UPDATE: The End of the Christmas Catzilla layout

Next, a photo the two track line my son set up under the Christmas tree. After I took this, I had to take the DD51 out of service because it was making an awful squeaking noise. Except for the D51 and it’s end coach, the other locomotive and rolling stock are mine.

[Super]

Your son did a fine job on the under tree Xmas train. How old is he now?

On the table top, cat bed, Layout I saw you had a set of gray long radius, outside curves......I take it you don't have a set of blue ones.

@ Super: He’s 8. Yeah, honestly, he did a better job on the two-track layout than I did!

Somewhere, I have some double track curves but I don’t have any of the single, wide radius curves in blue. A bunch of my stuff is stored and not easily accessible, including the double track sections. The gray wide radius tracks came in the “Let The Train Go!” track set that came out about two years ago.

I found the Plarail track a bit unforgiving in this application, which is why I went back to TM1 track. I experimented with adding items from various TM1 “winter holiday” sets but they were removed because I didn’t feel they integrated into the overall layout.

After Christmas, I would like to repurpose the layout base into something closer to a model train layout. Aside from using the grass sheet I already have and possibly adding a river, I’m not exactly sure what form it’ll take.

[Super]

wow...8 already...time is flying by.

A last, sad shot of the 2020 Christmas layout. Like the crappy year itself, this has staggered along with numerous wrecks and resets towards a future of wary uncertainty!




While the little village is still quaint and snowy, signs of damage and neglect are apparent. The charming steam locomotives have been replaced with purposeful electric and diesel power. The passenger station remains intact for now but hasn’t seen a passenger train in quite a while. In the near future, the snow will be gone and unit container freights pulled by diesels will run heedlessly through the land.

That’s all a rather melancholy and melodramatic way of saying goodbye to this year’s Christmas decorations. Wes pulled up the Trackmaster 1 tracks this past Wednesday and replaced them with Plarail track.

I plan to repurpose the base, which is 1 inch pink extruded foam. Aside from that, I’m not sure what else I’m doing. I have some Woodland Scenics grass mat that isn’t great for a realistic model layout but might work well for a toy train layout. I have three bags of snow flocked bottle brush trees and an experiment has confirmed that the snow flocking will come off with a soak in warm, soapy water and a little gentle brushing with a old toothbrush. Finally, I have extra pieces of foam and several ways to model water.

It’s mostly a matter of figuring out what I want to do next and taking the time to do it.

[Super]

Awe...you should of hid some catnip in the trains and cat food in the buildings then filmed a B Rated horror movie of Catzilla destroying the town

Funny enough, my cats aren’t really fans of catnip!

[Super]

What??? cats that don't like Catnip??? Thats odd