This was a sad weekend. I demolished most of what little progress I made on the home layout and most of it is in the trash. It sure came down faster than it went up!!!

We haven’t found a piece of property yet but am sure we will as things develop. I already have a concept in mind for a new layout (one that I can actually build this time) that involves four decks on 9” spacing with very narrow…2” or so… ROW. It would basically be a free-standing “E” shape with the back of the “E” being the working staging yard on both ends of the railroad. I would use my “unfolded bidirectional helix” where the transition between decks would be an “X” with both levels appearing in a single scene exchanging position. For four decks there would be three of them… and with only 9” of separation the grades would not be all that long or severe. I am going to make a mock-up which I’ll photograph for a future Ramblings.

Industry-wise Bachmann proved to be the hit of the show with lots of good stuff for N for a change. Their long-awaited Ten Wheeler 4-6-0 looked really nice. The Peter Witt trolley was a gem and the GE 70 Tonner was a nice addition. The GP7 looked better than any previous Bachmann diesel and should be a nice lower-cost alternative to the Atlas locomotives. For you modern guys they have a new Canadian Cylindrical Grain Hopper. Fox Valley showed samples of their N Scale body shells and production for the HO Hiawatha… it didn’t look like there were any errors to correct on the HO version so the N should be good to go! Con-Cor had a new Micro-Trains 1015 clone dummy coupler which will be their new standard. Atlas, InterMountain, did not have any news. BMLA announced a new ultra modern fiberglass Mechanical Reefer continuing on their modern theme. Lunde Models has another resin-cast city building in the works and several laser kit manufacturers had some nice N Scale building kits as well. Kato announced their next passenger project… Amfleet II Coach, Food Service Cars and a Viewliner Sleeper along with a P42 and modernized Budd Baggage Car. There are a couple of other locomotive projects I know about but they probably won’t hit until TrainFest, so there is even more to look forward to!!

An interesting video posted on the Atlas Forum alerted me to a new technology that may be of some interest to you. There are USB “Spy Cameras” available that have the capability of recording video in color and sound that are the size of a USB memory stick. Rich Gorman took one of these and taped it to the top of a passenger car and sent it around his layout. Since the camera uses a pinhole lens the resolution and depth of field was excellent and, being battery operated, there were no problems with loss of signal in the video. One could make up a more permanent camera car to achieve a cab-level view and possibly edit the video to include a photo mask of a cab interior so the video appears through the cab window…. I’ve ordered two of them from Hong Kong via ebay (around twelve bucks each including shipping!!...but they require separate purchase of a micro SD memory card).

Again, thanks to all of you who availed yourselves of the Galesburg & Savanna Backshop (garage) Sale. I dragged most of the leftovers up to Milwaukee and found homes for another bunch of equipment. I still have too much of it left (including Atlas-style snap turnouts, Code 80 flextrack in mass quantities and cheap prices) so if you are interested just give me a shout and we can open up for business at your convenience!