NTS&B Santa's Workshop

 My Grandson gave me a building he made for me for Christmas.  Of course I had to find a place to put it.  Here's a couple pictures of it all lit up.

NTS&B Some More New Shelves

 For some reason, I keep running out of display space for my trains.  I decided to fill up the last remaining space I could find in the train room with an approximately 8 foot wide by 7 foot tall shelf.  I reduced the spacing between shelves to the minimum I could, which picked up an additional 2 shelves over my other 7 foot tall one.  Here are the before and after pictures.

New shelves before loading up.

I have purchased a couple 4 car subway sets recently,  wanted to free up a couple tracks on the main line to accommodate visiting trains, and get my remaining trains out of the train closet.  The trains that were on the subway and mainlines were very long, so took up most of the new shelves.  By the time I got all of them on the shelves, I am almost out of space again.  Here are what they look like after being loaded up.

NTS&B Train Room Lighting

 I sometimes forget to turn the layout off, so I wanted a routine to run about 10PM to shut everything down automatically.    I used to use an X10 for home lighting control, but the system was not dependable.  Also,  the software was not upgraded to run on Windows 10 and my new system did not have a serial port, so I was out of luck.

Then may son gave me an Amazon Alexa and plug for Christmas.  With additional plugs, this gave me the flexibility to turn off my layout, and my workbench automatically every night.  

Along with my florescent lighting in the train room, I had 14 recessed spot lights.  I have been told that blue lighting over the layout simulates moon light better than just turning off the lights and using the lighting on the layout.  I decided to change out all of the spots with smart adjustable color floods and spots.  These are also controlled by Alexa, so I can change the overheads to any color and brightness I want.  The lights are very bright when set to white, so I can use them instead of the florescent to help minimize the fading caused by the florescent.  The Alexa routing also turns these light off automatically at night, in case I forget.  The flood lights from Walmart work very good when using the built in Alexa commands, but are intermittent when changing colors using a routine.

Here are a couple pictures.

Simulated Moon light with bulbs set to blue.

An attempt at Sunset

Ready for St. Patty's Day.  Can even set to red and green for Christmas.

And Bright White

NTS&B Name Changed to North Pole, Tinseltown, Sabastian, and Bigville

I am getting ready to paint and letter some cars, and decided that if I was going to change the name of my railroad, I needed to do it now.  The name was North Pole, Tinseltown South, and Bigville (or NTS&B).   

I wanted to include my 12 year old grandson Sabastian in the layout name, and had a small town that needed to be named, so I decided to name it after him.  He was born a couple years after I already named the layout, which is why it didn't originally include him.  So, now the new railroad name is North Pole, Tinseltown, Sabastian, and Bigville (or still NTS&B)   I have buildings, tunnel portals, and a bridge already with the initials, so none of that had to be changed.

Here is the new billboard leading into the town.  I used an HO street light to illuminate it.

NTS&B 2020 11th Piedmont Pilgrimage

Update-In December 2020, after this video was made, I renamed the layout to North Pole, Tinseltown, Sabastian, and Bigville.

Due to the COVID19 Pandemic, there were no live National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) Piedmont Pilgrimage tours this year. The NMRA decided to do virtual layout tours for interested participants, to keep the event alive.  Since I had already done 10 of the tours, I decided to continue my trend and do the virtual tour, which also serves as a nice way to document the layout .  Here is the youtube video. I hope you enjoy it.

NTS&B Shelves On End Wall

 Again, I find myself low on shelf space.  I built these 4 foot tall by 8 feet wide shelves on the end wall with the idea of finally getting everything out of the train closet.  

NTS&B Kathy's and Jennifer's Billboards Finally Installed

I finally got time and energy to finish the billboards.  I modified some medal spotlights I purchased years ago at the York train show.  I replaced the light bulbs with LEDS, and installed them to light up the new billboards.  Here are some pictures of the results.

Kathy was from Long Island, and liked New York Central, which allowed me to buy that line without getting into too much trouble.  I thought it was only fitting to take her picture with a NYC F3.

When Jennifer was little, I bought her an HO Santa Fe set.  She loved it because it was "Santa's Train".  Here is the O-Gauge version with her billboard.

NTS&B Dedication To Jennifer

On January 18th, 2020, my poor sweet daughter Jennifer passed away.  It's been really tough for me to handle.  Over the years, she has contributed many scenery items to the layout.  Sometimes, I think she just wanted to give me a challenge for how to fit them in, since most weren't train related.  Because of this, I wanted to do something on the layout in her honor.  I decided to make a billboard for her similar to the one I made for Kathryn.  Here is the result.

NTS&B Merry Christmas 2019

Another year has passed, and the layout has progressed very little.   Kathy passed away this past August, and my daughter has moved in to help take care of me, and get help for herself.  It made the holidays much less lonely.  She made cookies, helped set up and decorate the tree, hung the stockings, and picked out and wrapped most of the presents.  It wouldn't have been much a Christmas without her.  We celebrated an early holiday in TN with my son, his wife,  and Jennifer's son, then had another holiday here with Kathy's daughter Carolyn and her husband.  Carolyn carried on her mom's tradition and made a nice lasagna, which Jennifer helped me finish off in record time.  All in all, the kids made it a much better holiday season than I had ever anticipated. Here are a couple pictures.

NTS&B Trump Train Passenger Car

Here are a couple pictures of a passenger car I recently acquired.