My time and attention sometimes ebbs and flows with the railroad- I have a full time job that keeps me busy like a lot of people- so finding extra time can be difficult.

Anyway, I decided to take a few night time shots of my mill and a few have a little Photoshop work to add clouds. I hope that you like them!

Sitting here at the PC in the US it makes me think of the things that I am grateful for. I can freely indulge in my hobbies, have the space to do so, and can access an ever growing number of products and vendors online which I could never do 20 years ago.

Life is good. Happy Thanksgiving.

I know that this is a little out of my neighborhood, but I couldn’t resist this. There was a paper stock HO scale file online that I located (not copyrighted) so I printed it out and built it. The shell underneath is black foam core board and the image is printed onto 110lb. cardstock with my HP inkjet.

Anyway, it turned out decent and I will use it. There is a motel attached to it- the property is in downtown Chicago. Here is the site for the real property:

http://ohiohousemotel.com/

And here is the PDF file: http://rail.habersack.com/paper

Here is the cardstock and foam board model:

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. There were a few things that I was looking for to go atop of my building for the railroad. I saw a few things around that fit the bill.

What’s here? Two LEGO bricks, a wood skewer from a party favor, two FunFoam marshmallows, a cologne bottle. The roof is foam core, the building is Plexiglas covered with illustration board and striped with auto pin striping tape. Is it perfect? No but it does the job.

I wanted a building that had somewhat of a local taste. The former Matheson Building in Baltimore – which is the current Bank of America Building- was a nice prototype but I never had the nerve to start it. Photoshop, foam core, glue sticks, and my printer made it all easier.

Below is the original building:

And her is my model. I have decided to make several changes to keep it from being an exact duplicate- my railroad is a Baltimore theme, but not specifically supposed to be Baltimore. Since the steel mill is a historical “what if”, the rest of my layout follows suit. Anyway, here is my building:

And a few shots on the layout: