was about 60-70% grey and 30-40 coarse beige. I realize that the best way to be authentic is not to be consistent as the colours and size/weight mix of ballast can change a lot even within one stretch of track.

As I said, I've been pleased with the results but just remembered one thing. A staff person at a LHS -- who is very experienced with scenery -- said he didn't like using HO ballast for HO layouts because the ballast in general was too large. He recommended using N scale ballast on HO layouts. Has anyone else found this or could comment on this?

Thanks,
Rob

I'm interested in campgrounds that have some sort of railroad interest. Please post.

I'll start with Port Huron KOA. I-69 West of Port Huron at Wadhams.
This used to have a railroad along one side and a pair of cabooses that were slowly disintegrating. The cabooses have disappeared and the railroad is now a bike trail.
However, they do have a 15" gauge park train that runs around on weekends. (4-2-4, gas engine).

The New Year is almost upon us.
Like making life resolutions(Loose weight, quit smoking, stop drinking) Id thought I'd make a list of "Layout Resolutions".
It'd be interesting to check this list next year and see what was done.

Finish benchwork(Seven years, isn't done yet) Had a wall in the way that kinda put me off for awhile. The wall is now gone.
Finish laying track(See above)
Finish CNE engine facility-Wire roundhouse tracks, finish scenery(Big Bonus at work this year...Maybe replace old turntable with the Walthers Self indexing one, Use old turntable for S&W(Southwick And Winsted)
Finish and improve Winsted Yard.
Finish Winsted.(City)
Finish Norfolk.(Country)
Start Torrington(Another city)
Complete CNE/S&W interchange.
Find and paint two Bombadier Bi-Level coach cars in CDOT scheme(Already have the cab car)
Improve layout lighting.

Find the time to do the list.