Jumping ahead to winter 2013. Recently, I decided to make a model using a Bar Mills "The 1-Kit" that I got on sale at my local hobby shop. It is a sort of you make up the building kit. My inspiration comes from my bother-in-law who is nuts about his Mustang auto-mobile! During hurricane Irene he asked if he could store his Mustang in my garage. I gave him the okay knowing his anxiety about his beloved car. In a later conversation he said the one thing he wants is his own garage (for me it would be a full usable basement for a monster HO train layout!).  His wish gave me the idea to build a gas station/garage named after him for the layout. I envisioned a 1950's style home town filling station with national service station affiliation. I had two JJL Innovative Design Phillips 66 gas pumps (I had got at the Springfield train show) so I chose to make it a Phillips 66 station.

Here it is about half way finished.

This is the stage jut before I put on the shingles. I had left over Northeastern gray slate shingles from another build I could use- so I did! The small structure to the side is a Bar Mills "Zak's Shack" that I added Northeastern corrugated metal roofing to.

I put together a Central Valley wood fence (a la George Sellios) with period poster take from the Internet. Note the "I Like Ike" to place the context in the 1950's

The almost finished garage. The figures are Preiser and are chosen to represent my bother-in-law and his three daughters. His wife is in the window on the second floor.

The same year that I began my layout I started working on Erie RR equipment. It was hard to find prototypical HO Erie cabooses. I found my first Quality Craft caboose kit at a train show in Kingston NY. It is the finished caboose in the photo above. It is a wood kit with white metal castings. The company that made it is long out of business, so I got the idea from the Internet to use 2 part resin (Alumilite) to make casting of the metal parts and use styrene and other parts to make two scratch built copies. It was a stretch for me to model being new to the hobby. In the end they came out good. If I built them today, they would be better! Currently you can get kits of the same "Magor" Erie wood Caboose from JJL Models along with a "Dunmore" Caboose and soon a "Bay Window" model (these are nice resin kits!).  Aslo, yeoldhuffnpuff.com  sells an old "Silver Streak" wood kit of a older Erie "Box Car" Caboose. If you need decals, Prime Mover Decals makes Erie Caboose decals for HO.

This is the oldest photo I have of the layout (October 2005) with two of three Erie Cabooses I built from scratch. It is basically a 4'x8' wood table frame with pink insulation board on top. You can clearly see the Life-Like Power Lock HO track that I would not use again. Early on I started thinking about the Erie! Two of the buildings seen here I gave to a friend for his layout.

I've been workin on the railroad...

This is the first tine that I have tried blogging – I’m always behind the technology curve! I suppose as an Episcopal priest I should blog on things far more serious, but perhaps maybe beginning with my hobby is easier and the first toe in the water. As I said in my first blog entry my model road layout (hobby) began with a cheap HO Scale Life-Like “Shop Rite” train set I bought for my son as a Christmas present in 2004. I thought that model railroading might be a good father/son activity. At first my son was interested and we had fun together. But as these things go he interests led elsewhere (comic books, action figures, Dungeons and Dragons, and of course the computer and internet) and I found myself enjoying the hobby alone.  The choice of modeling the Union Pacific R.R. was that of my son. I asked him what railroad our layout should be based on. He decided on the UP (mistakenly thinking that it was the one modeled by Walt Disney in his back yard- a slightly longer story behind this). So, beginning in the spring of 2004 I built the layout table (4’x8’) out of wood and pink insulation board (trying to keep it light to move!). Early on I subscribed to Model Railroader magazine and found sites on the Internet (i.e. Railroad line forms, Atlas forum [now defunct!], and others) and it was from these sources that I learned about the hobby. I wish I had started with a little more knowledge as I would NOT have used steel Life-Like Power lock track! I would have use nickel-silver Atlas track (or some other good brand!). I have had a lot of live and learn experiences over the years in the hobby. It has been eight years that I have been working on this layout and I am still not finished. It has inspired me to someday have a much larger HO layout based on the Erie Railroad. Along the way I have also begun to work on projects for my future Erie layout (set in the 1950’s). In the mean time I am going to finish the UP Layout. In some ways I am basing it on a photo I saw in the spring 2008 issue of Classic Trains magazine. It is a 1956 photo of a 2-8-0 steam engine pulling a short-line mixed consist of 6 cars. It was taken on the Columbus-Spalding branch of the UP in Nebraska. Besides the Baldwin engine there are three cattle cars, a Warren tank car, a UP boxcar and a combine Harriman coach. I wish I could post the photo but it is copyrighted. It was from this I decided that my layout would be a UP short-line set in Western Nebraska. I will now start posting photos of work I have done on it over time. I will also share photos of work I am doing on the future Erie R.R. layout.

In 2004 at Christmas I bought my son an inexpensive Shop Rite train, and that is the beginning of this blog.