Ever notice how a model railroad always brings a smile? I’m not sure why the hobby shop owner didn’t notice the transformer was missing on the “trade-in”. I wouldn’t have…

I have been having trouble finding the right materials and paint etc. to make the background hills on our train layout look realistic, along with other problems. So whenever I…

I saw somewhere where a guy substituted floral foam for Woodland Scenics ground cover… Look how it turned out! Just take a block of that green floral form from your…

As you see, the back third of the primary train layout here, will be mountains; tall mountains when I’m done. This is layered syrofoam panels, but the upper reaches will…

Here’s something I learned. Acrylic white mixed with a color they call “coffee” equals a nice gray. Acrylic white mixed with India ink, equals a particularly unpleasant shade of black.…

I was looking at the sad progress on our train layout here. Eventually the mountains on the back third of the layout will tower over a forest and a small…

I have been experimenting with the train layout, and it shows. The texture of this mountainside rockery is OK, but the paint came out looking like some sort of military…

The little HO scale railroad in my garage is barely started, but is already overrun by colorful rolling stock, a lot of it is cheap old Tyco stuff, not realistically…

Apparently, I forgot what a frustrating hobby this was, my last train set was about 25 years ago, and my first when I was about 6 in 1966 or so,…