Building and operating the Atlantic Inland

 When you arrive at a yard and none of the cars on the tracks are classified is there a faster way to classify cars than pulling each track and beginning to classify? It’s actually a serious question because I’m concerned I’m doing it wrong. The first thing I do is look at the card boxes for each track to establish if there is a system laid out. Next I actually look at every card in every box to check that all the cars on each track are blocked according to the car card box label, or are there some random cars that will come back to bite me later,  -OR- Is the track a “dog’s breakfast” and it must be classified. Next, but actually accomplished while scanning all the cards in the boxes,  I look for cars going to a like destination. Is there a predominance of destinations, does one track have a lot of cars going to the same destination.  If the card boxes are labeled as to destination, AND I have found a lot of cars for a particular destination I make a judgement call ...

 I do not, as a general rule, know anyone in the hobby around here. They do not know me. My old circle of friends endured years of Me; at home; in the train room; and while I was at work. They all saw,  first hand,  what I was capable of.  I AM NOT A MODELER. I am not capable of building good models. I don’t, as a rule enjoy assembling model trains. “If I can’t get it out of the box and on the rails in ten minutes…”, you’ve all heard, or more accurately read, me saying that. I developed a construction skill in the entertainment business. FAST not necessarily good. My rough framing will not win medals for beauty, but it will pass inspection.  Over the thirty odd years I spent in the entertainment business it was “Get a concept Thursday afternoon, and have it built and in front of the camera by Monday or Tuesday.” The parts the camera didn’t see didn’t get finished. Then tear it all down Wednesday and start over again. I recently got a lot of flak from some local ...

 The President of our local train club is moving. He is selling off his equipment. I bought his spray booth.  It has an exhaust fan, ducting, lighting. The whole works. And I’m getting it at fire sale prices. Far less than I would pay for materials to build my own.  In addition to the spray booth I got my California Air Tools compressor. Currently I’m using it to run my nail guns during basement construction (it runs my 16d nail gun just fine). The eventual plan is to use this exceptionally quiet compression to run my air brush.

 This blog is titled “Building and Operating the Atlantic Inland”. That’s not specifically true, in so far as no track is down yet. I have  an unfinished basement that I’m currently finishing. Lots of framing, wiring, a little plumbing. But no benchwork and track yet. I’ve mocked some track up, and continue to do that.  I’m particularly concerned with the clearance necessary between loading docks and cars, or clearance between structures and cars. Lighting and shadow areas are concerning me. The placement of lights and the shadows they cast. I want to know, in advance, if possible, where I should place lights to illuminate the benchwork but not leave a great deal of the layout in shadow.  Flooring concerns me. I would like to have the layout room look as nice as possible. The rubber/foam mats from the big box store feel good on your feet, but carpeting looks much better. I’m pretty settled on T-Bar ceiling because it will hide a lot and allow fairly easy repositionin...

First, let me extend the warmest and most sincere New Years Greetings from the Atlantic Inland Railway to all of you. Happy New Year!  A few blogs ago I mentioned that I wanted to add some passenger service to the assorted coal branches spread over the PLAN for AIR2. My plan is to have a Passenger Combine included with the coal hoppers on each branch. This car would get collected by the mine run and be brought “Somewhere”. Where? Let me give you some background on the coal branch’s on the new layout. On AIR1 the coal branch’s were relatively long terminating in a one or two track staging yard, concealed beneath benchwork and scenery. There might be two or three tipples on each of these branch’s. Additionally there was always short a merchandise train staged that came out from time to time. One or two of these trains was Mixed*. On AIR2, ,my plan for these branch’s is that nearly full mine runs  will be staged in the branch staging. The mine run will come out of staging where i...