Bob Bucklew began his modeling
career at age 8 with a Lionel train set
from his uncle. Though the Lionel was
traded for HO scale, the pleasure of
model railroading has remained.
Bob got serious with model railroad-
ing while working for Excelsior Truck
Leasing, a Penn Central and later
Conrail subsidiary.
His current layout was begun almost 30 years ago, an HO
scale free-lanced Quaker Valley Railroad set in western
Pennsylvania in 1977. It employs a JMRI CTC panel to control
the NCE layout. He recently authored an online tutorial on
construction of the panels using JMRI software.
Bob and his wife, Lynda, live near Reading, PA.
feature allows me to have a double track scenicked gate with
no interference.
The cam action also provides a solid stop when the gate
is closed. Most times I don’t even find a lock necessary to
secure the gate in the closed position. I did add a common
brass gate lock to the front edge of the gate, as shown. I con-
sidered replacing it with an electronic door latch to permit
the dispatcher to control access. In 25 years, we have not had
an accidental opening of the bridge under a train.
Power to the rails on either side of the aisle is straightforward.
I routed this power up through the wall and across the sus-
pended ceiling to make both sides part of the same electrical
block. I then ran wires to the four rails on the bridge, and have
them crossing to the fixed part of the layout almost parallel
