Long time no see

It's been a while since the last post. Meanwhile I was very busy with my job, extremely busy with family - I have two young kids eating up 97% of my spare time :-)

But I was able to work on the layout as well. I painted backdrop, applied some static grass and added a little bit of vegetation to the first scene a visitor sees when he/she enters the layout room.

Want to see some pictures? You need to wait, cause my camera is broken. Repairing costs almost equals a brand new camera, so I probably end up buying a new one.

Take my advice: never leave the camera in children's reach.

September 27th, op session

Last saturday I held an operating session on the SP Coast Line. We were 10 operators! But we were able to fit :)
The good side of op sessions is you get a lot of tips from your operators, and this was no exception. It looks like most of my operators wants to do more switching around the layout, not just in the Guadalupe yard.

So I thought about changing a little the traffic pattern, allowing manifest freight to switch some cars in Surf - I already added a spur at Surf, to allow more cars to be set out or picked up.
Also, the Lompoc Local and the Guadalupe Local will have more to do both in the yard and out on the main, so the fun should be guaranteed. We'll see :)

Onto the photos! Unluckily I don't have much photos, since my camera end up in the hands of one of my kids, and guess what? Thanks to Enzo Fortuna, who shots some photos with his camera.


Sergio and Mario working at Surf with the Golden Gate Manifest, while in the foreground the Coast Merchandise East is heading to Los Angeles

Mario, Golden Gate Manifest engineer, is switching some reefers at Guadalupe

Franco works as Guadalupe yardmaster and he's taking care of some cars. He runs the Geeps seen here

Mario is making a back up move to couple to the rest of his train and move on to San Francisco

Here are the Golden Gate Manifest motive power: a couple of Cotton Belt Tunnel Motors

Guadalupe yard starts to get crowded

Marco, Golden Gate Manifest conductor, is carefully checking his car cards before leaving Guadalupe

On the right an SD35 and a GP20 serve as the Lompoc Local motive power, switching cars in Guadalupe.