Happy New Year!

Now that Christmas is over, I'm getting back into model railroading again. The coal-to-oil conversion on my 0-6-0 is complete and I will include a photo in an upcoming post, along with a listing of the reference materials I used.

I've also completed testing the track laid so far. The 0-6-0 is my "severest critic" in smoking out any problems with gauge or alignment, and thus far there have been few corrections required, and those have been made. In this phase of the layout I still have a couple of sidings to lay; the ties are down, just need rail. I hope to complete this in the next few days. Once that's done it's time to start putting freight cars on the track, after any damage from packing and moving is corrected, along with any extra detailing I feel moved to add.

At that point the track on the "left" and two-thirds of the "top" of the layout will be done (see track plan in a previous post). I'm going to stop there and begin scenery and structure work on that portion before I go further in the track plan. More about that, and the rationale behind it, in a future post.

A non-railroad aside: Two weeks ago we acquired another dog, a cocker spaniel/poodle puppy. She's now two months old and is already partly housebroken and is learning to play fetch. Her name is Molly and we're delighted to have her.