Aly Foxx's N Scale Layout

[Missaberoad]

That's ridiculously sweet 

[CRL]

Just wait until she learns some of those “special programming language” words we tend to say when something goes wrong.

The fun of raising kids... they make us better people if we let them.

[davefoxx]

Nah, she already learned those words from her mother. 

DFF

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ahahahah, amazing.

There's an editorial about this very subject in this months RMC. It's worth picking up just for it.

[nkalanaga]

Learning to program locomotives wouldn't be a bad idea.  Given the way the world is going, she'll probably be programming computers before she's out of grade school.  And she really can't hurt them, or herself, especially if the factory settings are backed up before she starts.

[CRL]

But what if she’s better at it than you are? 😱

[MK]

IF?    

[Missaberoad]

But what if she’s better at it than you are? 😱

Then she gets a new chore 

[peteski]

Last night I was working on programming a new locomotive on the LokProgrammer.  Here's the setup for my programming track and the LokProgrammer.  It's all under my layout on a rolling storage cart:



Well, last night, Aly (who turns eight years old next week) was playing with her layout, and she made a comment to me that one day she would program locomotives, too.  Look what I found underneath her layout this morning:



Too funny!  Is this a parenting win?  A model railroading win?  Both?

DFF

Aw shucks!  That is so darn cute!  Smart girl! Win all around!

[glakedylan]

you are blessed and a blessing
wonderful!


sincerely
Gary

[eric220]

Too... cute... must... sit... down...

[davefoxx]

All right, folks, we’re back!  A while back Aly decided to change the season on her layout from winter to fall.  We had to rip up some track to get rid of the “snow” that was applied over it.  We also replaced (and redesigned) the streets.  A few new houses, and we’re making progress again.

Tonight, we worked on applying grass to the layout.  I’m teaching Aly how to glue it down with wet water and diluted white glue.  Here’s Aly (she turns eleven years old in December) dribbling on the glue over the newly applied ground foam.



She’s very proud of her work.  I am, too.



Here’s the pumpkin patch, cornfield, moo cows, and hay bales that we installed not too long ago.  If you were to look close in person, you would see that Woodland Scenics provides cow patties with the cows!



She wanted @Chris333 to know that Foam Depot lives.



DFF

[nkalanaga]

She glues her ground foam the same way I do.  Nothing fancy here, but it's worked for many years!

The "Foam Depot" reminds me of my early modeling, at about her age.  My first trains were a Lone Star 000 set, for Christmas, when I was ten.  Nobody else in the family was interested in models of any kind, and there was no room for a layout, except under my bed.  One advantage I did have was that my father worked for the railroad, and had for 30+ years, so I'd heard a lot about how they worked. 

Having no money for kits, no model building skills, and no one to teach me, my first industry was a warehouse.  A large, modern one, with room for several freight cars on one side, and a truck dock on the other.  The whole thing was a piece of 2x4, with shirt cardboard glued to the ends to cover the grain, and the doors drawn on with a marking pen.  The dock was a folded piece of the same cardboard, glued to the wood block.

It wouldn't impress a real modeler, but did serve the purpose, as my freight cars now had a destination.  I'd already found that N scale cars would work with the 000 stuff, if the 000 couplers were bent a little, so had a handful of cars to switch.

The next was a tank farm - toilet paper cores and spray can caps!

 

[Chris333]

Ha ha I love it! 

That pumpkin patch needs a Charlie Brown figure.

I see she also likes to wait on adding a fascia