CFNR loco shop

The loco shop/ maintenance facility of my favorite (and part subject of my layout) California Northern, is located in Napa Junction (now known as American Canyon, somehow, I like the old name better..).
I've started with a mock up of the building, which, if all goes well, may be used as supporting walls for the final structure. Here are the front and rear (North and South) walls cut out of styrene. The dimensions are approximate, as I have no drawings, I have to 'guesstimate' most dimensions by using pictures from Google Earth and Bing, and use the measuring tools to get some rough dimensions, the rest is just trial and error with a sheet of paper. I think they look fairly decent so far. ;-)

Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine

The February issue of the free Model Railroad Hobbyist  Magazine is now available for download.
I've been reading this magazine for a while now and I have to say the quality is great. There are quite a few adds in it, that sometimes are a bit in your face, but they are there to keep this otherwise great magazine totally free, and the rest of the content is of very high quality, so I can live with it for now.
The magazine was started by Joe Fugate, a well known Model Railroader, who's produced many articles, howto video's etc etc over the years, and his layout is the well known Siskiyou Line .
Check it out, after all, it's free so you've got nothing to loose! :-)

Lost a part?

If you're like me, you may no longer have the parts sheet or drawing that came with a loco you've had for many years, and then the inevitable happens, something breaks, and you need a replacement. How do you know what to get?
Fear not, HO Seeker will help you find the parts for your HO locomotives, or at least make it a lot easier. The parts sheets and drawings , as well as loads of other reference material, old catalogs etc etc are all here, organized per manufacturer.  Go to www.hoseeker.org for more.

NMRA Atlantic Region

The NMRA Atlantic Region has it's own dedicated website, which recently has been updated.
The Atlantic Region is for those modelers living in Europe, Africa & South America, with the exception of the British Isles , which has enough members that it has traditionally had it's own region assigned.
I would expect that if activity grows in other countries, it could diversify into the European or African Region for example.
Anyway, if you're interested in (North American) Model Railroading, have a look, and better still become a member! NMRA Atlantic Region. 

Atlas Trainman plus NRE Gensets

Not to be outdone, Atlas has also announced some exciting news,  a second run of it's NRE genset locomotive in various roadnames. Different road numbers of UP and CSX among others, plus one of the Rail America companies, the San Diego Imperial Valley RR (pictured). This model is getting close to the latest locos my favorite short line now operates. The CFNR has, although those units have a slightly different shape long hood and exhaust stacks, several NRE gensets in it's roster, replacing all but a few GP15-1 units... Here's hoping....

Athearn Genesis GP7

If you are one of those, hoping for accurate models of a first generation 'Geep', place your pre-order now!
Athearn has announced a model yesterday, to be released later this year, in their Genesis line, of the GP7/9.
Among the first run are SP Pennsy and SP Black Widow schemes.  They will be available both DC and DCC+sound. If their other Genesis releases are anything to go by, these should be great looking models. Just a shame that they still elected to use small micro bulbs instead of LED's for lights....

Links are here:

http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/012511/01_Gen_GP7_1_012511.pdf
http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/012511/02_Gen_GP7_2_012511.pdf
http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/012511/03_Gen_GP7_3_012511.pdf

I'm secretly hoping for a release of their SD9's....

Yard expansion

As promised, here's a picture of the latest I've been up to on my home layout.
Another sheet of extruded foam board (2" thick) has been added to one of the yard and tracks 1&2 have been extended. I'm still experimenting with the final track plan on this section, so none of this has been glued or fixed in place yet.  I am still not entirely certain what to do here, but I am certainly more influenced now by the 'operations' bug, so I want to make sure that I can build in enough operational value to run trains, but not cram the area completely full and make things unrealistic.
I'll keep you posted.