Magic Water Fills the River

The river took a lot more material that expected.  I filled the river with about 3/4" of Magic Water.  The surface area is about 2 square feet.  It took 5 bottles of Magic Water.  The overall effect is great though.  I used Tamiya oil based paints (Sea Blue and a greenish colour) to tint the water before pouring.  Only a few drops are required, unless you are doing a very thin pour.  As the water gets deaper, the tint shows up more and the base can hardly be seen.

CN9644 Crosses the Creek leading to South River

I'm a big fan of Supertrees.  They look great when painted up and added ground foam.  I like to use mainly the course foam.  The bridge is a Walthers kit and the truss bridge is an ME kit.  The abutments were made from four single abutments that I picked up at a train show for cheap.

Scrap Yard top View.

The small office was a reclamation project that I picked up for a few bucks.  A few little touch-ups and some weathering and it looks great.  The main structure was partially built and I purchased from "Trains In the Kitchen".....a local couple that were buying, detailing and reselling HO structures.

ONR 1605 dropping freight in scrap yard.

This GP9 was detailed and painted from an inexpensive P2K purchase I made on Ebay.  If you are willing to do some painting and detailing yourself, you can find really good buys on Ebay.  I purchased a lot of my engines that way.  Several required some tuning up; especially the shaft gears.  Many were cracked.  I was intimidated to try installing my own decoders but after a little trial and error, it became very easy.  I fried a few decoders, mainly be being careless, but both Digitrax and NCE have no questions asked return policy and they were replaced.
Another favourite place to purchase items, other than your LHS (Local Hobby Store), are:
1) HO Interchange (a Yahoo Group where members can post items they would like to sell).  There is no fee to join or to sell.  I've purchased kits and turnouts and have not had any issues.
2) Train Shows (Flea Markets) - Through the winter there is a show at least every two weeks in Southern Ontario.  There are alway lots of great deals, but get there as soon as the doors open and look for the estate sales first.  The best deals go fast.

Early Days on the MCRR.  Note the hunched over position as I lay the trackwork.  That should have been my wake-up call to indicate that I was building the layout too low.  Keep the lowest level at least 40" off the floor.

New Direction

In my first post I suggested doing some research before planning your layout.  In thinking about what to post next, I decided to concentrate this blog on guiding neophites (newbies) to the hobby through the decisions that have to be made and why I decided to go in the directions that I did.

There are lots of blogs and information out there that talks about their specific layout or how to do something, but I haven't seen a lot that helps guide you through the process and points the way.  I've spent well over 1000 hours in the last 18 months immersing myself in all that this hobby has to offer.  It truly is a great hobby, with so many different aspects, that there is something to suite everyone's interest.  I enjoy all of them to varying degrees.  Hopefully if you take the time to read through some of my posts, you'll accelerate your learning curve and get to "running trains" sooner, and with fewer mistakes than I did.  Even if you are not in a hurry, hopefully I can point you to some new sources of information or areas to enjoy.  After all, Model Railroading is about the journey, and not a race to be finished.  That is, unless you are like so many men in this hobby....retired or semi-retired, and you figure you don't have that many years left to enjoy your layout.

My next post will have some decent substance that you can aply to your model railroading adventure.