Great fun was had yesterday in Bowmanville and today in Woodstock! In addition to a couple of wonderful finds (and spectacular deals), the best part of both days was connecting with some model railroad folk and having some great conversations.

In Bowmanville, I bumped into Ralph Renzetti who does amazing weathering. Ralph has a great ‘how-to’ series on trainmasters.tv called Extreme Weathering. Ralph is a great source of information and recommended a fiberglass brush for distressing paint that works well. He also suggested I try a rubber cement fading technique that I am excited to test out. Ralph has also inspired an upcoming post that I am working on…stay tuned!

Sunday in Woodstock, I met up with Muskoka Steve who won first place in the YouTube Model Builders BIG Build Contest. A big congrats and kudos! I blogged about Steve’s fantastic Maple Leaf Mills model here. You can watch the big win on YouTube below.

Steve is very involved in NMRA and told me about the 15th Annual Hamilton & District Layout  (H.O.M.E.S.) Tour on Saturday, November 7, 2015. Layouts are open from 9am to 5pm (with a break for lunch, 12:30 to 1pm). There will be 20 layouts in various scales open to layout tour participants, several of which have never been on the tour before, and including the HOMES and Burlington club layouts. Mt Albert Scale Lumber will also be open for demos. More info here.

And a final shoutout to Luc from Sarnia, who you might remember from my first Sunday Shoutout. Luc is working on a new layout and it was great to hear about this plans. He also received a delivery at the show and is now one of the rare few that have a set of my HO scale beavers 3D printed from Shapeways. Always great to connect with friends, mentors and the folks who inspire me to be better and do better!