Thursday, May 26, 2016

The almost end of May Update

Can you believe it?! Memorial Day is upon us and the month of May is almost over.   This month saw the re-energizing of the attic conversion and some new rolling stock acquisitions.   Here are two more of the latest purchases.  Again, starting to appreciate the TOFC ops more and more.  These flats and trailers work well for the 1950's as well as early 60's, so I get to cover a lot more era with these two particular models from Walthers.  









The attic is heating up again with this mini- heat wave we have had this week, but if it cools down just a bit, I am hopeful to complete some more insulating work.   I have tried to not let a day pass without doing at least one thing in the attic.   Progress albeit in small steps.

I hope everyone enjoys the Memorial Day Holiday and remembers those that paid the ultimate price for our freedom and ability to enjoy life as we know it in the USA.    

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Onward! May 2016 Update

Well despite a very mild winter, not much work was able to be accomplished on preparing the attic space for the layout.  I will spare you the reasons for most of my absence for the past 5 months, but the past two weekends have yielded some much needed time in the attic and we are back on track.  Progress and Onward!   I was able to start to frame in the back corner of the room, thus creating the storage area on west side of the room.  A similar space for storage is going to be mirrored on the the eastern wall as well.  It is not much to look at, but it did enable for me to clear up the center space and organize the room.

The winter months did allow for plenty of new rolling stock purchases however, and a number of long awaited pre-orders have arrived.   I am particularly impressed with the RTR 85' flats cars from Athearn and the corresponding trailers.  I have never been much for modeling piggyback service or TOFC.  These flats might just very well change my mind and they will work very well for when I want to run an early 1960's train.   Here are a few pictures:




Also the Walthers Mainline New York Central Observation cars arrived over the winter.  I was happy to finally pick up two of these cars for my Budd era passenger trains.  



A number of other items have arrived and I picked up some oldies but goodies from a few trains shows as well.  I will try to snap a few pictures over the next few days for another post.

I will leave you with an overview shot of my one stand alone module against the wall.  For not being anywhere near complete, I think it looks pretty good and this is helping me to envision what the room will look like once the room construction nears completion over the course of the next few months.