O GaugeWatch.com

How cool would it be to have a wall size poster of your favorite locomotive hanging in your train room or anywhere else in your house?   Since Fathead doesn’t offer train locomotive Fatheads you’ll need to get creative and make your own using a service called Block Posters.

Block Posters is a website that allows you to upload any image up to 1 Mb in size then enlarge it by choosing how many ’slices’ of paper wide it will be.  The slices can be A4 or Letter sized pieces of paper in portrait or landscape.  Once you size it, download the slices in the form of a PDF and print them.  Assemble the slices on the wall and, voila, you have a wall poster of your favorite locomotive.  The best part is the service is FREE.  Now the resulting poster won’t be photo quality, it will be pixelated and you may need to trim the border of the slices depending on your printer but the results are great.  Visit the Block Posters Image Gallery for some examples.  Oh, be sure your ink cartridges are topped off because you’ll burn a lot of ink.

The redesign of OGaugeWatch is almost complete.  The top or banner section of the new design calls for a great photo of an O Gauge layout.  Not having a permanent layout myself, my photos are limited to close up shots of my Christmas layouts, none of which seem quite right for the banner photo.  I’m looking for a more expansive shot of a larger layout showing O Gauge trains in all their glory rolling around or through tree covered mountains, over bridges or through/around cities.  The more scenery the better.   

If you have a great shot of your layout and don’t mind sharing it send it to me and I’ll consider it for the banner shot.  Photo submissions should be high resolution, show lots of scenery and feature one or more of your favorite locomotives.  Close ups won’t work as well as more expansive shots because I’ll have to crop out a piece of the photo to fit in the banner section (which measures 920 x 300 pixels).  I don’t have any prizes to hand out but I will credit the photographer and layout owner on OGaugeWatch.  I can easily change the banner photo and plan to if I can gather a nice collection of photos so don’t hesitate to send more than one.  Send the photos to dave(at)OGaugeWatch(dot)com.  Thanks for your help!

UPDATE:  Check out the banner photos at the top of the pages on www.toytrainsontracks.com to see great examples of the types of shots I’m looking for. 

There may be many of you that are unaware of the OGaugeWatch Flickr group.  Flickr is an on-line photo management application that makes sharing photos very easy.  About a year and a half ago I created the OGaugeWatch Flickr group so readers could share their favorite O Gauge photos with other readers.  Since its inception a number of great O Gauge photos have been uploaded to the group. 

It’s always fun to share photos of our favorite hobby so don’t be shy and upload photos of your layout or collection.  You can also keep track of newly added photos by checking the Flickr ‘widget’ in the left sidebar of the blog.  When new photos are added, the widget will display them.  Click on the widget to view the photos.

For more information about how to upload photos to Flickr (by the way, Flickr is free) you can read my original post about the OGaugeWatch Flickr group by clicking here.

O Gauge enthusiasts and beginners alike love to talk about and share
their experiences in the hobby. If you’re like me you have plenty of
photos of your layout , collection, and layouts you have visited at model train shows or clubs. And, like me, I’m sure you
can’t wait to show them off. Flickr is a great way to easily share all
your digital photos on the web. It’s easy to use and allows you to add
your photos to "groups" so you can share your photos with people of
similiar interests.

In the spirit of sharing, and showing off :), I set up the OGaugeWatch
Flickr group
so OGaugeWatch.com readers have a place to share their
O Gauge model railroad (or any other gauge) photos with others.

Click on the link below to read on

Continue to read Share Your O Gauge Photos!