March 2025 Issue

I was reading Ask MR column about the oyster cannery. When I read about the ground oyster shells for chicken feed, it brought back memories and goes back to my model railroad roots.
I grew up on an egg farm and cattle ranch. My family delivered eggs to many of the smaller towns and locally as well. We would use tons and tons of the oyster shell over the years for building the egg shells.
In the early 90s, we got out of the business as new equipment was needed and it couldn’t be justified. One of the buildings was later converted to a shop. Junior or senior year in high school, I started to build my first big layout in that shop from a 4x8 sheet of wood that came from the lumber yard as a weight for a piece of paneling. That evolved into the layout that I worked on until 2018 due to my late father’s sickness. Pieces of that layout (or planned parts) ended up in my current layout.

3 Likes