That Was Fun

One of the blogs that I follow is Chris van der Heide's Algoma Central. His blog posts contain a wealth of information on Canadian railroading in the 1960's up through the mid-80's in addition to very in-depth research on the AC. He is also an incredibly talented modeler and scratch-builder. Some of his recent structure and freight car projects are just beautiful. You can find a link to his blog in the Great Railroad Modeling Sites list to the right of this post.

Last week, Chris posted about making a styrene strip sorting and storage rack. Here's a link to the post: http://vanderheide.ca/blog/2018/09/23/styrene-strip-sorting-and-storage-rack/. I have been struggling for years to keep my supply of styrene strips and brass wire organized and Chris' design looked like the perfect solution. Plus, I have never used foam core board for anything before and this project looked like a good chance to try it out.

The photo below shows the modified shoe box that I have used for many years to store strip styrene and brass wire. While it doesn't look it, the strips are organized by size and part number. But as you can see, actually finding the part number and/or size requires a bit of searching. And the box is getting pretty full.

Chris provides the basic dimensions of the rack in his post and it's easy enough to come up with the rest based upon the size of the Evergreen packages. So after a little cutting and gluing with the foam core board, the new rack was ready to be placed in service!

This was a fun little project and a nice diversion from wiring up LED's for the dispatcher's panel. And I know I'll be grateful the time I reach for some brass wire or strip styrene. So thanks, Chris, for the idea!