What? An Operating Session!

Phil, James and Ethan (l-r) work Train 7 At Aquia Landing

It has been a long time since I hosted an operational session. According to my records, the last session was September 5, 2024! (I didn't do a blog post for that session probably because it was part of MARPM and I had to leave my house as soon as the ops were over to go to the hotel for do the final paperwork and payment).

Nick, Jacob and Amby (L-r) work Falmouth

So it was great to host a group of 9 operators on Saturday, 10 Jan 2026 for an official op session on the Aquia Line. That was session number 28. And what a great session it was! The basement was full of laughter and camaraderie as Phil Taylor, James Rodgers, Joel Salmons, Joel Salmons, Remy Salmons, Ethan Rodgers, Jacob Hol, Amby Nangeroni and Nick Ozorak ran the railroad for nearly 3.5 hours. Five of them were first time operators. Remy was only the second woman ever to operate the railroad.

Remy, Joel and John (l-r) at Falmouth

Because we had 9 operators, we ran the normal scheduled trains and an extra. That makes things a bit crowded in the front room when trains meet at Brooke or Stonemans, but everyone seemed to make it work. 

Screen shot of the virtual Aquia Line in Trainz 

Nick is the host "The Roundhouse" podcast. He also builds virtual railroads in Trainz. He brought screen shots of the Aquia Line railroad he is building in Trainz, a virtual model of the Aquia Line. He has been working on that for quite a while. It looks really neat. One of the views he showed me was the layout without the house walls in the way. That was an interesting use of the virtual layout.  After the ops, Nick spent some time taking photos of spots that needed more work in his virtual plan. We also discussed some possible changes to the layout including the foundry at Brooke and the installation of the machine shop at Aquia Landing. When it is done, he will make it available for downloading.  To see more of his podcasting work and virtual railroads go to https://www.youtube.com/@NickOzorak

Nick's concept of the foundry at Brooke. Looks good, but that W&A Car has got to go!

Happy New Year. The Moby Dick Diorama

Scene from the News Years Party we attended 

Work on the Aquia Line is 2025 was dominated by the machine shop construction and developing a range of figures to populate the layout. Somehow I  managed to host no operation sessions all year, though I did have an open house for the layout and ran trains for some quests.  I did attend some op sessions elsewhere including Marty McGuirk's inaugural session, Mat Thompson's new  Oregon layout, Rich Steinman's EL and George Shindledecker's WM. 

I hope to get more projects finished on the Aquia Line next year. I also have several other modeling projects lined up that I wish to compete (see Moby Dick diorama below). It will be a fun year as I also have a lot of travel planned starting with a trip to Costa Rica. Then to the Atlanta Figure Show in Feb, and Florida in March. Later in the year there trips to Japan and Prague on the schedule.  In July-August there is the NMRA National Convention in Chattanooga and the IPMS National in Fort Wayne on back to back weekends. 

From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee

Gregory Peck stabbing Moby Dick

This is a figure diorama I am working on inspired by the story of Moby Dick. Specifically the scene from the movie with Gregory Peck where Ahab is caught on the whale and he tries to stab it as seen at the left. 

The scene in the movie is a bit different from the book where Ahab doesn't get lashed to the whale, but is yanked off the whale boat by the harpoon line as it wrapped around his neck,

 

"The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.

The scene in the later movie with Patrick Stewart is a little closer to how the book described, but still has some differences.  

Scenes from Patrick Stewart's movie version

I mocked up the diorama in Blender

The whale was too large for my printer so it required me to print it in two parts.

I used 2-part putty to resculpt the eye area.

I added additional wrinkles to the whale using my Rotex sander.

I have blocked in the colors on Ahab/

Work Session on the DRGW

About one quarter of the overall layout

 I went to Charles Bassing’s DRGW layout today to participate in a work session. I had not been to his layout before. I only knew about it from Mark Gionet. Well, turns out I was really in the dark as this is probably the largest layout in Northern Virginia. Charles has been working on it since 2008. It’s pretty far along with benchwork and track. Now a crew of folks are helping build scenery. The railroad covers the Tennessee Pass and Royal Gorge regions from Pueblo, CO to Minturn, CO in the 1930-40s including standard and a fair amount of narrow gauge. This is an area that I am somewhat familiar with as I modeled Tennessee Pass in N scale about 20 years ago.

I was assigned rock carving jobs. First I helped add rock castings to some of the many vertical cliffs. They were using sculptamold as a means to “glue” the castings to the cliffs and to carve the areas between castings. Believe it not, this  was the first time I tried sculptamold. I found the my regular carving techniques didn’t work as usual when I use Water Putty. But, we made it work. 

. After lunch, Charlie asked me to finish the rocks around a tunnel portal. For that I used lightweight hydrocal. My usual carving techniques worked here and it came out nice. After that I went back to sculptamold on the cliffs.

Meanwhile, Nick Kalis was painting structure mockups, Steve, Mark and Charles worked on staining and painting the huge cliffs. By the end of the day, the cliffs looked great.

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Mark making some last minute corrections to rock castings

Mark begins staining rocks

Steve, Mark, Charles and Nick painting rocks

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Pueblo yard

Looking good. 

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Great rockwork

Holiday Open House

 We hosted a holiday open house today. This is become somewhat of an annual tradition. There was a good turnout. I didn’t put out a guest list, but at least 40 people were there at one time. There were several first time visitors. And I may have recruited some new operators.

Alicia made cookies and brownies. Marty and Christine McGuirk brought some cookies. Almost all were eaten too, saving me s lot of calories  

Several of the guests did the scavenger hunt which seems like they enjoyed. 

Yule log playing Christmas Carols. 

John Hancock

 This is a figure I have been working on for a possible 2026 show figure for the National Captial Model Soldier Society. It is a bust of John Hancock in 1/12th scale.  The figure is part of the theme of US 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I sculpted the figured digitally using Meshy and Blender. It is painted with acrylics and inks. I tried to use Rembrandt lighting with a main light to the figures lefthand above and a small fill light on the right. 

The signature name plate was cut on my laser. The base is a piece off rosewood salvaged by Rob Kempinski from trees damaged in a hurricane a few years ago.

I have also been painting a 75mm figure of BG Hermann Haupt. This is WIP.