It has been several dogs' ages since I've made a post here, but I'm back now.
I'll leave the long story out, but there are some changes. I'm still sticking with 1966-ish, but I don't know if I'll be pursuing the fictitious Gibraltar Branch plan. However, the primary location focus remains Carpinteria; I may decide eventually to revive the Gibraltar idea; I may revisit the idea of fudging the Ojai Branch; or I may decide to opt for that section of the Coast Line, with Santa Barbara and Ventura as staging yards... we'll see. But whatever I decide, Carpinteria will be the centre-point. I've started looking at ways to compress Carp into something manageable that still gets a reasonable Carp "vibe", I'll post about that in the near future.
For the moment, a little word about some new arrivals. After quite the shipping ordeal that involved the package taking a detour to Montreal (apparently Canada Post doesn't know the difference between QC and BC), my order from Lok & Roll in Germany arrived with three new freight cars: a CP Rail insulated boxcar, and a pair of PFE reefers. Apparently, TT scale has beaten HO to the availability of an R-40-27!
I'll do a closer review of them once I've received my copy of the PFE book (ordered), but for now I'll say I'm pretty content with them... though the price *is* a bit steep.
