Jim's Model Train Site

I had been contemplating for a while the possibility of making Autumn the season modelled on Chatham. Christmas made that a surety. My wife gave me some autumn foliage for Christmas, and so I 'took the plunge' and decided to model autumn.

In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered Penicilin by accident, in 1945 Percy Spencer realized the potential for using microwaves for cooking food by accident, and in 1903 Edouard Benedictus made a discovery by accident that allowed him to invent safety glass.

I have been adding some spruce trees to various parts of the Chatham layout today. Partly this is to flesh out the hill that covers the baseboard join. And partly to hide the end of the backscene and the staging. The Chatham layout has been a bit devoid of trees in general and I felt it was about time I remedied that.

On Chatham and Illinook, the scenery building is in full swing. Adding foliage and other scenic elements to the two layouts is giving the impressing that the a lot is getting done, and I suppose in reality it is. And the various scenic features are beoming less naked (and therefore less embarrased. Can you understand the title now?)

A few weeks ago, my manager asked me whether I would be willing to do a talk for the Rotary Club he belongs to. Having not done any public speaking for quite a few months I thought it would be a good idea although I was little nervous - this would be the first time I would be doing public speaking about model railroading.

Today was a scorcher! Typical Aussie summer weather. The maximum temperature forecast for today was 39 degrees C (around 100 degrees F). I reckon it felt like it was too. The humidity didn't help. And the fact that the garage that the layouts are in has no insulation and a (hot in summer cold in winter) tin roof probably added at 5 to 10 degrees to the temperature while working on the layouts

I have long enjoyed designing track plans for various sizes and shapes of layout. And I have a number of track plans available in the Photo / Track Plans section of this site as a kind of testiment to that fact.

But while travelling on the train between our home town and church, I noticed that one of the stations enroute had a simple yet operationally interesting track plan.