Keeping in mind that I got discouraged building my Climax kit two years ago when I was having problems not with the kit but with the power chassis, I stayed up perhaps a LITTLE too late last night fiddling with decoder placement.

I decided against Jim Starbuck's very clever method after having totally botched that method before. It was my later inability to seat the spring contacts on the tabs coming up from the trucks that stopped me in my tracks before.

Well, I decided...

Well, it's been about two years and I am back. What have I learned?

One, don't try to do these projects at temporary work stations if possible. I was constantly picking this project up and moving it off elsewhere. The result of all of this is that I often felt rushed. Since two years ago I have established a more permanent work station in the basement where I don't have to clear out every time we want to eat a meal.

Two, if you're going to do a decoder conversion, don't...

I decided that I wanted to go DCC after all in the 18-tonner. This is kind of a trick since there really isn't any space. I asked randgust if he had any experience, and he tipped me off to one scheme that someone else carried out on the same chassis that our very own JStarbuck posted in this thread...

Critter goes digital - TrainBoard.com

Naturally, since this is my first decoder conversion as well as my first locomotive kit I decided to go for broke and put a decoder...

I decided to order a Class A Climax kit from randgust here on this board (no affiliation... other than I know him from Trainboard). I found that a certain 18-tonner plied the forests around Astoria between about 1903 and 1915, bouncing between three different logging companies.

In my own conception, this locomotive was found in a barn after nearly 90 years of storage and was restored to running order as part of a living history logging museum. Strict prototype modelers are probably...

I had been struggling with how to make a yard for my planned Astoria branch (the old SP&S line) until a guy in my club showed me a copy of an historic track plan for Astoria's waterfront that showed some of the elements I had been looking for:

1. Something that will work as an NTrak module but also as part of my basement layout.

2. Something that I can break up into 4 foot long chunks, reasoning that that is what I can reasonably carry up the stairs and fit into my...