Blog 5th Anniversary

I've been model railroad blogging for 5 years now.  My first post was 5 years ago today, Introduction & Layout Plan.  On one hand it's easy to look back over the 5 years and be a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy and think about what I haven't accomplished.

On the other hand it's hard to be where you are today without having gone through the experiences of your past.  While I can look back and see neat projects along with big failures, the reality is that model railroad requires one to get their feet wet before they are able to know where they are going.

Since this is a 5th anniversary post it should probably be all big and epic, but I only have one small bit of news: I've started building the new basement layout.

It will be an HO standard gauge layout focused on shortline operations and switching, set in either the Shasta area of northern California or central/southern Oregon (to be decided) in the either late 1980's or early 1990's (to be decided).

Without getting too ahead of myself I have enough of a track plan sketched out to start building benchwork.  Once the blue foam is in place I can start doing some more serious planning and drawing of specific track locations.  The one thing I do know is that it will feature a woodchip loader with an as-close-as-I-can-be length spur (capable of holding 12-15 cars).

This layout is yet unnamed.