Merry Christmas

Family pictures at the New Freedom train station

Friday the Flanagan family had there Christmas and holiday photos taken at the New Freedom train station. Two PRR cabooses sit coupled together for visitors to check out.

New addition to layout

About half of my current layout is being rebuilt. The new addition should be operational by December.

Good Bye Mikado! Enter EM-1

Last week I traded my Legacy Mikado for TMCC EM-1 . It should be arriving some time this week.

Here is my Reading T1 in action. It has since been to weathering table. Stay tuned for video of that.

This week my long awaited Lionel Reading T1 arrived.  This engine had been upgrade by Train America Studios with TMCC. A big thank you to Walter M at RMT ( ready made trains) for hooking me up with such a great engine

CSX SD80MAC goes for a spin.

GEF O gauge railroad part II : The second site of my website is now up and running. Please take a look around. I will be adding much more to the site as time goes on.

https://sites.google.com/site/gefogaugerailroadpartii/

Weathered conrail GP 20

This past week I purchased an Mth conrail GP 20. I then took it the weathering table for some added dirt and grimet

Vision Line Hudson goes for a spin.

The Lionel Vision Line Hudson running up the grade with a C & O Allegheny awaiting track clearance.

new scenery on the upper level

A Short little video of the CSX and NS SD70 Ace. A run by of the Jersey Central 060 with tons of smoke.

This past Sunday, I traded three CSX flatcars with trailers and my PS1 SD70 MAC for some new rolling stock and passengers cars sporting the B & O livery

Hydrocal and rock work added

 A highway bridge will be built where the roadway ends. It will span the lower levels.

 Jersey Central 0-6-0 steams down the mainline.

My Little Conductor. Tinkering with who knows what

CSX SD70Ace and C30-7 head a lower level freight

Rock work is just about completed in this corner of the layout. This week I will be concentrating on getting the hydrocal on the mountains.

Adding Mountain Backdrop

A new addition to the layout is the Mountain Backdrop. The backdrop is made from actual photos I have taken in Pennsylvania. I then use the Costco Photo center website and have them printed on 20X30 inch Posters.  Take a look.

scratch built coal breaker

Scratch built coal breaker almost finished, still need to add some lights,windows and so finishing touches

CSX SD-40-2

MTH  CSX SD40-2 Crosses over the the Trestle .

Using foam to form rock layer

2 " Foam insulation board is cut into pieces and stacked in order to make this soon to be mountain. Tunnel portals wll  be going on next followed by a layer of  Hydrocal plaster and rock castings. 

The foam is kept in place using nails. Recently, I've began using Locktite all purpose adhesive between the foam layers This seems to  work the best out of glue type agents. 

The new scaletrax lower level with some Layout improvements.

The Scaletrax lower level is the portion of the layout that goes around the room. Here you could see the masonite board for the backdrop that will eventually go up.  Not installing this prior to construction of the benchwork was the biggest mistakes I made during layout construction. 

I had to customize this bridge to fit the 46 inch span crossing the doorway into the room.  It used a lionel truss bridge attached to a bracket for a garage door and then finished the girder with Atlas H.O scale bridges.

This Trestle was built using dowel rods and Balsa wood from Michaels Crafts.  A friend suggested building it so that it would open up the scenery a bit.

CSX 724 and 4843 pull a freight on the upper and middle levels