I finally did a video tour of my home layout, the Get Out n Push railroad.

Continuing from where I left off in the previous post:

Around this period I recieved my first Athearn locomotive…a major improvement to the Tyco and Lifelike.  It was an F7 unit painted for Amtrack.

Scenery on the home layout was not very good…dyed green sawdust representing grass (poorly I might ad) and some lichen directly out of the the box in all of its multi-colored glory.

This display was wired for DC, using a dual cab control.  This allowed for the operation of two trains at once, if you were able to switch everything correctly.  I can recall doing this with one of my brothers, trading between the inside and outside loops and hoping it did not cause a derailment (the usual result).

The layout stayed in this form until we moved, where it was put into storage for a time.

Around the age of 16 I moved into my great grandmother’s house to keep an eye on her, and the layout was set up in her garage.  While it was here myself and one of my brother’s removed the massive guacamole mountain and started using extruded foam to create new scenery.  Unfortunately for the layout, I only lived in this location for about a year and a half and the layout was moved back into storage – where it resided to this day.

While the layout was in storage my interest moved away from model trains into table top wargames.  For several years I was interested in Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.  This hobby brought me into the world of assembling and painting miniatures.  This was also my introduction into the art of drybrushing.  After 5-6 years I got tired of the wargames and began to focus more on school and other activities.

Fast forward about 5 years:  One day as I was on my way to get lunch I saw a sign advertising a model train show not far from my house (I never did make it to lunch that day).

This was my introduction to the San Leandro Historical Railway Society, which I have been a member of every since and am currently the chairperson of the scenery committee and the superintendent for the HO scale display.  Quite the improvement since I started in the club with no model railroad equipment whatsoever.  Once I started in SLHRS I began to slowly accumulate equipment, until I was given a substantial amount of HO scale equipment by my wife’s uncle (thanks again Gary) as he was unable to continue in the hobby.

To this day I am still interested mostly in logging railroads, an interest that started early on through the pictures of the famous Pacific Northwest railroad photographer Darius Kinsey.

Lately I have been listening to a couple of different podcasts about model railroading, these include: Model Rail Radio, the Model Railcast Show, the Model Railroad Hobbyist, the Model Railway Show, the Observation Car Podcast, and the Scotty Mason Show. I found all of these on iTunes, and can strongly recommend each of them.
These podcasts led to a train of though of how I got involved in the hobby of model railroading. As I can recall model railroading for me started with a Tyco train-set, the army one if I remember correctly. I might have set this up on the carpet once or twice (shudder) and then on the kitchen table.
Not long after my dad built a 5×9 table out of a sheet of 3/4 plywood, set on sawhorses. I can recall the first two loops that were nailed into place and running trains around like slot cars. This table was painted the most hideous color of light green (left over old house paint I think).
The loops lasted a short time and then work on the layout began. It was based upon an extended plan featured in the Model Railroad that Grows book from Lynn Westcot.
I remember reading the book, but never really tried anything from it.
Around this time my dad got another train set for Christmas…a lifelike UP model of some sort.

After the track had been laid it was time to start upon the scenery. We started this monster of a mountain using chicken wire covered in a layer of paper-mache made with plaster. This was then covered with more plaster. All in all I believe there was over 150lbs of plaster used on this mountain. We painted this mountain using spray-paint…the end result was a mountain that looked like guacamole.

TBC

I recently picked up another couple of cars from my local hobby shop (impulse purchase while waiting for my Tsunami decoders to arrive).

I was amazed at the amount of detail available on this 3 bay offset hopper from Athearn.

I also picked up an Athearn stock car.

After these pictures I took my usual steps and replaced the couplers with Kadees and painted the metal wheels.

I still need to weather them.

I recently have started listening to a couple of different model railroad podcasts. One of the most interesting subjects, described in interviews on both the Model Railway Show and also on Model Rail Radio (both on iTunes) was a micro layout called Brooklyn 3Am.
http://carendt.us/scrapbook/page87/index.html
I cant say enough about how awesome this little scene is, and how it uses a lot of small effects to complete the scene, even to the sound.

As described on the website for the display it is built on a foamcore table.