A Visit to Andrew Castle's Home Layout

On Monday, January 10, 2017, after many failed attempts, I finally was able to spend a few hours at Andrew Castle's house to take in his excellent models on his layout that is developing quite nicely!

Believe it or not, I did not take many photos, but rather took some notes the old school way with a paper and notepad!  For those of you that don't know, Andrew is an excellent modeller, and has just a couple locomotives on his roster that are factory painted.  The first photo that you can see below is of two excellent custom paint jobs featuring CN 4762, (GP38-2W) & CN 9410, (GP40-2W).

Custom painted CN 4762 in HO Scale.

Custom painted CN 9410 in HO Scale.

Andrew models a few different prototypical scenes, including Onslow to Brookfield, NS on the CN Bedford & Springhill Subdivisions, along with the Truro A-Yard and a portion of the CBNS Hopewell Subdivision.  Although not much scenery is done, the models that Andrew has taken the time to build, reconfigure, strip paint off of, repaint, etc look extremely sharp!  The scene below hosts covered hoppers that in time will be a recreation of CIL Fertilizer, more commonly known as Truro Agromart today, located in Onslow, NS.

Covered hoppers on the CIL Fertilizer spur.

Although the Truro-Yard does not usually host much if any road power, this yard currently hosts a smorgasbord of power, as these are currently "dead", waiting decoder replacements.  Andrew is in the process of changing over the decoders in his locomotives from Tsunami to LokSound.

CN Truro A-Yard, with locomotives awaiting new decoders.

CN 3541 sits next to the former yard office in Truro, NS.

The pride and joy of Andrew's Layout is his scene depicting Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS, and served by the CBNS Railroad.  The entire scene below is either scratchbuilt or kit bashed pieces.  I was very impressed to see this in person, as there is just the right amount of detail to make this scene come to life!

Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS.

Although we didn't run any trains, I was perfectly content to soak in all of the information that I could learn about priming and painting models with various methods.  Of course, being able to look at this layout as a whole was much appreciated too!  Thanks again to Andrew Castle for having me over and letting me see his work up close and personal, and again for being such a wealth of knowledge to me!  I cannot wait to return and hopefully operate on this well-built layout someday.

- Caleb