Blog Introduction

Hi, my name is Ron and I’ve been interested in Maine Two Footers since the early 70’s and the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes railroad in particular.  For me, as with many, I fell in love with the two footers after reading Moody’s book.  I had been modeling Colorado in Hon3, until one day when my local hobby shop had a Custom Brass #6 and a caboose #556 for sale.  Bought the On2 equipment and sold the Hon3 and been doing SR&RL ever since.

In the 80’s while attending a Narrow Gauge Convention in Denver, I got into a conversation with a friend about modeling the Maine two footers.  My friend innocently asked “how many Maine two footers are there?”.  I had no idea, but I decided to place an advertisement in the back of the Gazette for a “survey”.  One thing led to another and I started the Maine Two Foot Modeler magazine in 1985.  I produced just 9 issues over 28 months, before getting bogged down in not having enough time; work etc just kept getting the way.  Fortunately, Gary Kohler, one of the subscribers volunteered to take over so I handed the fledgling magazine over to him.

For many years I never had time or a good space to model the SR&RL like I wanted to, so I just collected brass and kits.  The usual story.  A few years ago I retired and bought a retirement home in Northern California.  We added a wing to the house which included second floor space for a layout room.  It took several years to finish off the layout room with drywall, HVAC, LED aisle lighting and to develop a trackplan.  I went through seven trackplan versions before settling on version 8, the one included in this blog.  Construction on the layout just really started in December 2013.