Tenth Anniversary of returning to HO scale

When I moved to Albany for law school I packed everything up into our family's minivan and drove from Rochester. Sadly, the last thing to pack... which didn't quite fit... was my sectional HO switching layout. I had enjoyed building it, as it was my first "realistic" layout (all my others were roundy-rounds on 4x8 plywood sheets) but it had its limits too. Its trackplan was from an Altas book: HO-26, the "Southside Connecting," which I modified to remove some of the track. It was probably designed to just sell their turnouts and crossings. It had some issues, like a turntable on one end at the end of a passing siding requiring me to rotate it every time I needed to do a runaround move. I got as far as ballasting and ground foam, and didn't consider its loss the end of the world. It taught me a lot.

The final shot of my Camas Prairie layout taken 4/2020

After several stints with N scale layouts, including a prototypical one of my own design based on the BN/UP Camas Prairie Division in Idaho in the late 1970s, I lost interest in N scale. The problems of DCC decoder installations (something I had to farm out generally because I was buying older engines) and MicroTrains couplers (for complex installations, I also had to farm them out) got expensive. In HO scale I could do it all myself. Plus, switching operations in N scale are delicate. I have friends whose layouts operate well enough to permit it but mine just wasn't cutting it. Finally, my favorite aspect of the hobby is building stuff and I found kits in N scale limited and containing oversized details. I wanted out!

So, on a whim on September 08, 2010 I drove to the local hobby store to see what they had for HO. Having mostly built only Roundhouse/MDC and Athearn kits, I was impressed with the level of detail in the Accurail kits they had. Having subscribed to M.R. for years I had also seen the trend of ready-to-run stuff flood out. But, I quickly settled on a small Athearn kit for a D&H coal hopper. I didn't pay much for it, and I had no idea if it would fit in with the theme of any future HO layout I might build (I wasn't even planning an HO layout at that time). I just thought building the kit might be a fun way to pass an hour. I actually set it aside and within days purchased several more kits, and this one was sort of forgotten. Until my wife saw it, declared it "her's," and that was that!

That D&H car is pretty special to me because of what it represents, and even more so because my wife did everything herself. With my guidance, she took the kit and painted the steel weights brown to blend in with the frame. She glued them to the body. She weathered the trucks by drybrushing with brown acrylic paint, and faded/weathered the sides with brown acrylic paint washes. She sealed this with Dullcote. She then built up a false load floor, caulked the edges, and painted it black. Finally, she mounded up a load of real crushed coal and secured it with matte medium. I was pretty proud of her. She commented that it needs some more black weathering, and I agree. But for now, I think it looks great!

And, I absolutely love HO scale. I still have N scale, S scale, O scale, G scale, and 7.25" gauge trains to satisfy my crazy whims, but HO is where I belong.