What's Going On Here?

"Welcome to my new blog."

Oh joy. How many times have you heard THAT before?! So what’s so new about this one?

My hope is that this will develop into a meeting place to share approaches and techniques for those interested in modeling the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, focusing mainly on creating or adapting models to more closely represent the prototype. However, those who model other railroads will hopefully find some useful techniques and/or approaches here that can be adapted to prototype modeling in general, regardless of the scale or road. 

I should probably start out with what I plan will and will not be posted here. This will NOT be a detailed description of my own layout. I already have a web page that covers this for those that might be interested. Also, because the emphasis is to be more towards the prototype modeling, you probably won’t find too many posts about slapping a steam loco herald on a 40’ steel boxcar and calling it an O&W model. They didn’t have any, and nor do I.

Rather, this blog is intended to be a more off-the-cuff discussion of projects, techniques and approaches that lead towards the end goal of creating a prototype-based layout and as such will be more timely than my rather static web site. That, after all, is supposed to be the advantage of a blog format.

In addition to my own work, I am hoping to enlist the input of fellow O&W modeler and co-conspirator on many projects, Mal Houck. We have different approaches and circumstances – I have a layout, he builds dioramas; I model diesel, he models steam (well, I would model steam if Mal hadn’t cornered the market on affordable O&W brass, but that’s perhaps a different post….); I tend to work with commercial models and modify as needed, Mal buys a perfectly good locomotive then rips the guts out and… well... again… another post.

Hopefully you ‘ll find something of interest and will share with others who might also enjoy the content. I also welcome any appropriate comments that you might wish to offer.

Welcome aboard!