After lunch we headed over to Matt’s rendition of the Louisiana Eastern Railroad.\u00a0 Matt had recently completed grafting a beautiful section of a layout that he had acquired onto the peninsula of his layout.\u00a0 And he has done a masterful job of integrating it into his original layout.\u00a0 Had he not told me what he’d done, I would have thought it had always been there.\u00a0 Matt really enjoys building very detailed structures with interiors, and I enjoyed studying them, continually finding more and more to see.<\/p>\n
And last we visited Mike’s L&N Railroad.\u00a0 Mike has an attic layout, and that thing has one of the longest runs I believe I’ve ever seen on an HO layout.\u00a0 The layout goes around the four walls of the room, and into a long U-shaped peninsula in the center.\u00a0 But get this . . . it has three levels!\u00a0 The room is over 50′ in length, and while I don’t recall its width, it is wide enough that Mike has four foot (and greater) aisles through most of the layout.\u00a0 He says it takes about an hour for a train to traverse the entire line!\u00a0 He is relatively close to completion on the trackwork, and scenery already has a good start.\u00a0 The layout will feature both CTC and some APB signaling, and should be quite interesting to operate.<\/p>\n
I believe all three of these layouts will have good operations when the time comes, and that can’t be too soon.\u00a0 I really miss the operations we had at Lou’s, and I’m hoping I’ll be invited over to run on these pikes someday.\u00a0 The tours were excellent and I’m glad we made the trip to see them.<\/p>\n
Late that afternoon we departed Covington and then made a stop in Hammond just to see if anything was running on the CN line there.\u00a0 Our timing was impeccable.\u00a0 We arrived just in time to see a southbound freight roaring by, headed by a couple of KCS units . . . an unusual sighting.\u00a0 And a few minutes later, the southbound local came charging though town hot on the tail of the first train.<\/p>\n
Upon arriving back in Denham Springs (about 8:30 pm), Tomcat decided to call it a day.\u00a0 Wayne and I headed over to the Lagniappe Restaurant near my home for a late supper.\u00a0 A great day, indeed!<\/p>\n
But that wasn’t the end of the week.\u00a0 Today, Friday, Syd Dann dropped by my house for a visit.\u00a0 I gave him an update tour of the Louisiana Central, and he then went to his vehicle and labored to carry a large grip into the train room.\u00a0 Inside was his latest acquisition, an O scale 2-6-6-6 Allegheny!\u00a0 Man, that was one massive locomotive (even as a model).\u00a0 After our show-and-tell, we headed up Highway 16 to Watson’s Pizza Place, where I ordered one of their famous Watson Supreme pizzas.\u00a0 I really love that pizza!\u00a0 Naturally, my eyes were larger than my stomach, so I’ll be chowing down on the balance of my Supreme for lunch tomorrow.\u00a0 No problem, there. But what a delightful week it has been.<\/p>\n -Jack<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week has been one of several social gatherings for me.\u00a0 It began last Wednesday when Wayne Robichaux, “Tomcat” Kelly and I drove over to Covington, Louisiana to spend the day touring several layouts.\u00a0 The three of us are former … Continue reading ![\"biggrin\"](\"http:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/biggrin.gif\")
<\/a>And the week still has another day left.\u00a0 In the morning I’ll be attending the weekly ROMEO breakfast with some railroad friends at the Warehouse Restaurant over in Baton Rouge.\u00a0 I know I’ll have gained five pounds this week by the time I finish it.<\/p>\n