07-02-2010, 09:19 AM
O'Dave ... I'm both impressed and heartened! 
I'm really impressed with the thought and organization that you've done ... it is not all that dis-similar to my own approach to the hobby, using my model railroading time in the days following graduation from college and working to start a career as a research and planning project when I had time in the evenings, but no money and no space beyond a three-foot-long section of track that I used as a "class" in hand-laying track and and developing ballasting technique. Route travelled, industries by town/village, standards of the road, Class Numbering Systems for Locomotives as well as for Freight and Passenger Rolling Stock ... all of those things are coming into play now as I, like you, rejoin the hobby after a lengthy hiatus.
I'm very interested in the graphics that you posted with the copy. What software was used to develop the track plan drawing and the route through the state of Michigan map? Really nice stuff! I wouldn't mind generating some of that stuff myself!
And you mention you've "been gone" from the hobby for 25+ ... Myself likewise and as I use all my fingers and toes doing the math, I think that would take your last involvement back to the late seventies and the days when the concept of "Freelanced Prototype" was being made popular by the likes of Allen McClelleand and Tony Koester and "the boys of the Lichen Belt," all modeling the area of and around the coal fields of the Appalachian Mountains. Those were the same people and magazine articless that influenced me.
One thing about your overall plan does concern me though ... you said "shed" and the image that first came to mind when I saw the track plan drawing, and the double doors at one end, was steel outdoor lawn equipment storage shed. Now, my sister and her family live outside Detroit and I know that in the winters, the couldn't see outside through the frost on the windows in the winter until they replaced all the windows with "double-pane vacuum-space insulated" windows. So how will you deal with COLD in this "outside shed?"
hock:
I will watch your progress with interest, O'D, and If I have't taken the opportunity to say so before ... Welcome to Big Blue at The-Gauge!
I'm really impressed with the thought and organization that you've done ... it is not all that dis-similar to my own approach to the hobby, using my model railroading time in the days following graduation from college and working to start a career as a research and planning project when I had time in the evenings, but no money and no space beyond a three-foot-long section of track that I used as a "class" in hand-laying track and and developing ballasting technique. Route travelled, industries by town/village, standards of the road, Class Numbering Systems for Locomotives as well as for Freight and Passenger Rolling Stock ... all of those things are coming into play now as I, like you, rejoin the hobby after a lengthy hiatus.
I'm very interested in the graphics that you posted with the copy. What software was used to develop the track plan drawing and the route through the state of Michigan map? Really nice stuff! I wouldn't mind generating some of that stuff myself!
And you mention you've "been gone" from the hobby for 25+ ... Myself likewise and as I use all my fingers and toes doing the math, I think that would take your last involvement back to the late seventies and the days when the concept of "Freelanced Prototype" was being made popular by the likes of Allen McClelleand and Tony Koester and "the boys of the Lichen Belt," all modeling the area of and around the coal fields of the Appalachian Mountains. Those were the same people and magazine articless that influenced me.
One thing about your overall plan does concern me though ... you said "shed" and the image that first came to mind when I saw the track plan drawing, and the double doors at one end, was steel outdoor lawn equipment storage shed. Now, my sister and her family live outside Detroit and I know that in the winters, the couldn't see outside through the frost on the windows in the winter until they replaced all the windows with "double-pane vacuum-space insulated" windows. So how will you deal with COLD in this "outside shed?"
hock: I will watch your progress with interest, O'D, and If I have't taken the opportunity to say so before ... Welcome to Big Blue at The-Gauge!
biL
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln