Double sided

As mentioned before, I'm also active in a local NMRA group, and we're currently designing and building double sided modules. Here's a picture of the beginning of one of mine, with a single track mainline on what is to be one half of the board. A center backdrop will divide the two, and you can therefore have something completely different on one side from the other.
My boards are exactly 36" long. This will enable me to fit it in my car for transportation, but also one single piece of flex track will fit 'end to end' without any interruptions, which will make for smoother operations. Here a Peco code 83 flex track is installed, without the need for any trimming of ends etc.

The 1950's SP in slideshow

My modeling pal Brian has a great slideshow on Flickr of his layout, set in the 1950's Southern Pacific.
To view it, click the link to his page. It really has some great atmosphere. I think it provides plenty of modeling inspiration, and you can almost smell the diesel and coal&steam in some pictures. One question remains, can one ever have enough Cab Forwards?  :-)
Great stuff Brian!

Cheap ground cover and ballast

The hobby can get expensive sometimes, so if there are ways to save on a little expense, then I'm willing to do a little experimentation. We have a small pet lizard at home, and it suddenly struck me that the substrate used in his vivarium, is pretty close in size and shape as the bags of Woodland scenics medium and fine ballast. Although the colour is a bit light in our case (it is supposed to simulate a desert landscape) it can be toned down with weathering powders etc.  It is made from calcium, so do be sure that you don't get any loose pieces anywhere near the track, as I'm not too sure what it would do to the gears in your precious locomotives, but I'd say this product is great for a variety of uses. The product is called 'all natural Reptilite calcium substrate', and is available from the better pet shops. It comes in 20lbs bags (a little over 9Kg's) which should be enough for the ballast needs of many layouts, and covers quite a large area of ground if you use it as your base ground cover. It comes in a few different colours, but they are mostly all pretty close to desert shades.   It's worth considering this material as an alternative. If you plan to use this, and this being a natural product, I suggest to put some on a few baking trays and cook it in the oven for 30-45mins at 200 deg C or more. This will kill most bacteria and beasties that may be present, although it is pretty clean out of the bag. Do the same if you use mud etc from your back garden or from other sources. (to keep the peace with your wife/partner, use old trays or buy a few cheap ones for your exclusive use :-) ). The picture shows some of it cooling off, after receiving above process, and gives an impression of it's colour.

Southern Pacific Modelers Society (updated 2x)

For those who like/love/model the Southern Pacific, a new internet message board (forum) has been brought to life, the 'southern pacific modelers society'.
This fairly new forum has big hopes and big plans, and already has some interesting prototype and modeling info. If the SP is your RR, you owe it to yourself to pay them a visit and sign up (free of course).

UPDATE: The site appears to be suffering from a server issue at present and can't be accessed.  I've contacted their admin and they are working on the problem. If you have trouble, try again in a few days or so.

UPDATE 2: the problems are solved, the site is fully functioning.

Useful Links

Just to let you all know that I've updated the "Useful Links" column, adding a few more UK based retailers that specialise in US/Canadian outline, or have products used by modelers to North American prototypes in stock (e.g. US style track etc..).

Have a browse through them, most of them do web orders, and many take Paypal as a form of payment, which I think is ideal.

Double sided modular concept

Aside of my own private layout, I'm also involved with a local NMRA group located in the South West of the UK, in Plymouth. We call ourselves the Western Union. As a group, we've got a modular layout we set up once a month, and run our trains, where more and more the intention is to learn and operate like the prototype, with waybills, dispatchers etc. etc. To expand on this, we're now in the process of developing double sided modules, which will eventually give us a longer run, and more operational possibilities.

A concept drawing ( (c) Mike Ruby) of this can be seen here, the individual boards are still to be planned but I know that some are developing a set of boards based on Truckee on the SP Donner pass route. I myself am also contributing with a set of 3 boards (making one module) initially, one side just a single track main, the other side will have some operational interest with a small yard. It's going to be a challenge to fit track and scenery in each half's 7" (the boards are 18" wide with variable length to accommodate transportation and access) but it will be fun.

Benchwork

On my own California Northern layout, I've continued to add a small section of benchwork, this to expand the layout a little on the east side of the trackplan. I'm in the process of making a revision of that, to accomodate the small extra area that I now have available.
Benchwork is actually not quite correct, as in my case it doesn't really resemble a traditional benchwork. Rather I've used a few pieces of timber that I've screwed and glued to the roof construction beams of my house, and on top I've used the familiar extruded insulation foam board, sometimes called polyfoam or spaceboard. It's 50mm thick and therefore very rigid, but very light at the same time.  It has added another 4 ft to my layout area. I will post more progress pictures on this part of the layout in a future blog post.
I've also received a few more HO cars of models produced between 1980 and 1995, so they match the era I'm modeling. It's pretty hard to find cars of this era, the 50's and present day are fairly well represented, but anything in between, apart from a few classics and exotic cars, are hard to come by, so I guess my streets will not get very busy any time soon.