Kawartha Lakes Railway Introduction

While attending the 2015 RPM-East meet in Greensburg, PA last week, I had the chance to hear Eric Hansmann discuss the idea and merits of web blogging.  Eric made me realize that creating and maintaining a blog wasn't as arduous as I first imagined, and that it was a great way to share ideas.  Therefore in effort to document my Kawartha Lakes Railway, as well as start a discussion of some of my favorite modeling topics (paper mills, saw mills, forest products industries), I decided to develop this blog to document the progress of my HO scale model railroad, railfanning trips and modeling the above industries.   

It's been just short of a year since I started in on the re-design and construction efforts on the KLR.  The original KLR was started just before 2005, and coincided with our local NMRA division hosting a regional convention. In 2011, we once again hosted the MCR convention, which prompted a large amount of work on the layout.  The 2014 NMRA National Convention followed this, where the KLR hosted both a bus tour and a visit from members of the Layout Design SIG.  During the convention, the Layout Design SIG posed the question "what would you have done differently with your layout".  After several operating sessions prior to the convention, this topic had been burning a hole in my brain, as I realized that switching at my paper mill wasn't as fluid as I would have liked, nor was switching several other industries.  The question prompted me to take action, initially with a re-design of several spurs to allow for better storage of cars and then with construction of several new modules, which allowed me to re-design my paper mill.  

I hope to post some pictures next time showing the progress after some of the new track has been laid and I can once again run trains and begin switching operations.