What to do when your layout is not available.

Even though I'm not able to access, much less operate, my GC&SF layout, I'm still managing to get in a good dose of model railroading.  Rod and John still hold their regular operating sessions, and we've visited Greg's layout where he is finalising his operating system.

Brendan's D&H 4th sub - Champlain Division

Last Saturday Brendan invited the gang down for the first operating session on his D&H layout. Here's a photo of Brendan sitting at his dispatcher's desk.

The long sheet of paper that Brendan is reading from is his train graph.  The telephone handset is connected to a two-way radio, and is used to communicate with the 'town operators' (and train crews), who are similarly equipped.

If you're not familiar with Brendan's layout then I recommend that you click across to it right now and take a look.

Thanks for a great day Brendan. 

Men's Shed layout

I also spend a couple of hours each week at the local Men's Shed, where some of us are building a HO scale layout with an Australian theme. These photos show the area that is most advanced, although it still needs a lot more work:

We're using some techniques that I would never have considered using on my own layout (eg saw-dust collected from the shed's wood-working area and dyed green for ground cover, and beaded packaging foam for the sub-roadbed and scenery base), but I have to admit that the layout is already looking a lot better than I was expecting at this stage.  One of the fellows is becoming so skilled at making gum trees from twisted wire that I might commission him to build some N scale trees for my layout.

Regards,
Ron