Thanks Mark!
I use a combination of CorelDraw and CorelPhotoPaint to do the plans. Coreldraw is a vector program where you can define sizes specifically to three decimal places. PhotoPaint is a bitmap program for photo editing. I also use a great screen capture program called Snagit to capture photos off of google and save them as JPEGs for importation into CorelDraw. Snagit is not free, but it saves great amounts of time and effort compared to doing just a screen print on your keyboard. With Snagit you can crop and annotate pictures before you save them. If I want to do any serious work such as taking perspective and distortion out of the pictures, I bring them into PhotoPaint.
The Mouse is a good sander for hobby work. It's a vibratory sander and doesn't leave swirl marks. The sandpaper attaches with velcro and it comes to a point so you can get close to corners with it. For heavy sanding I also have a Skil belt sander, but that is only for doing edges of platforms, rounding out roadbed at the crests of grades, or matching panel edges. In other words, it stays in the box most of the time.
I get a kick out of blogging the daily progress on the pike. It gives me something to do while watching TV at night. I like to multi-task.
Thank you. The Corel products certainly do a nice job for you. Layout building an operating trains is slow for me with other obligations. By the time I retire, I may be to the point where I would be ready to build some structures, and learning a software product could be advantageous.
I can envision many uses for the Mouse around the layout.
Thank you for your response.
