Home of the St. Louis, Leadville, & Rosetta Railroad, my model railroad layout project.
Personal and layout updates. Notes about my research, building the website, and other fun stuff.
January 9, 2026
I've still got some work left on the Piper Junction layout, but it's getting close. The last few buildings need paint, and the layout desperately needs trees. I'm also considering swapping the turnouts from Atlas plastic frogs (insulfrogs?) to something otherwise more robust, although ripping up trackwork at this stage is going to be less than fun. As well, the whole layout needs lots of little detail bits, from flora and fauna to lineside details to all the little people who will inhabit the world. It would also be nice to add telephone poles and wires, but we'll see.
N scale broad gauge is more doable than I originally thought; a 1.5 mm adjustment is a simple conversion on most older rolling stock without any modification. For the standard gauge section, I'm planning on running a pair of recently-acquired Atlas moguls (DC for now, will be converted eventually someday) as well as the two Bachmann old time ten-wheelers I pre-ordered (these come with DCC and sound). The broad gauge section will have some converted Americans; it appears rather easy to convert at least the Bachmann old time American locomotive to Nw6½, and the tender should be as simple as printing new trucks. I may design and print a new shell for the locomotive, too. The 3' narrow gauge section still remains to be determined, although this too might use a Bachmann old time American frame, as they're plentiful and cheap. The Nn3 Handbook contains a guide to convert them.
The Free-Trak Standard seems a logical choice for the 1930s Rosetta Railroad layout. It should allow great compatibility with my T-Trak club (as long as I provide connections) and give me a way to set up temporarily for home operating sessions. I came across the Free-Trak standard while looking to see if the name was taken for the standard I already wanted to develop; lo and behold, Uncommon Models had beat me to the punch! Not that I mind, as his description for the standard is better thought out than I could have devised, and I'm excited that there are already standards I can use for intercompatibility should I ever meet another Free-Trak-er.
There seems to be aa shortage of N scale coupler height gauges since the Micro-Trains acquisition by Atlas. Hopefully this is just a blip in the production line; I can't see gauges going away. I need one before I continue work with my N-Possible couplers.
That's all for this post. Check back soon for more pictures added to the Trains Gallery and the Layout Page.
November 28, 2025
The new website layout is up and running! Everything should be updated through Git and VSCodium now, thanks to tutorials from Scumsuck.com and bcomnes. I've organized it a bit better, with some hierarchy, and prepared the site for its next update. Proper CSS formatting coming soon, graphic menus on the horizon.
In model railroad news, I've began a few projects towards my eventual goals.
I've purchased my first DCC system, and have begun to convert my N scale Bachmann Prairie 2-6-2 (Rosetta Railroad #TBD) to DCC using a Soundtraxx mobile decoder. I ended up with an HO scale mobile decoder, so it's been a bit of a tight fit getting it in the tender. Maybe not the best idea, but I've committed.
My micro-layout, Piper Junction Railroad, is moving along nicely in its construction. The scenery is looking pretty nice. The small 6" radius curves are challenging for most of my equipment. I'll need to fix up some of my smaller locomotives and get them running.
The decision has been made, I'm beginning tests on N-Possible couplers hoping to convert the entire fleet.
Some playing around with the idea of N scale 5'6" broad gauge.
More to come in the next blog post.
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