 
          tips about composition.  The two most important tips were
        
        
          “Present your subject simply and directly in plain English” and
        
        
          “Use active writing, such as ‘Paint the wall white’.” My writing
        
        
          tends to be passive and somewhat verbose, so I had to keep
        
        
          this in mind throughout the writing phase.
        
        
          Referring to the outline of the various construction steps
        
        
          that I made earlier, I broke the article up into four pieces:
        
        
          1) Background Information; 2) Girder modification; 3) New
        
        
          portals; and, 4) Painting and weathering.
        
        
          Next, I reviewed the photographs in each of the folders (A
        
        
          quick note – do not put the photos in separate folders when
        
        
          submitting them. Simply list them as "Photo 1(a), Photo 1(b)
        
        
          for different exposures of the same shot). I picked several
        
        
          bracketed exposures for each step and then wrote about
        
        
          Tom Patterson got his start in
        
        
          model railroading with a Lionel
        
        
          train set at Christmas back in
        
        
          the ‘60s. That train set even-
        
        
          tually became part of his first
        
        
          layout. Tom reentered model
        
        
          railroading in the late ‘70s
        
        
          and has been working on his
        
        
          current layout, the HO scale
        
        
          Chesapeake, Wheeling and Erie
        
        
          Railroad, a free-lanced coal hauler set in West Virginia, for
        
        
          almost 20 years.
        
        
          Tom and his wife have two grown children and live in
        
        
          Cincinnati, Ohio. They enjoy hiking, biking, reading and
        
        
          spending time with their family, which includes two rescue
        
        
          mutts and a large number of salt water fish.