Hi there and to the forum Jim, nice to have you on board ... and don't forget to join in on any threads as you wish.
all, I'm Jim (yeah, you probably guessed that ), my interests go back to my first childhood, retired as I am enjoying my second childhood playing with my trains , well, at least my wife knows where I am. Anyway, my preferred era is UK freight during British Railways steam and green diesel, the only blue allowed are the Blue Pullman, Deltic DP1 and some NCB shunters. Working in OO and a confirmed DCC enthusiast for train control (despite the extra aggro involved at times), nothing fancy, i.e. no sound or computer control. IMO sound is too expensive and not realistic enough for me, I prefer to cast my memory back to real steam engines when I used to visit steam preservation sites and superimpose that on my vision, along with the aroma of working engines. I'm too young to remember real BR steam , but then again I would have been too old for my wife so life's not that bad. Have done some 4mm rollingstock building, still have some WIP from just before going to uni back in '77, really must finish those, however eyesight means that some detail will now be left off, can't see it, haven't got the time to apply it (fine lettering especially). Most items I was to build I have now bought rtr, much has changed since I got into modelling hobby in '73. My railway centres on a marshalling yard linking a mainline to industrial branches on which there are a few industrial yard and harbour connections. Recently written a traffic generation program that runs on a laptop under Windows. This includes simulated industries consuming and producing goods to exercise my railway, it's interactive output is to a cheap wifi linked tablet displaying requests for wagons to move goods. On top of that I am trying to finish my online store to sell off all the surplus stuff I have bought over the last 12 or more years, I did a lot of selling of my (and bruvver's) childhood toys during 2005-7 but really had enough of 'the' online auction site since then. So now I'm careering into my 3rd age with more to do than ever, positively, at least I can do less now to be tired enough to go to bed sooner.
Excellent Jim, Thanks for the intro. Feel free to fire up some of your past and present projects. Always of interest. Cheers Toto