One of the better small locos to have come out in the last 10 years is the HO scale Trackmobile available from Broadway Limited Imports. I’m working on my unit to weather it into a loved if hard worked unit. There’ll be an article in April about how I weathered it and how you can do so too. The only drawback with this model is the dummy coupler on the front end. Somewhere on the internet I read about a change to the Trackmobile front where you add a shortened Kadee #58 coupler directly under the dummy coupler. Essentially the change was drilling and tapping a 2-56 hole in the bottom centre of the dummy coupler, shortening a #58 coupler and then drilling a hole in that for the 2-56 screw before screwing the two of them together. While not perfect it falls within the Kadee coupler height gauge requirements and allows the Trackmobile to be double ended. Saving the Hand from the sky (the 0-5-0 hand of god) traverser. Now, onto today’s site.

Site 1: RÜGENSHAVEN (Carendt.com)

Thomas Van Hare of Ashburn, Virginia, USA put this layout in the Carendt.com First layout design contest in May 2008. While the layout location is imaginary this HO Scale German fishing harbor corner layout Thomas says “involves a Timesaver (with eleven destinations), plus dual opposing Inglenooks, competitively running two DCC ‘Little Cow’ Trackmobiles”.

The layout features small fishing warehouses, boat maintenance facilities, fueling and supply shops, a fishing net manufacturer and marine diesel repair shop. At center is the harbor’s main canning smokehouse business, with two loading platforms.

You can find out more about the layout design challenge and the entries from the 2008 challenge on the Carendt.com site.