Just a little update on The Omega Scale efforts. The current project is to produce something called a wood sheathed boxcar. I know what you are probably thinking. “Why don't you produce some kind of locomotive”? Good question! What this particular project is about is to produce a boxcar at a higher level of quality. The boxcar in the photo is in fact a sheet steel sided later era boxcar replica. It is a “prototype”. It was built a little bit “quick and dirty”. I wanted to get something graphic for our readers for as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. The project in the works now has several goals. A standard of production, finer details, and a more realistic appearance. However, we definitely need a locomotive. What is on the drawing board is a small switching locomotive. More updates to come.

     Let's talk about what motivates certain people to do certain things. In the case of my interest in model railroading, let's go back in time. I remember as a small boy I would often play in my bedroom. I liked it because our house was built on a slight slope and that end of the house overlooked the vacant lot next door. I would often look out on a warm afternoon with the window up and my arms folded on the window sill and watch the sun go down. Many times I would play with my toy train. It was only a circle of track with a windup steam locomotive and one car and a caboose. A very short train. It of course would only go round and round. I sometimes think I was hypnotized at that point. One time in 1^st grade, the teacher gave us an assignment to get our dads to read our library book with us. My dad was glad to do this. My book was about a railroad called the Santa Fe. It had a colorful “war bonnet” paint scheme on its passenger locomotive. As we went through the book, my dad informed me he had ridden on the Santa Fe Passenger train “El Capitan” when he was in the army. He also said he worked for that railroad in New Mexico when he got out of the service maintaining the signal system. He told me about seeing the massive steam locomotives working in tandem slowly hauling a heavy freight up the Raton Pass. He said the noise was like nothing else he had heard before.

     As I grew a little older, I noticed on the way over to my cousin’s house we would cross over some railroad tracks. Sometimes we would have to wait for the train to pass before proceeding. This was before overpasses. I would read the letters and words on the boxcars. I remember thinking how the slogan “The Feather River Route” probably meant the train passed through Indian country. I often saw “Southern Serves the South”. I was proud of that slogan. As I was coming up, I often stayed over at my cousin’s house. There were two of them. A boy and a girl. Both older than me. The boy was like my older brother and he was good to let me play with his train set. He was interested in trains as well.

     Later, as he got older, he gave away his Lionel train set and got an HO train set. I thought it was great. In spite of being smaller in scale than the old set, it was very realistic and detailed. No third rail either. The set had something new too. Turnouts (switches) that let equipment move off the main line. The old set was just an oval. And another thing, there was a stock pen with a realistic ramp for loading and unloading livestock. And to top it off, the scale cattle were painted to look like a breed called Hereford. This just added fuel to the fire because our grandfather had a farm out in the country. On this farm he raised, guess what, Hereford cattle! We spent many hours operating that railroad. It seemed like when we were not operating the model railroad, we were studying the catalogs published by the companies selling model railroads. The catalogs had colorful watercolor illustrations showing trains moving through boundless scenery in addition to pictures of things that were for sale. We were in hog heaven. I guess those happy days were what inspired my interest in model railroads in later years and continue to guide me to work on the very small railroad, also known as The Omega Scale Railway. Happy Inspiration to you with whatever endeavor you do, until next time.

The dilemma of the dreamer: When I first started thinking about building The Omega Scale Railway, I kept thinking “what if I could make this work?”. As mentioned in a previous post, I tried several ideas which failed the practicality test. Many times I thought about shelving the whole idea. “After all, who really wants this?”, I said to myself. Well, you now know the rest of the story. I kept working and working and working (sorry about the repetition). The problems I wanted to solve for myself are: any roadname, any type of equipment, any era can be fabricated. Pretty neat, huh? Also, I was constantly running out of room, needed more real estate. Problem solved. Short of funds? Build it yourself. And so on. As an added feature (quirk?), this project can be built to run without electricity. As a matter of fact, my initial, layout will have no electricity. Modularity is also planned. More update to come. See you then. PS, a photo of the prototype boxcar will be added to the blog.