So I received a T gauge starter set from eBay yesterday and I've been debating what to do with it.
Today I was in a local junk shop browsing around with the wife and stumbled on an old, beat up documents case sitting in the corner.
*PING* The light came on.... Briefcase layout! ( I had half contemplated the idea before but didn't have a briefcase handy at the time.)
I bought it and brought it home. At 13.5 by 19.5 inches, there is just enough room for the track, some scenery and a space to cut out for the power pack.

So I opened up RTS and using N scale track, made my loop to give me a basis to work out a simple, one track layout.
(N scale halved is just about equivalent to T gauge. Not quite right but pretty close. Thanks to rmyers over at Talking T Gauge for that info.)
Then I threw it into Paintshop Pro to color it.
This is what I came up with.

The black areas on your left are for the controller and storage for cables. I may try to make some kind of box with a lid to fit in there in order to keep everything from falling out and bashing the layout when not in use. Or perhaps Velcro straps.
A forest in the upper left along with a house and barn with the field close by.
Bridge over river in the top middle. The river runs into the lake.
Of course the obligatory mountain with a tunnel over to your right.
And lower center is the train station in the middle of nowhere....

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Hi All

i am wanting to buy a few of the Walthers Ho scale Coke car kits. i dont care what numbers they are as long as they are unbuilt. thanks very much.


Todd

Bachmann's latest offering in the spectrum series 2-6-6-2 ,video below



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Is anyone using digitrax sound decoders and the PR2 or PR3 programmer?

That the modeling on The Gauge has been truly TOP-NOTCH over the past couple of months. Everything from rollingstock to structures to entire layouts. Absolutely superb. A big thanks to all of you who post photos of your work and share your thoughts and ideas and techniques! And keep them coming!

Friday evening we assembled in Waterloo for the trip west. We caught a BNSF-powered 661 in Waterloo and a Q393 down at Auburn Jct. and again in Avilla.





More photos from Friday night can be seen on flickr.

I have an individual who needs a drawing or side view photo of Freight Motor 817. It was cut down from a possible passenger traction car into the freight motor. This took place around Ft. Wayne.

Any help would be appreciated.

One compliment I frequently hear about this hobby is how it bridges together many different disciplines, such as construction, arts and crafts, history, and electricity. I'm curious, what specifically have you learned or learned how to do as a result of this hobby that you would not likely have learned otherwise, yet you use in other areas of your life besides model railroading?

A big one for me would be electronic knowledge. The past few weeks I have been tinkering around with building a laser guitar (a guitar that plays like a regular guitar but has laser beams instead of strings). I don't think I would ever have had much electronics interest if it wasn't for trying to build small electronic gismos for my model trains as a teen. Sure, I liked to tinker around with everything, but I doubt my interest in motors and electric circuits would have developed if it wasn't for trying to figure out how my trains worked and how to make them work better.

Believe it or not, this hobby has even modified my political viewpoint on some issues. When reading about the area I am modeling, I realized some of the same political issues that the region faces now are the same as they were 100 years ago. When I read 100 year old accounts, it is nearly the same as what is in the newspaper today. And yet, the same solutions that were tried 100 years ago are being proposed again today! If the same thing didn't work 100 years ago, why would it be any different today?! In other words, this hobby led me to investigate a political isue that I no longer see a simple solution for. Funny how that works.

And, it helped with my last job. As a result of my curiosity and knowledge of railroad history, I posed a question regarding the disposition of land after a railroad right of way is abandoned. This caused a small hubbub at the Department of Justice, and resulted in a court delay that forced the federal government to re-examine their data. Had my task been assigned to someone without railroad knowledge, I doubt the issue would have been caught.

So how about you? How has this hobby affected your non-railroad life?

Congratulations to Steve (e-paw) for garnering the most votes in the Spring Bash Challenge.

This one had lots of great entries and our best-ever voter turn-out, so a big thanks to all who participated.

Wayne