This past weekend was a really great time down in Columbus! I was invited by @w_neal to exhibit my layout at the Ohio N scale Weekend. It was a great show filled with a good lineup of vendors like CMR Products, Spring Creek, and Rasputin selling his line of finely resin cast vehicles. The amount of talent on layouts and displays was really great as well and worthy of note. Several modelers came up to my layout to show their work, which seemed to me at least to be equal or better at some of the O scale brass models I've seen in the past. It was also good to put faces to the user names for several of Railwire members and meet the gentleman who helped AMB with the design of the NKP 1000-series cabooses that are on the tail end of most of my trains.
Believe it or not, the entire 10' x 6' layout fits inside a Kia Soul. I just wanted to show this, since when I was designing the layout, seeing photos of how modelers store and transport modules aren't as common as seeing the shots of them on display. Even though it's a very basic concept, I hope this provides visual clarity to someone thinking about having a modular layout. Also, Velcro strips are a great time saver in helping keep the lower and upper portions of the legs from bouncing around or being too frustrating to handle (I easily look like the clumsy people shown in black and white during cheesy infomercials).
It was very nice to see w_neal's new layout, a double-sided shadow box of a Michigan grain hauler. The design is very clever, and I can see how this layout will provide quite an enjoyable experience of switching cars in a den, living room, or spare bedroom.
All things considered, the layout ran really good and didn't have as many bugs as it did in 2019 when I had part of it on display. Several of the Fast Tracks Bull Frog turnout controls were replaced by Blue Points, which helped a good deal with reliability, and for obvious reasons are able to take some of the abuse that comes with transporting a modular layout.
If anyone knows some hacks on how to get a Bachman Berkshire over some wobbly track, please let me know. The diesels I have and the BLI mikes were pretty good at navigating the transitions between modules, but not so much with the signature locomotive of the NKP.
It was a great time in Columbus, and if you're within a several-hour drive of the capital city. I highly recommend attending this show next year, it's always been good at filling my modeler's mental notebook of all kinds of tips and techniques.
