Some questions about The Downtown Spur came up at the recent RPM open house. So, for the number crunchers in the crowd, here is some arcane minutiae. The rest of you can resume your other duties. Era: 2007 Room size: 21’6” by 17’ 6” Track: ME code 70 Turnouts: Micro Engineering #6 Turnout Count: 13 […]
At the tail end of the railfan’s photographic golden hour, Y120 shoves a massive reefer down the spur of Pan Am Frozen Foods on my Downtown Spur layout. Photography is a way to experience our layouts in a way that’s impossible with the naked eye. I used my backup iPhone6 for this shot and then […]
Yesterday, I uploaded Episode 7 in my Switching Operations 101 YouTube series. Among other things, I focus on the importance and procedures related to ensuring you have a functional “couple” prior to doing a shove move. I also cover the procedure for dicey moves across heavily-traveled streets. Thanks to all of the professional railroaders and […]
This summer’s focus for The Downtown Spur is working on the structures along the 1400 block of 22nd Street (which parallels the railroad). The latest project is El Tigre Meat and Provisions as it looked around 2007. It was necessary to selectively compress the length. The main goal was to capture the hand-painted logo. Here’s […]
I’ve just uploaded Episode 5 of my Switching Operations 101 video series. In this segment I take a look at switching an LPG dealer and touch on how buffer cars are handled for an industry like this. My friend Tom Klimoski made a great analogy when it comes to operational practices. View them as a […]