Closing out 2015

The last couple of weeks have been pretty fun with Christmas, time with family and friends and time in the train room. Yesterday, Lisa and I took Nicholas, Adam and Angie to the Cincinnati Museum were we saw The Art of the Brick exhibit but also the year round Cincinnati train display, the seasonal holiday train as well as a look out Tower "A".

The display of Cincinnati is open year round

Quite the inspiration. I was looking at some of the details and determining how I could use the ideas on the PRR Irwin layout. Today, I spent some time tweaking some scenery in Herminie but spent the majority creating coal loads for the hopper cars. I have 4 or 5 cars that do not have coal loads which is confusing While in principal, I know how to do this - I've read enough articles - I've never done it before. Also, I am trying some materials from Michael's Arts & Crafts to simulate the coal in various sizes. As the glue is till drying, we'll have to wait until the New Year to see how things turn out.

The Holiday train exhibit is more toy train but very exciting to watch

Another task I finished today was creating a backup of the blog. While this website allows you to export and XML file of the content, there are no photos so I used a custom Lotus Notes database to log all the entries. Maybe I'll publish it in book for someday! Reviewing the entries, I started 2015 with the trains more-or-less running and very basic scenery. As I look to the New Year starting tomorrow, I have most buildings in place (although some are mockups), the two tunnel areas and about 70% of the basic scenery completed. There are now trees, bushes, people and cars bringing the scenes to life. And, of course, real operations based on a a published freight schedule. Not too bad.
Wonder what 2016 will bring?