Over the past year, I've seen a lot of ups and downs that have affected my desire to do much of anything. Some of it purely personal, some of it site related, and well just been kind of an ugly year. Modeling sure took a back seat to other things.
A few of you have been kind enough to notice a great big change in my demeanor of late. Yes I have become a lot more interested in just about everything in life.
A good portion of the attitude change is just because most of the crap is over, or has passed long enough ago to be just distant ugly memory's as opposed to fresh wounds.
Enter my new pool and my desire to build my g scale layout, but I really do still love N Scale the best.
Now here's part of the problem. Ya'll know me. BIGGER IS BETTER. I've started and quit n scale layouts at least 6 times over the past what? 4 years? I get all fired up, and then reality sets in. Out in the garage away from family, overwhelmed due to the size, but want to run many trains and do lots of scenery.
CAN NOT DO ROCKS FOR THE LIFE OF ME!!!!
So about 1 month ago, Stephen (son) and I went down to Del Mar for one of the travelling train shows. I was specifically looking for some G Scale stuff, and wanted to visit some friends from Door Hollow, and Del Oro.
Enter "Piute Flats Branch of the D&GW" Into my life.
I spoke with the young lady in the orange shirt here for a few minutes and expressed my heart felt appreciation for the job her and her husband did on the layout. And then left for other parts of the show. "Why don't you come back for the clinics", "I'd love too", with no intention of coming back.
Well after I exhausted the vendors, we were back in the area near the refreshments area, and right next to the PFB layout again. So I sat down, not intending to stay long. Ended up sitting through Rock Casting 101 and Rock Painting 101, and a bunch of other tidbits. The owner of the layout really knows how layout info so it's easy to understand and has a great sense of humor as he does it. I bought his tips and tricks books and by the time I got home, I WAS SO EXCITED ABOUT N SCALE AGAIN I couldn't stand it.
This weekend, my #1 reason for heading to Anaheim was go get to tell him thank you. I did that, ran puddy on the layout and got a bunch of pictures.
Here's Puddy again.
Now without further adieu.
I won't talk much as the pictures do a much better job of showing off than I can describe. Just know this, the layout is about 42X56 in size.
And one of my very favorite scenes. Rocks are cat litter. Supposedly un used!
Ok, so what blew my skirts up so high? As many times as I've been told start small, I just don't think that way. Maybe it's being from Texas, or maybe it's just a guy thing, but bigger is better. Even when you look at the various modules that you see at shows, still, you need at least 4 corner modules to run with, and that again is bigger.
This is the very first really smallish layout i've seen first hand. I know there's a lot of small layouts here. Samuel Ridge for example. But the are so well done, you don't get any kind of feeling for how small they are, or what can be done in a small space.
Here is/was my first example of what you can do with out getting over whelmed. And I was just blown away.
The results in my modeling life are evident. At least I hope so.
Now, just to let you know, I have for sure, invited this chap to the site, I hope he'll swing by. He's got a lot of great info we could all use, and we have a few modelers here he could learn a lot from also.
