000 Dixie Central II - Getting Ready

We start designing the Dixie Central II on Jan 1, 2011.  The three zero's up in the title will be used to count the days.  I've GOT to finish my remaining NMRA Achievement Program certificates before the National Convention in 2013 so that I can get my MMR at the convention with my friends there to throw things at me.

 Hey!  Who took over my basement!  Well, the first thing we have to do is throw out the riff raff and take it back over again.  Actually my wife Marie is cleaning out her stuff now.  I put up a table for her to work on and she is about half done tonight.  Taylor is playing with this enormous Barbie Pleasure Palace for the time being until we find a place for it.  Santa must bring smaller toys next year.

 My books are still a mess from when the movers destroyed them, so I've spend a large part of the day moving them and sorting.  I've got layout design books mixed all through them, so all of those had to be located and placed on a special shelf.  Wow!  I can't get over how many track plan books I have and still I don't have them all.

I still keep the old books as well as the new ones.  The business books are being moved over to the other shelves.  I'm throwing out all the Model Railroader Magazines from 2009 and back since I got the nifty DVD set that Kalmbach is offering.  This is a MUST HAVE tool in your arsenal!!!

Right now the room is in reasonable order except for the old layout stacked in a corner.  Hopefully I'll get a bite on it soon.

I'm already going through plans and ideas for the small basement area which is just slightly bigger than a bedroom.  While cleaning it up I ran across Model Railroader April 2001 which has one of my all time favorite layouts in it...The Georgia Southern by Steve Flanigan.  On page 48 (see, if you had the DVD set you could go look it up right now!) he demonstrates what I think is one of the finest small layouts ever built.  It has a great blend of scenery, realism and operations that just can't be beat.  I'll read the article again tonight.

So Jan 1 we get started!  Maybe we'll finish this one!