Good Morning All. Cloudy and 64°. Looks like another nice but windy day today, sort of a repeat of yesterday. Flo, make it a breakfast burrito and some grape juice. Survived the family Easter egg hunt and feast yesterday. Found out from one of my brothers that I am not alone in not
being able to remember even knowing the names of all of the third generation kids (all 18 of them), except my own grandkids.
I arrived early and got to spend some time with him in his layout room (a dedicated room above his shop), while a couple of his grandkids ran some trains. He expressed his desire to tear the whole thing out and rebuild using the original plan that I gave him, which was unfortunately after he was almost complete with this one. I didn't know that he had started building at the time. While this one works, he realizes that it's boring to him now. He has a yard and two industries on his U-shaped island, and uses the yard mostly to display stuff. He cannot use his Big Boy steamer since most of the layout (built exclusively with sectional track) has 18" curves with a few 15" in tight areas of the main line! He also mistakenly lined his ties up with the plywood edge (gasp) and there isn't enough clearance to add guardrails. He now realizes that an around the walls plan could resolve many of his issues. We all discovered this to some extent with our first layouts.
Wow! Thanks for all of the likes and comments for yesterday's post;
Chuck,
Tom,
Sherrel,
Mike,
Garry,
Chet,
Phil,
Jim and
Patrick.
Got home and only spent a little time in the train shed. Got a couple of pictures of the completed scene that I have been working on. I actually still need to add some parking stripes in one parking area, and I will most likely revisit in a week or so and add additional figures and vehicles.
From the right, the blue structure is a small wood products manufacturer and the building is made from PikeStuff components from kits that I bought just for parts. Next to it is Federal Cold Storage, a Walther's kit that began as Brook Hill Dairy or something similar. In front is Magees Tire Repair, a "beginner's" laser-cut wood kit from Bar Mills.
On the right is Acme Chemical, an agricultural chemical distributor and is a very old, slightly modified Magnuson resin kit called "V. F. Transfer Service". On the left is Loy Distributing, a beer distributor. The brick portion is made from DPM modular walls and the "newer" steel structure is from an long-forgotten company. It represents a replacement building for the portion of the original that burned down years before.
I also intend to add some detail inside that open dock door over on the left of the beer distributor.
Karl - You're trapped now with the living room remodel.
Chet - Interesting historical review and nice coach model.
Greg - The man who wired my house used a lot of #10 wire that was leftover (purloined) from a commercial job that he was working on at the time. It might have some bearing on why he moved out and went back to Oklahoma and sold us the house (cheap) only six months after he almost completed it. We had to paint a few rooms and install additional kitchen cabinets after we moved in. The #10 is rather difficult to work on in those tiny boxes!
Garry - Very nice scene. I really like how well you blend backdrops into the layout.
Terry - Good luck. You don't seem to have any luck at all with computers.
Today is Earth Day. Do your part and plant something, clean something up or just enjoy the day outdoors. I see that some of you applied mulch over the weekend.
Everyone have an awesome day.
... Thanks for sharing humor. 
