All Aboard!

Nephew Update: Back in the ICU and still requiring lots of prayerful support. It has been, and will continue to be, a very roller coaster type healing process. It is a miracle he is still with us regardless of what happens next.

As you know, if you have been following me, my husband is a model railroad enthusiast and I am the primary kit construction engineer to bring the towns on his railroad to life. When I’m off being Kim Janine Ligon, Author of Suspenseful romances with happy-ever-afters, I don’t have as much time to devote to the growing HO layout in our basement. This year though I have focused on building for several reasons. First, I’m feeling guilty although the scenery is more for everyone else. My husband has them all laid out in his head. Second, I’m not getting younger and those tiny pieces that need to be painted, glued and decorated require good eyesight and a steady hand.

What you may not know if you’re not a model railroader is that you have to have all the buildings created for an area before you can add grass, streets, and trees. You have to be able to sit them down into the plaster just like the foundation of a real building is in the dirt. So I have focused on completing a whole section of buildings which are those in the picture above.

Then I went around the corner to the middle section of the layout and did a few of those buildings as seen here.

And I’m no where close to done yet. There are dozens of kits needing paint, construction, interiors, and signage before all three sections of the layout is complete. I’m having fun creating interiors and making my own decals for the signs throughout our towns.

If you saw a closeup of the building in the first section with the white turret the sign says ‘Whistler’s’. It was never in Southern Illinois as my readers know. It’s on the square in Lansdale, Wisconsin. My husband said I got to create it twice, once in print and once in 3D. I enjoyed doing both!

In the world outside there is so much that is ugly, unkind, and basically unexplainable it is nice to retreat to the basement where our world has no graffiti, no litter, no nasty attitudes, and no political intrigue. It only has the very best of everything you can imagine and you can hear a train headed down the track ready to take you somewhere exciting and wonderful. All aboard!