Is it Done?

No model railroad is every truly finished. But to me, there’s a difference between adding small details and refinements and building entire sections of scenery and major structures. I think Frederick, OK is done, for all intents and purposes.

There are several important details I’d like to add: A car puller at one of the elevators, stop signs at the WT&J crossing, and discarded ties along the ROW. But when I step into the hobby room and look at the layout, there’s a sense of completeness about the layout, and that’s rewarding.

I’ve learned a lot from this layout, probably more than any past layout. I plan on writing a “lessons learned” blog post explaining the mistakes I made and what I’d do differently. I’m headed out abroad for work again, but there’s a chance we could be living in North Carolina a couple more years when I get back – if that’s the case, I might have time to improve on some of those deficiencies. In the meantime, they’re mostly easily overlooked, and I enjoy running trains on the layout immensely.

While I was reorganizing the hobby room, I found myself flipping through old issues of Model Railroader from 2003. Man, that was a great year for that publication! I also plan on sharing a blog post about how that year of that magazine influenced 11 year old me, and how it has impacted my modeling goals today. More on that to follow.

Also, my friends have been hearing the rumblings of me, a serial layout builder. What is next? I’m already plotting a few ideas for the future… I’ll write more on that as the ideas start to come together.

In the meantime? I think this is the best layout I’ve built yet, and I’m gonna enjoy it!