Blog

When my husband passed in 2008, I inherited not just his unfinished freight depot but also a problem I suspect many of you share: where on earth do you put a layout when your house wasn't built with one in mind? My workshop now occupies what used to be our dining room, and I've watched friends squee …

When I inherited my father's incomplete N scale layout back in 2011, I had no idea what I was getting into. His layout lived in a temperature-controlled spare bedroom, and I naively thought I could just reassemble it in my Portland garage and pick up where he left off. Three buckled track sections a …

When I inherited my father's half-finished N scale layout in 2011, I had no idea what I was getting into. The benchwork was solid, the track plan was beautiful, but the basement? Let's just say there was a reason Dad never finished. That first summer, I watched humidity creep up to 70%, and within e …

I spent two years running trains on a cramped 4×8 sheet of plywood in my spare bedroom before I finally admitted the truth: I was doing it wrong. The layout worked, sure, but the curves were brutal on my modern diesels, I could barely squeeze between the table and the wall, and I had maybe 40 feet o …

I spent 28 years at the CTA Skokie Shops fixing things that people said couldn't be fixed. So when someone tells me they can't fit a model railroad in their spare bedroom, I hear a challenge, not an excuse.Here's the thing: your bedroom probably is smaller than you'd like. The average secondary bedr …

I spent three evenings last month watching a fellow modeler on our club's forum slowly realize his layout design exceeded AnyRail's 50-piece demo limit. He'd invested hours perfecting his PRR branch line plan, only to discover he couldn't save it. That frustration prompted me to write what I wish so …