Christmas/Winter Trains & Layouts - LETS SEE YOURS!

@Mark Boyce posted:

Welcome back Kotter!  Very nice Kevin!

Thanks Mark!

@PRRronbh posted:

Mikki, what part of North Carolina?

Ron

I'm sorry, Ron, but I thought I had posted a reply but don't see it now. We moved to Hendersonville just south of Ashville.

Mikki

Merry Christmas

Okay, now that the first NFL game of the day is over, here are the photos:

This was my first - at will be last - usage of the Menards tubular track that I purchased for the layout (I had sold off all my Lionel tubular track years ago). Wasn't happy with the tracks constantly coming apart and because of the ties being further away from the track pin ends, the track clips from Lionel couldn't be used.  Had to tap in with nails to keep tracks together which still kept rising up from the foam and buffalo snow.  Also, the bottom of the rails were a bit wider, they would not align with the rubber ties for 3R Plastics that I had so instead of clipping them to the track bottom, I just slid them under (you can see the result of the movement of the ties afterwards in the photos).  Same thing with trying to force on the Lionel Lock-On.  I went out to the LHS and purchased three Lionel 10-inch straights to that I could provide power to the track.

Yup, crimping ties with pliers, etc. is I guess part of model railroading with tubular track, but that's not my cup of tea.  I didn't mind it for a instance or two when I had Lionel tubular track, but to do it for every single piece of track, not so much.   I'll stick with good old Lionel tubular track whenever I'm going to use that track style.  That being said, most likely going to use my Atlas O track for Christmas 2024.

Very nice Kevin'.. Merry Christmas... The best in the new year to you and yours'.. 🎅

Merry Christmas Everyone!

@walt rapp posted:

@trumptrain  how do you remove all of that.  You post images of your layout here year-round and there's not snow in the off-season.

thanks - walt

Hi Walt -  My apology for being so long in getting back to you.  I'm just seeing this post now.  

To answer your question:  I first scoop up as much excess as possible and deposit it in canisters, saving the snow for a future project.   Next I  brake out my shop vac and apply the crevice tool, sucking up any excess.  

Here's the back story about my snow scenes:  In late July of 2022 OGR approached me about doing a feature story for the Dec/Jan issue which came out in mid November 2022.   OGR requested that I also provide photos to accompany the story and that the photos not be photos that I had previously posted on the Forum.  Obviously a reasonable request.  Rather than cover my entire layout with snow, which would have been a massive undertaking, I decided to create 3 dioramas at three different locations on my layout.  I then covered these dioramas in snow.  So in actuality the snow scenes you see are taken of the dioramas.  

As it was, even with the dioramas, removing the snow was quite a task!  I'm so glad that I chose to create dioramas and not cover the whole layout or even a large section of the layout in snow ...  Although one day I may do so.  Time will tell!  

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone.  Sorry for the late posting but it’s been a busy holiday season so far.  Here is this year’s rendition of our family Christmas Carpet Central Railway with a photo of a nicely restored post-war Lionel 675 followed by a video of the 675 pulling a consist of silver and red archived Lionel Madison cars from 1997.

Very nice!!

We're still celebrating Christmas!  I posted this in the what did you run today thread and I just saw this... I think it probably belongs here.  I'm new at this, I hope it's not a problem to post it here as well.

Here are photos and a link to a video of my 2023 Christmas Train Layout.

Link to video:  https://youtu.be/hf1aiUYH6o4

Merry Christmas to All!

Jerry Gahimer