Will this dream come true ?

If you can dream it you can do it. If you have the desire, you will do it.

Still dreaming and planning

My health is not as well as I would like, and I lost my wife to ALS (Lou Gehrings disease) three years ago. All this has set me back. But dreaming and some planning I still manage. At least the plans are real, that is, they are on the web! 

I have at last updated my other blog with more info and drawings.

Here is a glimse of a recent plan for the main level:

KnuT

My condolences to you. The same would absolutely devastate me. I can't imagine how you must feel.

I hope playing with trains bring you some solace. 

Your other blog

Knut,

I went to your blog but you have mistakely posted the same drawing for lower and staging levels!

I like what you have posted,

Thank you

Alan, thank you for your warm thoughts. Yes, it has been, and sometimes still is, hard times. But I will not give in. Life goes on, and model railroading, aka "playing with trains", is one of the pleasures of life.

Graeme, Glad you liked my posting. Thank you for catching the same drawings. I thought I had corrected this last night, but not so. Should be OK no.

As you will see, I am using kind of a nolix to gain height between the main and the upper levels. The difference will be around 35 cm (ca 13 3/4"). The grade starts just outside the last turnout of the yard (almost in the middle on the short wall to the right). The Scull Valley tracks will be level. I am reducing the grade to 2.5% in the 24" turnback-curve on the end of the grade. The grade ends just before the Wickenburg/Prescott station on the upper level.

I have built a test-grade to check out if this works with my train lengths, and found that my engines haul surprisingly many cars. But some struggles downgrade with buckling, meaning I have to deal with that.

On the end of that grade is a (too) small staging yard. But this means we can do op-sessions, and we do some times each year. My really happy moment was the grin on the face of the real life locomotive engineer after he had participated in an op-session on my layout for the first time 

Hang in There

Knut, My condolences. Hang in there, Buddy. We have your back and hopefully your hobby will bring good memories. Keep us posted to keep your juices flowing.

Thank you

Thank you, Nigel.

Yes, I try to hang in here. My healt has actually been worse the last year, but there are glimps of hope. And I do wake up every day  

Miss my lovely wife, of course. She was very supportive and she was very good at stiching:

I found this she made for my oldest son to the millenum, it is even a train on it:

This week I am preparing the layout for an op-session next tuesday. That is something to look forward to!

How are you doing?

KnuT, haven't heard from you  in a while.

How did the op-session go?

Any progress on the layout?

Paul O

I am good

Thank you, for asking, Paul. I am still hanging around here.

I think the op-session was good. I had a good time preparing for it. Got my chance to run some trais then. The boys seemed to have a good time. As always I did find things that I can do that might make the layout or the next op-session better. I might write about this in an other post.

Living with a pretty serious disease like ME means living with lots of limitations on what I can do. It is like a car with a battery that never charge well. If I do to much, it usually takes a long time to refresh. I was pretty exhausted after the op-session, but it is so good for my wellbeing to work a little bit on the layout and having the boys enjoy themselves with the layout.

And that is why my layout is bigger than common sense says it should be. I love to share the hobby with my friends.

Model railroading is so fun that it is very easy to get lost and keep working to long. So I set an alarm on my cell phone for 15 or 20 minutes and stop when it is ringing. When having a good day, I might do an other similar work session. When having a bad day (like most these days), I sit in my chair or lay in my bed dreaming and sometimes planning the layout. And read MRH and the posts over here and other mr related stuff. Or I watch TrainMaster videos and others. I learn something new everyday which I hope I one day can take with me to the layout.
I am very grateful I am able to get up off the bed every day. Not everyone are able to do that. One day I hope there will be a cure for this disease. As I do hope for ALS, which is a much, much worse disease.
No onto dreaming of the layout…..