The Olympian Road

06/17/2026

Working to finish up the construction end of South Harbor before this weekend. Starting Friday evening and continuing for the next three weeks, not much work will be done on the layout itself as other obligations take us elsewhere. Using that time, I hope to get several videos done so that a new video every two weeks or so can be uploaded to the channel.

This Saturday (hopefully) a new video will be uploaded on the construction and overview of the South Harbor extension of the layout.

https://youtube.com/

Videos uploaded on that schedule will be between 15 and 30 minutes long, and not longer than an hour. This long form content is designed to be educational, as well as document the progress and creation of this railroad.

Please be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel so that in the near future we can Livestream! Still in the planning phase is a weekly livestream, likely to be on Thursday nights starting at 7:00PM CDT/CST (Chicago, U.S.). These livestreams will be easier to do than formal long form videos and we hope for it to become a place of community and comraderie. Livestreams will cover everything from layout construction to kit building, scenery, and much more!

Currently, the channel has 25 subscribers, which means we need at least 25 more to be approved for livestreaming!

Thank you all for your continued support of this project! Keep moving!

06/17/2026

A very productive evening in South Harbor tonight as the drop-down section between there and the climb up to the mine was built and roadbed laid on this new section.

The shelf section is 12" deep and will run atop the crew lounge couch headed towards the harbor. The harbor has two tracks: one which leads to the car float and another that is used for ore/gravel unloading as well as loading shipping containers onto flat cars. Leading into the harbor there is a passing track used for the passenger station, as well as a runaround should the need arise.

Its wonderful to see ALL BENCHWORK COMPLETED! 🎉 Trackwork will be finished as possible with little able to be done in the next three weeks due to other obligations. During that time, work will be done building rolling stock kits, repainting existing rolling stock, and finalizing certain plans for a potential rough-in operation session in July.

Once fully operational, scenery can begin (and will take a very long time to complete). Excited to have all this work to do! Many YouTube videos in the works, so please check out our channel and be sure to subscribe! In order to livestream we need at least 50 subscribers! We are halfway there! Livestream times are yet to be determined, but hoping to work around other modeller's streams.

Thank you all for following along here on the Oak Harbor Line!

06/14/2026

🔌 Officially Wireless! 🎉 Saturday, a TCS wireless controller and panel arrived to convert our NCE Powercab system to wifi/wireless. After only 4 screws and 5 minutes, the system was up and running. The controls have been easy to master and every instruction is explained thoroughly in the manual.

A huge thank you to Donald Irace (a follower of the page and operations master) for the suggestion to change to TCS! It was the right choice and has made even the limited operations we are capable of many times more enjoyable.

06/14/2026

Oak Harbor Line 605 rolls across the high fields between Fort Bourissa and Oak Falls with a mixed freight headed to South Harbor.

605 here is a stock Bachmanm On30 mogul, based on a Baldwin prototype. After some superdetailing and a repaint, this model will be a strong Porter mogul and represents the main power on the Oak Harbor Line.

06/13/2026

Our next YouTube video is live! This is a ahort timelapse of benchwork construction for the area that will be South Harbor. Its a little different from past videos, so hopefully its enjoyable. Please be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to our channel!

We currently have 22 subscribers, once we reach 50 YouTube will allow us to Live Stream! I hope to be able to stream at least once a week. Thank you all!

https://youtu.be/pz2eFqmcxJ8?is=is8M81Q8yupyVXx1

Benchwork wraps up for port city of South Harbor. this will be a hu...

06/12/2026

Things are busy here on the Oak Harbor Line as summer allows for more time to get work done. Two hours this morning meant that a pile of lumber became the South Harbor annex. Some door hinges and a bit more time will complete the drop-down section that connects South Harbor with the rest of the line.

Craftsman Kits are inbound from San Juan Car Company and Berkshire Valley Models. These rolling stock additions will finish out our freight fleet meaning that fast and safe freight service across Silver Island is soon to follow.

An array of Hawthorne Village coaches will be repainted for our passenger/tourist service, which is a vital part of keeping the island functioning. These should be complete before the fall rush as university students return to the college in Oak Falls.

Two Moguls have joined the fleet as our main power. Superdetailing plans are now in the works to turn these stock models into real headturners.

A forney arrived, damaged sadly, so requests have been sent to determine if it will stay or return and a new one ordered. The forney will likely be converted to a 2-4-2 + tender as certain curves on the line might prove too challenging for the swing of the tender on these forney models. This planned Columbia class will look like a smaller version of the Sandy River & Rangely Lake's Prairie type engines.

Lastly, WE ARE UPGRADING TO WIRELESS! A TCS controller and wifi interface should be arriving today to upgrade our current NCE system to wireless. This is extremely exciting and will allow for better operations in the future.

We hope to share more updates soon and will have a video on building the South Harbor benchwork soon! Please be sure to follow us on YouTube as after we have 50 followers we can livestream!

06/05/2026

Today, the UP 4014 rolled through our area... It was incredible to see such mass passing by under live steam! They really are "the last of the giants". We hope you enjoy this video uploaded to our YouTube channel!

Union Pacific (UP) 4014, one of the several 4-8-8-4 class locomotiv...

06/03/2026

Working on presentation last night with the installation of these drapes. Instead of building walls, just using curtains to help shape the layout room and seperate off some utilitarian areas of the basement helps create a nice finished appearance and almost looks like a stage for the railroad.

The best part about the curtains is that they can remain open the majority of the time to allow circulation in the basement which is important for humidity, heating/cooling, etc.

In a week or so we hope to be back working on the layout proper as more modeling time will be available in June and July.

Question for the other model railroads: how do you create the best presentation of your layout?

05/26/2026

Hello everyone! Its been entirely too long since we have had an update for the railroad...

FIRST -- Thank you for almot 400 followers on Facebook! We so deeply appreciate the support as you like follow and comment. We hope you find the content enjoyable!

This month (May) has been very slow progress here as its been incredibly busy in the "real world" and the time and money has not been available for many projects to get done. One thing that has gotten underway is the benchwork for the port city and the shelf for the tracks to run behind the crew lounge couch and connect with the layout. A drop down bridge will be constructed in front of the panel. Hoping for more more progress to be done during the month of June!

There are many projects to be done, but chief among them is finding more followers on YouTube! Currently we have 20 followers and we need 50 in order to stream live. If you could please help us get there, I would deeply appreciate it!

As always, thank you for every like, follow, and comment! See you soon!