Welcome to the Frogtown airport

  You have just landed in a small town where time is stuck in the late 1950s.
A place where the men work the coal mines and the boys play baseball.
Women stayed at home & raised the kids.
Elvis is still King and the Goodboy Hamburger drive-in on Friday night is "THE PLACE TO BE".
  Back in the day when most freight was still moved by rail, you could see trains all the time. That is true in this place. This is frogtown.........
  At one time the small airport outside of town was big enough, but now it is too small for commercial planes. Now it just lands small personal planes like Piper Cubs and Cessna's. It is busiest during the Annual Air Show, which is going on now.
  The new Zoo and Golf course bring outsiders into town which helps a lot, because after the IH plant went on strike, no one who lives here has any money! Thankfully the coal mine is still working, at least until they unearth another dinosaur bone like they did on they lower hillside. But that's another story.......

Trains in town Trucks haul most freight these days, but here in Frogtown we still use rail cars to haul in goods and ship out products. A day won't pass without seeing many locos passing thru & dropping cargo. Coal from the mines goes out and scrap iron for the foundry comes in. New autos & parts come on rail, as do farm chemicals for the warehouse out of town. The co-op uses quite a few at harvest time to ship grain. Yes, trains still run in Frogtown....

Into town The first thing we see as we leave the airport is the drive-in theater next to Coal Mountain. That's where the mine is and it's a pretty big operation. It normally employes about a third of the men here in town but things are a little slow right now. The IH foundry is the other big employer but they are shut down for a strike and not using coal to melt iron. PLUS with all the concerns about global warming, coal has gotten a bad name. No buyers, no need for coal. No need for coal, no need for miners. No need for miners, no jobs, no paychecks, Bad news Charlie....   Stupid EPA.... It snowed last winter, so how can there be global warming and why don't we get it when WE NEED it.....

Things To Do This is the time of year we have our annual classic plane Air Show. The  wwI Bi-plane Sopwith Camel is here as well as the  Pitts Special. Two wwII Blue Corsairs are here escorting a silver P-51 Mustang. Even though these planes are from wwI & wwII they are flight ready and are taking off & landing all day long. You'll also see the newer Piper Cubs & Cessnas. There is also a helicoptor from a local news channel flying around, so the sky is full of activity. If planes aren't your thing, there's lots of other stuff to do... We have a 9 hole golf course & a Little League baseball team for sports fans. There's  General Rufus B Scruffy Park with hiking trails and cabins. Fishing is allowed but hunting is illegal. Shoot anything in these woods and you will probably just piss it off. Bears are known to wander the park and supposedly Bigfoots been seen coming out of the train tunnels. Safer entertainment is the drive-in movie, the carnival at the baseball field and of course our Zoo.

How I built it... A little bit about how I built this layout is included for those interested. The first thing I learned about the hobby is, "A Train Layout is Never Done". Most of the modelers I have met said the day they finished a layout was the day after they started planning a new one... The second thing is to find a good train shop with people who know what they are talking about and have a good supply of what you'll need to finish your project. Mine is Train Central Corp. at www.waynestrains.biz This is my third so I am still trying out new methods. My last layout was blue insulation board and that worked well. This time I wanted to try the plywood cookie cutter style because I wanted to be able to move it around to shows and have it be sturdy. Check out the few pictures I did take during construction.

Next project The fun of doing modeling is doing something "OFF THE WALL" or "TRUE TO LIFE". I am an Off the wall type so I like to do something that isn't done alot so my next project was a real test of my imagination and abilities. I wanted to build an N-Scale suitcase layout that passes thru from top to bottom to create enough room to have two sidings and a loop over&under. A tall order for a carry-on suitcase but I did it and it works well. The details will be posted here later but I can show the case. It's the challenge to make it all work is were the fun comes from. More later.

Thanks for Stopping By  As I said this is a hobby where you never stop changing things. Like yesterday when I added 4" height to my mine just because I felt it needed to be more "Majestic". Then I had to flip the airport runway so the planes could take off away from the mountain !! I made the airport as a single independant unit that will tilt up or take off so I can access my hidden staging yards. Lucky for me it was fairly easy to modify. SO, changes will occur and I will update as they happen. Thanks for visiting Frogtown. This railroad is not prototypical in any way...... Disclaimer : I garantee that everything in text is incorrect in one way or another. It's a ficticious town and I lied about everything:~). You can e-mail me otherwise. Rufusbscruffy@aol.com . Have Fun and a great day