 To make operations more realistic, George plans to install a working signalling system, and his fondness for signal towers means the railroad is ready for that. They're everywhere, and give the Franklin in South Manchester a real railroady feel. But then again, there's a lot of everything everywhere, and some people suggest George has overdone it sometimes, but he has a good answer for that. Some guys sometimes come here and say, well, you've got an awful lot of buildings here. I said, did you ever look at old pictures of Boston or something? The buildings are sort of like Frankenstein type. You grab a little here, grab a little there, detail in the roof here, detail here from the building, and you put it all together and you come up with some interesting model. The models are even more interesting because of George's generous use of signs. These give visitors a sense of place and help define the layout's era. Today, home computers, illustration software, and color laser printers make it relatively easy to create signs. But many of the signs on George's layout predate the PC, and often required a lot of legwork to find. And modeling inspiration from a great American writer. I like to read Mark Twain. I think he's a wonderful author. This is something that I think Mark Twain would hear around, would enjoy. Our report from the 2015 Amherst Railroad Hobby Show. The whole premise of the layout is that it represents the types of scenes you would have seen along the railroad in the early 1900s. The retired engineer bends the rules. I had 42 years following the rule book and I don't like strictness. I know that there's a reason for the strictness on the railroad, but down here we can have fun. What does it take to keep Portland's largest model railroad club running smoothly? The strong point of the layout is it's big. The biggest problem we have is emptying the garbage cans and cleaning the bathrooms. And the trials of getting the basement ready for an open house. There's scenery materials all over the floor here, and half the layout is functioning as a shelf, and it's just a mess. It's a war zone. Cozy Home, made for an in-scale empire. Most of my layouts in the past have been in very small rooms that were not dedicated space. They were shared. I fully recommend it if someone has the space to make themselves a train cave. Can you fit a GP60 in a garden shed? It just happened to be a perfect space for a railroad. When I first came out here, it was just the studs with no carpet, no insulation, so I did all that to make it comfortable. A railroad in a depot. We have a lot of people come in just to see the building, for the architecture, for the type of craftsmanship that was in the building. I drive by the place and I don't want to go in there. And now there's something that I would stop by and see. There are good reasons to do things your own way. It's my thing. I count my own rivets. I don't want to be held to a specific era, a specific prototype, because there's too many things in railring I like. I started off in in-scale and actually did some in-track. You still have the look of the three tracks of in-scale, but tell me what the difference is now with the one track, because that's a new concept. Yeah, it's mostly just to have a single track mainline, as opposed to the three tracks which are sort of unrealistic in some situations. And some of these modules do have the three tracks, but for the most part it's all single track railroading. It's a mountain crossing, so the single track fits more in with that theme than the three tracks. And it makes a pretty good display layout. We basically run point to point as opposed to in a loop like most in-track layouts do.