There's light at the end of the tunnel ...

He can't give us an exact date just yet, but our builder tells us that the new HQ building for the GC will be ready for us to move into in October. To say that we're excited by the prospect of returning to our old address would be a huge understatement, although the past 15 months of house-sitting has been an experience in itself.

Here's how the new house looks as of today:

No - the blue box isn't the TARDIS.

I will sure be glad to be able to run trains on the layout again.  All in all, 2015 has been a bad year as far as layout operation is concerned. Not only has my own layout been unavailable for sessions, but two other layouts in our group have become 'fallen flags'.  Earlier this year, Brendan sold his house and headed off for a trip around Australia with his family.  Fortunately, his layout was purchased complete by another friend and will rise again in the (hopefully) not too distant future.  You can see the full story on Brendan's blog.

Our friend Big John also sold his house, and has completely demolished his ATSF Boise Sub layout.  It was a seriously good layout, and I will miss it very much as I really enjoyed operating on it. John is planning to build a new layout in his new home, and as he works quickly I'm sure we won't have to wait too long to be running trains on it.

The Boise Sub featured an interchange with the Rock Island, and included this GP18 which was owned and weathered by Rod. Now that the Boise Sub no longer needs it, Rod offered it to me. He didn't have to ask twice.

Now I've just got to come up with a plausible reason for it to show up on the GC&SF in 1960. (I'm also thinking that the paint scheme is too modern for 1960. Maybe I should get a TARDIS after all.)

Regards,
Ron