On Saturday, March 23rd I made the all-day trek from St. Louis to Chicago to attend the O Scale “National” at Lombard, Ill. The venue was the beautiful Westin Lombard, same as last year, and there was a lot going on. I went up for the day and spent a few fun hours talking to friends and also buying some harder-to-get models, then headed back home in the evening. I like starting a trip report with a driving picture. It makes me feel like I went somewhere. This northbound on I-55 in Illinois. This picture makes it look an awful lot like Kuwait. The vendor room is where a lot of the action happe ..read more

My winter freight car work actually began last July. I didn’t get any modeling done all summer with the kids home from college. However, in July, I managed to break away from the fam for a few hours and attend the St. Louis RPM in nearby Collinsville, Illinois, where I gave a talk about building small layouts. I spent most of Saturday horsing around with old friends Greg Davis and Tom Christiansen. Greg was in the Army and during Desert Storm so we always have more to talk about than trains. Tom brought a huge display of FGE cars and we sat at his table for an hour or two and caught up. Durin ..read more

In the first week of December 2023, I finished construction and scenery for the layout—all the messy work—and transported the layout downstairs to its permanent home. The layout had been in the garage since July where I did all the messy jobs like Styrofoam cutting, wood cutting and dirty scenery work. The layout’s permanent home is on a carpet remnant in the basement of our rented home, so I did all the dirty work outside where I didn’t have to worry about messing up the floor. I use real coal and real dirt for a lot of the scenery and boy is it dirty. I think it looks great but it gets ever ..read more

My wife and I went to Brugge, Belgium over Thanksgiving to celebrate my 60th birthday. Two of our three children were able to join us. We’ve been to Brugge many times and we love life there. It was a wonderful week and being there made us feel ready to live in Europe again. For the railfan in me, a highlight of the trip was taking a train to Ghent for a day of sightseeing and waffle-eating. The ride was fast, clean, efficient, and of course electric. The train below was photographed at Ghent on our way back. This wasn’t our train but ours was a lot like this one. Unlike Brugge, Ghent has a t ..read more

Hermitage Road is slowly taking shape. In my last layout post I described painting and weathering rail and ties in preparation for laying down ballast. I use dirt dug up from a roundhouse site for ballast. In the late 2000s I lived in Indiana and drove through Richmond, Indiana frequently. On one trip past Richmond I stopped and found the site of the former Pennsylvania Railroad roundhouse. I dug up a couple of bucketfuls of dirt and cinders at the roundhouse site, brought it home, sifted it, and stored it away in a few one-gallon bins for later use. 13 years and two layouts later, I’m still ..read more

Chicagoland RPM wrapped up last week and it was a great success and a lot of fun. The meet was hosted by Resin Car Works on Friday, 27 October and Saturday, 28 October 2023 at the Northern Illinois Conference Center in Naperville, Illinois. Around 400 modelers from around the US and Canada attended. The NIU Conference Center, below. It was a gorgeous fall weekend. The two-day event featured 35 clinics, 115 vendor and historical society tables, home layout tours, modular layouts in-house, a fun Friday evening social in the NIU atrium, and lots of camaraderie and fellowship. At right is Bonnie ..read more

In the last post I described painting track and getting it ready for ballasting. Prior to ballasting, I felt it was important to install backdrops, fascia and lighting. In this boring post I’ll describe–briefly–how I installed backdrops, fascia and lighting. Below. In early July I rented a table saw from Home Depot, bought some 1 x 2s and 3/16-inch Masonite, and got to work. Here is the layout in the garage all set for backdrop installation. Looks like I’ve got a coffee ready too. I decided to hang the backdrop in three sections. One small section for each end, and one long 7-1/2-foot section ..read more

With track laid, wired and tested on the new layout, it was time to paint the track. Painting track is a big step, as all the trackwork should be operational and perfect before painting. Painting usually introduces a few other problems, such as problems at switch points and so forth, so the more work done prior to painting, the better. Hermitage Road is supposed to be an urban industrial layout, so weathering track appropriately is important. Here are a few motivational examples from around the U.S. that helped guide my painting. Below. This view is in Kansas, on a Union Pacific siding just we ..read more

The blog has been “dark” since the end of April. It’s been a VERY busy summer for me and my family, and now it’s time to get back to it. I mentioned in my last post–way back in April–that I had a full left knee replacement on April 5th. Recovery was much more difficult than I expected. The first two weeks were tough and I was in a lot of pain. After three weeks I was able to start working from home, and about that time I got back to the YMCA and was lifting weight to supplement physical therapy. PT went well and after six or seven weeks I was even able to jog a little bit. Below. The doc worke ..read more

Three weeks ago I got an e-mail from an old friend, telling me to expect a box in the mail. He didn’t provide any details. He just said “I’m sending you a box of goodies.” I do a lot of model and parts swapping with other guys, so much so that getting a box of swapped goodies a month is a regular thing. But this box was different. It wasn’t a box of cut-up decals or leftover resin parts, or somebody’s leftovers. This box included two beautifully finished HO scale models, with a note that said “These models are a blessing from Bill Welch”. Wow. The car above is a Sunshine ATSF GA-49 gondola ..read more