G'day, just joined. Looks like a great group! Thanks to Tom Mann for suggesting I check out Railwire.
I'm a long-time SP and AT&SF/BNSF fan and generally interested in all western railroading. I am Australian (nice to see a few other Aussies on the forum too by the way!!) and I moved to the US as an adult in 1995. A year later, the mighty SP was swallowed unceremoniously by UP >
. I live very close to the Richmond Pacific, the UP and the BNSF in Richmond Calif. In recent years, I have been leaning more toward modeling local operations found here in Richmond mainly because of the ease and speed of gathering prototype pics and info. We see plenty of local switching, interchange and road freights, so there's more than enough to keep me interested. I like modern era railroading (say 1975+) and really like the look of realistically weathered model railcars. There is a rail-served Sims scrap yard at the nearby port which has been receiving some really weary cars for dismantle lately, including lots of tired, graffiti covered Golden West boxcars (why don't those cars rust by the way?).
I model in N, and post on my blog when I have time. Lately I've been focusing on weathering in N and I'm also a bit of a track hound. I like to handlay in N and have a bunch of FastTracks gear which has helped enormously. Railroading for me is in a constant state of trade-off with competing family needs. I'm sure many of you are there too. I aspire to clear out the garage one day and fill the resulting vacuum with a layout before it fills in with more family stuff, but for for bandwidth reasons, that is for the future. Nonetheless, I manage to squeeze in a few hours of RR therapy each week and I'm looking forward to keeping up with pics and posts on this forum.
Cheers,
Coxy
