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.