Maine Central, Lamoille Valley

Maine Central, Lamoille Valley
Click image to link to my web site, nekrailroad.com

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Phill Express - Layout open for viewing and Ops sessions in October

 I will be participating in the NMRA Mid Eastern Region convention this fall, having my layout open for visitation and for operating sessions.

The Philly Express is October 16-19, 2025 and will be held in King of Prussia, a little northwest of Philadelphia. The convention hotel is the Crowne Plaza, and it is just under 1 hour from my home. I'll have the layout open to visitors traveling in on Thursday 12-4 and traveling home on Sunday 12-4.

I will also host 2 operating sessions, Thursday evening 6-10, and Saturday morning 9-12:30. This is a chance to run trains on the layout, with up to 6 operatoring positions available for each session.

The convention also has other open layouts, op sessions, clinics and excursions, It looks to be a good time! Here is a link to the convention web site to get all the details: https://phillyexpress.org/

Registration is open now at an early bird price, and there is an easy to use online registration process.

Op session information is at https://phillyexpress.org/ops/

If you are interested in joining in on one of the op sessions on my layout (or any of the other layouts), that is part of the registration process. I am activity 805 (Thursday) and 806 (Sat).

Hope to see you at the convention!



Thursday, October 24, 2024

Updates

I have not really kept up with posting here on this blog, mainly because I post updates primarily to the Facebook group for the layout, Northeast Kingdom Model Railroad. Much progress has been made on the layout since the recent posts have been made here though. That said, not sure I really want to go through the effort of posting lots of updates here, it just takes more work to do, especially when photos are involved. And writing up text is work that could be directed towards model railroading activities. Not sure how others feel, but publishing and consuming content through a web site like this seems a little more "old school" It is easier to do things through an app on my phone to quickly share something out. Not sure if there is a "Blogger" app that would help in that regard.

Anyway, some updates.

Major scenery efforts were done in East St. Johnsbury and Gilman. Those areas are largely complete looking, although there is always more that could be done.

Track was laid for Lyndonville and sceniced around the edges, leaving the flat areas ready for development. This combined makes the whole peninsula look somewhat completed. 

I did a major scenery effort to Morrisville, including building out the Lamoille Grain structure. Work is underway on the engine house structure, and I need to plan the background structures that will go along the wall to finish this up to a relatively complete stage. But just getting this track ballasted and and scenery in place really transformed things. This along with getting scenery all around Johnson except for the spot where the future talc mll building will go really makes this also look very finished. 

A number of structures were done. The ET&HK Ide building progressed to a good state, although I do want to build out some of the attached buildings and address the underpass and lower building level at some point. Also the Caldbeck Cosgrove building was built out, at a reduced scale, although it still needs the roof top structure element. 

For November, I decided not to join in on the open house tour this year. I have had a very small turnout the past few years and with other things going on I just did not want to dedicate a day or two to being available to the few who might show up. Maybe next year...

I will be at the Syracuse train show Nov 1-2 participating with the Free-mo layout. First time going to this show, although I have been to an NER NMRA convention there a while back. Good rail fanning, but I am not sure I will get the time to do that as we'll be doing full ops on the Free-mo layout at the show both days.

In January I will be back at the Springfield show, again with Free-mo. Always a great time, lots of model railroad fun packed into 3 days.

Here are some quick pictures from around the layout just to show things.

Whitefield


Feed Mill kit I picked up at Springfield in 2020 - fitting it into Whitefield area


Beecher Falls - Ethan Allen with completed NSRC S1 and 44 Tonner

Gilman

St. Johnsbury - structures in progress for ET&HK Ide and Caldbeck Cosgrove



Lamoille Grain - Morrisville

Morisville

Johnson


East St. Johnsbury

East St, Johnsbury

Lyndonville


Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Open House on Sunday November 20. 2022

After a few years off, my layout will be open again for the annual MD-DE-PA-NJ model railroad open house schedule for November. Go to http://www.modelrailroadopenhouse.com/ to see the whole schedule.

I will be open on Sunday, November 20th, 2022, from 11:30am to 4:30pm.

Since last being open in 2019, there is a quite a bit of new scenery to see, primarily in Gilman at the paper mill and East St. Johnsbury around the Maple Grove Farms plant. Will try to take a few pictures and post here (I know, no posts for a year! Sorry about that!)