Heinz Trucking

I forgot to send this to you before - love the picture!

So, by the end of 2009, the train layout was fundamentally complete but also fundamentally boring. So I decided to set two goals: (1) completely computerize the train layout while (2) spending as little money as possible.

Because I want to do this cheaply I decided to do in stages, one stage per year. Here are the goals for the 2010 stage:

Finish the scenery.

This means adding a few more buildings and an ice skating pond. I already have the kits for the buildings and a box of goop that promises to look just like water when it's done.

Add realistic lighting to all the houses

When we were putting away the Christmas stuff from 2008, Mary found the remnants of my old N-gauge train set - the buildings, mostly, which hadn't really been set up in 20 years. She suggested that we build a "Christmas village" for the next year.

Well, Mary lost interest after a bit and I did too, until just before Christmas, when my work was closed for the week and I had nothing to do.

At that point, I decided to get busy and, with help from Mike, I pulled together a four foot long layout - just big enough to sit on the bricks in front of our fireplace. The buildings were all from my 20 year old layout, except for the "Cricket Shirt Factory" and one of the row homes. (Actually, all the row homes are 20 years old, I just never assembled one of them.)