Collecting it all in one place.

For a few years, I have been posting photos and progress reports on various model railway forums, but thought it was about time to collect it all in one place.

In 2010, my wife and I bought a new house with a nice dry room in the basement big enough for a layout small enough that I might actually be able to finish it.  After negotiating over space with my wife ("just give me one room, and you can have the rest of the house"), I went to work tiling the floor and installing a support frame around the wall for the layout benchwork.

I have begun and never finished four layouts in the past, three in HO and one in N scale, based variously in South Africa, England, and the United States.  However, along the way I discovered On30, and the experimentation that On30 modellers love to get into. 

So the new layout, in the new layout room, would be On30.  But where should the setting be?  I enjoyed the research and scratchbuilding involved in modelling South Africa, but it's difficult and often tedious from thousands of miles away.  Modelling my own state of Michigan would be much easier.  I just have to look out the window to know what the landscape is like.  It seemed a good compromise to model both Michigan and South Africa.  I could still enjoy the research, but would be able to take a break now and then to freelance a layout in my home state. 

The layout room is roughly fifteen feet by ten feet.  On one side are the northern forests around the Lake Huron port of St. Cleve, Michigan, and on the other is Jabulani, a small rural station in the hills of Zululand north of the Buffalo River.  There are no such places as St. Cleve or Jabulani, but I hope to capture the flavor of both Michigan and Zululand.