If you read through the pages on building the benchwork and installing the track, you probably wondered, "OK, Bluejeans, when do we get to see a train actually run on your layout?"

Your wait is over--we made our first run with a pilot engine on August 15, 2007.  In recognition of how much Bluejeans owes the Air Force for where we are in life today, our Ready Made Toys "Beep" engine in USAF Minuteman colors served as the pilot engine making the the first complete circuit run of the layout's mainline.  We are operating in pure conventional mode using a post-war 275 watt Lionel ZW transformer Bluejeans bought at a train meet during his sophomore year of high school.  The outer mainline is controlled by the transformer's left controller; the inner mainline, missile railcar base yard, passenger station siding and stub tracks are handled by the right controller.

A few minutes after the pilot engine's run, a full train made the circuit without a fault.  For the trainwatchers in the audience, that's the K-line switcher from the Toy Train Operating Society's 1999 convention followed by a K-line Hershey's Syrup Tank Car, a Lionel Planters Peanuts Hopper car, a Lionel Budweiser refrigerator car, a Lionel Cracker Jack car and a Weaver boxcar carrying the Ross Custom Switches logo.  If you're wondering what the little squares are laying inside the inner mainline, they're paint squares for helping us pick out the color for the layout's roadway.  We took these with us to Cape Cod in September 2007 to match up with the real life prototypical environment.

On August 27, 2007, we ran both mainlines for the first time.

You're looking here at Ross Track installed in Ross Roadbed on top of one-half inch Homasote and three-quarter inch plywood.  There is no "rolling thunder" drum roll sound as many layouts experience due to poor sound deadening techniques.  That's good because immediately behind the photographer is our blues bar named (what else?) Bluejeans Place!

Let us leave you with a bit of trivia:  Bluejeans served a four year tour with the Ballistic Missile Office at Norton AFB, California which was the Air Force organization responsible for the design, procurement, testing and deployment of the Minuteman, M-X and Small ICBM missiles.  The "Minuteman in the Boxcar" concept was not a Lionel fantasy, but a true missile basing originally designed and tested for Minuteman, considered for M-X and then used for the Small ICBM missile garrison deployment in 1991.  Bluejeans, as the BMO's records manager, was able to retrieve the "Minuteman in the Boxcar" engineering records from the National Archives and provide them to the Small ICBM engineers, saving taxpayer money and system development time.   (If you ever go the National Museum of the Air Force, you'll see the "missile in the boxcar" on display out front.)  The end of the Cold War ended that missile rail garrison concept and BMO's existence, but that's fine--we still spanked the Russian bear and sent him home a loser!

Toy Train Layout Wiring and Control Panel