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Website News Archive: March 2007

29 March 2007

The JRB visits Rick SpanoRoad Trip! Yesterday I spent a very enjoyable and productive evening with Rick Spano (featured in the candid shot at right). I haven't seen him since December last year, so we had lots of catching up to do. Naturally, I brought along the JRB to show it off. He has about as much Z scale rolling stock as I do (he plans on building a coffee table layout "someday"), so we had loads of fun running various locos and trains.

I also brought along a camera to shoot videos of his animation projects for his website. As a test, I captured a brief bit of action on the JRB. Admittedly the video is extremely poor: the lighting was lousy, I didn't use a tripod or set macro focus, and I didn't worry about composition or what was running on the layout. Still, it's a fun fifteen seconds of spontaneous strangeness—and a nice souvenir from a great evening—as a CP Rail GP35 hauls a dozen coal cars (six each Reading and PRR) along the James River:

BTW, a bit of bad news: the antenna on my new AZL PRR GP7 has clearance problems on the JRB. So, I'll have to remove the antenna if I want to run it on the layout (in the photos I have of PRR GP7s and 9s, none have antennas). Rick was also disappointed that he couldn't run his GG1—but then, there's no catenary for it, anyway...

25 March 2007

As one would expect, design revision is a continuous process. To aid in the creation of Crooked Creek, I printed a full-sized plan and dropped it into place on the layout, then populated it with whatever structure fragments I had on hand. The result immediately gave rise to changes; for example, the service station will need to be moved slightly, and the coal trestle will have to go.

14 March 2007

Thanks to an unusually warm March afternoon, I was able to finally wrap up the bridge pier construction, since this had to be done outside.

9 March 2007

Been offline due to serious illness for the last few weeks. All I've managed is to fire off a portrait of a new acquisition, a handsome AZL PRR GP7. Head for the Gallery to see it posed alongside the newly-cast rockwork.

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