My grandson's birthday gift

[James M. Lewis]

Hi everyone as a avid model aviation hobbyist, also a model railroad person all my life. I have hosted a National Model Railroaders Convention on a layout tour. Can you ever have guess had 40 attendees in my layout room, well no they wouldn't fit so broke them down in smaller groups. So glad the wife had refreshments and we fixed up the living room and deck for others to relax. These attached photos are of a model railroad I've been building on for my grandson's birthday day next week. It measures 2'x8' and consist of (2) 2'x4' modules for easy transport. With the exception of the passenger station and smaller building to the right in the back ground and bridge, all others are scratch built. The cathedral and passenger station have fully detail interiors with lights, which can be seen by lifting the roof of the station. The cathedral building lifts up exposing the inside with it's many pews holding worshipers. The grain silo (far right photo) is made of PCV pipe and the other side of the scenic divider shows the rural setting in autumn colors. Today I'll be making operating signal lights that will be manually controlled using toggle switches. And there are street lamps also that are turn on by a switch connected to a power supply. l have been working on this layout for the last 5 months taking my time in super detailing. Got him over 100 freight and passenger cars plus 15 locomotives, have a box full of over 100 vehicles. There are over 500 hand painted people on the layout. Used jewelers glasses to paint the people, bought in bulk, may been time consuming but worth it. The electronics are digital command control with each locomotive having a decoder using the engine assigned number as it's address. This way there is no need for block control for track sections. He can run as many engines as he wants at different speeds and directions. With my son in law, we made him a special carrying case to hold all his trains. Best regards, Jim

 

[Rico]

Looking good

 

[D.O.G.]

Hi everyone as a avid model aviation hobbyist, also a model railroad person all my life. I have hosted a National Model Railroaders Convention on a layout tour. Can you ever have guess had 40 attendees in my layout room, well no they wouldn't fit so broke them down in smaller groups. So glad the wife had refreshments and we fixed up the living room and deck for others to relax. These attached photos are of a model railroad I've been building on for my grandson's birthday day next week. It measures 2'x8' and consist of (2) 2'x4' modules for easy transport. With the exception of the passenger station and smaller building to the right in the back ground and bridge, all others are scratch built. The cathedral and passenger station have fully detail interiors with lights, which can be seen by lifting the roof of the station. The cathedral building lifts up exposing the inside with it's many pews holding worshipers. The grain silo (far right photo) is made of PCV pipe and the other side of the scenic divider shows the rural setting in autumn colors. Today I'll be making operating signal lights that will be manually controlled using toggle switches. And there are street lamps also that are turn on by a switch connected to a power supply. l have been working on this layout for the last 5 months taking my time in super detailing. Got him over 100 freight and passenger cars plus 15 locomotives, have a box full of over 100 vehicles. There are over 500 hand painted people on the layout. Used jewelers glasses to paint the people, bought in bulk, may been time consuming but worth it. The electronics are digital command control with each locomotive having a decoder using the engine assigned number as it's address. This way there is no need for block control for track sections. He can run as many engines as he wants at different speeds and directions. With my son in law, we made him a special carrying case to hold all his trains. Best regards, Jim

That's what's so great about this hobby...There are different ways to enjoy it besides flying & racing. Thanks for sharing Jim

 

[James M. Lewis]

Hi everyone, last weekend delivered my grandson's layout to him in Maryland. Having set it up (took about 3 hours), Michael looked at me and said "Papa this is the best birthday present I ever had". Tried not to cry but my eyes got a little watery. I one proud grand dad of all my grand children. Have ten and each are unique in their own way. One grand daughter (Eva, Michael's twin) is studying ballet and has a part in the "Nutcracker Suite" this Christmas in Baltimore Maryland. Four are honor roll students and getting ready for college. All their parents are college and university grads working in professional fields. Michael is 16 and taught himself both Japanese and Calculus on line. He loves math over video games and wants to be a mathematician. After the movie "Hidden figures" came out that's when he decided NASA was the place he wanted to work at. He saw the video fran11784 (Tony) took two weeks ago of me flying the Apprentice that D.O.G. posted on the forum. He and his brothers want to learn how to fly both helicopters and planes, so when they come down this Thanksgiving will get them started. First a lot of computer simulator time before we hit the air field. Best regards, Jim