What’s happening?
Well, not much! heh.
The wife and I are back in Metairie, LA now. I’m currently waiting for a job offer to come in hopefully Thursday or Friday. Once that happens we can give our realtor the go ahead to file our application for a rental home. Until then, we’re just sitting tight….. but I got this railroad itch. 
So I’ve been thinking about my railroading future. We’ll be renting a home for a few years probably, as we still own a home in Texas. So I’m not sure I want to get back into building a large layout just yet. I think what I may do is work on building two dioramas; one city themed, one foresty/mountainy themed.
I figure this way I can:
1) Practice on my scenery and detailing skills on a smaller “layout” before taking on a larger layout scene.
2) Have a diorama I can use for taking rolling stock/engine photos on.
So that’s the basic plan I have for now.
However, I still have the desire to actually run trains. So to take care of that I’m looking into joining an HO Scale model railroad club here in Metairie, the Crescent City Model Railroad Club. They have one of the biggest HO scale club layouts in the south. It’s quite impressive. I’ve never joined a club before and I have never done operations before, so it’ll be a completely new experience for me. One I hope I too enjoy.
Well, that’s all for now. I’ll post more updates as things begin rolling.
See yall soon,
Shaun
The way the economy is, I think joining a club is the way to get the best bang for your buck. Good luck with your new job.
Shaun,
The Crescent City guys are great – or at least they were when I used to go down from Baton Rouge for their open houses.
As to your own layout, there are lots of good, small free standing layout plans out there. Frankly, I htink the last iteration of your Elmwood sub plan was a great idea for a not really permanent installation, especially with the sievers modules. DO you have (or anticipate) a space to try that again?
Ya know, last night I was just thinking about that idea, going modular. Came across a neat little intermodal Bend Track layout at http://www.rochelleintermodal.com
Seeing that got me thinking about taking my idea on doing dioramas and turning that into building them as modules that I could assemble into a small layout to run trains on.
Or as you said I can go back to the last version of the Elmwood plan because my benchwork is practically already made for modular use. With most of the track being straight along the layout, it shouldn’t be too hard to adapt it to a modular style.
Currently the only space that I’m anticipating to have available for a layout would be the garage. So that could a pose a problem possibly.
After we move in and see how the house setup goes will I know if there’s any inside space that, but I’m doubting there will be since the house we’re looking at is a little smaller than our TX home. (The dioramas I was planning to make 3′x1′in size so they would sit on my bookshelf in the office.)