Pizzeria Transplant

We've barely had a moment to rest here in our workshop, preparing and packing Christmas orders and getting out HT Gordon's. HT Gordon's begins shipping this week, it's a big crunch but we'll get it done.

I did manage a small break, and work on the small scene in the pic above. The pizzeria is from our sold out kit Harrington's Bar & Enzo's Pizza, released in 2003. Unfortunately I dropped the original diorama, face down..Harrington's Bar broke the fall, sparing the little pizza shop. So it's been sitting on a shelf collecting dust...since I haven't built any structures yet for my modern era layout, I figured I could make it work some how. It needs some more details, a proper road sign, figures...but so far I likes the sparseness of the scene and it's the tone I want to see through the entire layout. The empty lot across the street will be the site of a liquor store/cash checking joint, with lots of signage and a few folks up to no good. It'll have to wait until after the holidays...

In the meantime we'll continue with kit production and shipping. Somewhere in there, we'll be working on the next few kits, hopefully at least one new kit will be ready for Springfield. The next kit is going to be a gr- ...almost gave it away....stay tuned for some unique, new, easy to build kits in January and February!

Two Layouts...

I finally had a moment to work on my layout(s). It's been a while , probably since summer time...anyhow, this spurt was prompted by a couple things. First was a major cleanup of the layout room, wherein when I was done said to myself, "there's a layout in here, in fact there are two." The other was recieving two locomotives that I sent out for sound installations, once I powered them up, I was hooked again...If you haven't read previous blogs, one of the layouts features a modern day railroad, BNSF and CSX and the other a 1950's / New England / New Haven RR theme. Both are small, but satisfy my desire to model both eras. One of the best benefits is that when you get stuck on one, or are waiting for things to dry, you can jump on the other. In the photos above you can see I have been working on a muddy river scene in Iowa along a BNSF mainline, then jumped to some rock work on a New England harbor scene. If you've ever been in this dilema, where you've always modeled the steam/deisel era, and felt guilty when you felt like buying some Amtrak cars or an AC6000 locomotive, this is the answer. There are some compromises to be sure, but there always are in model railroading. My layout room is small to begin with, 11'x17'. The modern layout fits in the room like a U shape, while the 1950's era layout is only 2' x 10'. But my thinking was the modern layout would be sparse anyway, so easier to build lots of scenery. And the smaller layout more detailed but more manageable. I'll post some more pics soon, I have a feeling a lot will get done within the next few weeks.