Bigger Distractions

As I noted back in my post at the end of 2011 Aeronautical Distractions I've gotten into the hobby of radio controlled airplanes.  In the summer of 2012 I got much more involved with the airplanes, to the detriment of my model railroading activities.  In fact I did virtually nothing on my own layouts from early 2012 through the end of 2014, although I have continued to enjoy operating on friends railroads.  The airplanes have gotten bigger and far more capable, it's been a lot of fun.

I had some time off over the holidays and had planned to spend it finishing up my newest and largest airplane (a 60" wingspan Extreme Flight Edge).  On the first day I did some errands in the morning, went out to lunch, and drove back via a route that took me by CPF-BY (Bleachery) on the Pan Am Railways freight main line in Lowell, MA.  A couple ES44's creeping along got my attention.  I dug the scanner out from the bottom of the glove box to see if I could hear anything.  It was POSE, creeping through Lowell due to some problem I didn't overhear the particulars of.  I got a nice long detailed look at both engines and every single car as it slowly crossed Meadowcroft street.  When I got home instead of getting the airplane project set up on the workbench I found myself clearing the accumulation off the N scale layout to pick up where I had left off in 2012.  I'd been trying to keep it from getting too buried (the O scale layout is half covered in airplanes, half covered in the O scale rolling stock that was on the half now supporting airplanes).  Here's what it looked like when I started.

Bigger distractions

You can see the airplanes have gotten bigger - the red one on the left is a 48" wingspan Laser (wings are just visible edge up in the carrying holder I made for them on the far side of the layout).  The one sitting on the backdrop is the previously mentioned 60" Edge still in progress.

Over the course of a few days I managed to get past what had been the stumbling block in early 2012 (point jumpers) and actually get some track down on the runaround side of the layout.  Here's what the layout looked like the last night of vacation.

Track pinned down for the glue to dry

I'll describe what I ended up doing for point jumpers, feeders, etc. in separate posts sometime soon.  I'm excited to finally be making progress on the layout again, and I'm going to try to get it into good operating shape well before the weather gets good enough to fly R/C planes without frozen fingers again!