My wife married an axe murderer

My dad is retired from the US Navy. He was a sailor for more than thirty years. When I was six he brought me a train set from Germany by a company named Fleischmann. For Christmas he set it up on a sheet of plywood. I was mesmerized.

Over the next ten or twelve years I built several "pikes." Every month I waited eagerly for Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines. I assembled a library of books from Kalmbach Publishing when they cost a buck or two and people like Linn Westcott and Bill McClanahan were writing them. And of course, my ideal was John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid Railroad. Then I discovered, well, other distractions.

Fifteen years later I had a job, money, a little spare time. I started another layout, this time in "N." Oh yeah, when I was thirty I could still see and my hands didn't shake.

Two years ago I found the sheet of plywood with that tiny track nailed to it. Too lazy to drag it from the attic, I nevertheless felt inspired to recapture this scrap of my childhood. So I decided to go with something I could actually see (HO). Hey, what else was I gonna do? Buy a Mustang GT? Marry a beautiful woman ten years my junior? OK, well maybe I did those things too.

Boy, did I have a have a lot to learn. About model railroading, I mean. And driving. And beautiful women. But that's a different post.

Forget cab control. Now there's DCC. But holy crap. I gotta learn to solder again. And what on earth is a stall turnout motor? And foam? I live in South Carolina. It's hard enough to find batt insulation. Despite all these challenges I build a new, HO, layout.

It was so cool. I could run three locomotives on the same track at the same time. One of them even made noises. I learned all kinds of things. (Like, electronic things don't work if you let the smoke out of them.)

Tonight I took an axe to it. OK, a taping knife. But I am demo'ing my existing layout and building a new one. Inspired by Lance Mindheim (lancemindheim.com, shelflayouts.com), I decided to model a small piece of a warehouse district near Williams-Bryce Stadium in Columbia, SC. No mountain overpasses like John Allen built. No elaborate taxonomy of bridges and structures like Linn Westcott catalogued. But, I hope when I'm finished all three of them will be impressed. Or at least understand. Stay tuned.