TRAIN TIME: Menards #279-4591 M&M's Boxcar (Silver) (2019)

Welll, it looks like Ima gonna go down this M&Ms rabbit hole. This past year or so my train time out in my Room of Requirements has been largely devoted to candy related trains and train layouts. To that end I've been displaying Hershey's chocolate buildings and accessories and running Hershey's trains. Then those got packed up and I started running M&M's trains which are currently on the layout.

While K-Line made the bulk of Hershey's trains and accessories, Menard's has got the M&M's covered. Mike's Train House (MTH) produced a train set as part of their RailKing line of 3-rail O-gauge trains, a trolley set, a few loose cars and then they stopped. In 2019 Menard's started releasing 3-rail O-gauge train cars lettered for M&M's candy and three of them hit the shelves: a silver boxcar, a yellow boxcar, and a brown hopper. They followed up with more cars, some buildings and accessories, and it appears as if they're going to continue the run of M&M's stuff. Today we feature the silver boxcar - Enjoy! Opa Fritz 

TRAIN TIME: The Edge of Town Layout Gets a Makeover - Pt 13 New Train Sets, More Scenery Around the Lake, and Just Running Trains

I got two packages of Birch trees from Heki. Each package contains 10 trees in three different heights. That gave me enough trees for a nice tree line on the small corner hill plus add some color to the area. In addition a few more details were added to the lake area. Aside from those small things the time was just spent pulling out train sets and having fun running trains. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Picked up this beautiful K-Line by Lioenl Steam Chief set and gave it a go around the layout

The I pulled out a similar consist of vintage Marx trains...

TRAIN TIME: The Edge of Town Layout Gets a Makeover - Pt 12 New Vehicles, Another 'New' Buildings, and Scenery Around the Lake

Hmmm, it's been kinda tricky keeping track of where I am on this project so that I can show what's happenin' in chronological order. But let's see: new track, new hill, Plastic Freight depot done, most of the cardstock buildings replaced. Yup we're gettin' there. After many years of collecting I finally started to get in some Prewar Marx stamped steel vehicles. They generally cost far more than I was willing to pay, but of late a bunch have been available for more-or-less reasonable prices. Got lots of stuff done of late. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The Milk truck is a repaint but very nicely done.

Got in some rolling stock. Of interest were the wreck cranes. The smaller crane with plastic cab looks nice on this small layout but the top of the boom 'taps' the tunnel portal when passing through 

The larger diecast crane has issues with the boom swinging out and knocking stuff over.

More scenery work being done. By this time work around the lake is proceeding. This set from Woodland Scenics has some nice items in it.

This set of O-scale cattails from JTT Scenery is great but the bottoms are pointy. Apparently they were made to stick into holes drilled into the scenery. But here's the rub. My tiny lake (or pond) is a piece of rippled plastic sitting on top a piece of blue cardstock. I know, if I start drilling holes, sawdust will make its way between those two layers and muck everything up. Sooo, I cut off the bottoms of the cattails with a scissors and Super Glued them to the top of the piece of plastic!

I'm okay with this but i'll need more 

The EoT has a new track gang :-)

TRAIN TIME: The Edge of Town Layout Gets a Makeover - Pt 11 New Buildings, New Hill, Running Trains

Wellll, I'm now in a 'work-from-home' status due to the COVID-19 spread and although I'm at home my overlords expect me to account for my time every day so there is really no extra hobby time to be had. I do a LOT of posting on facebook in mt free time and unfortunately that means the blog has suffered but though all of this I've still managed to work on my small train layout, the Edge of Town.

Here's what's happened since the last update:

The cardstock grocery store has been replaced with a new production (vs. vintage) Plasticville Roadside Stand. Here it is shown assembled but not glued. Also, vehicles are being swapped out as whim dictates just for fun.

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Pulled out a Marx Commodore Vanderbilt and cars and ran it

I cut two pieces of 2" thick Styrofoam cut into a rough 'L' shape, glued them together and  glued them to the back corner

I bought a second set of rustic fences for the rustic cabin area

There's not much room on the siding. In an attempt to eke out as much space as possible I bought these Atlas bumpers which half the size of the Marx bumper they're replacing

Replaced the cardstock service station with my Littletown station for now. I kept the cardstock sign up for now

Ran more trains