1. Retired but still active, Jerry and Alison Ogden maintain their Possum Creek Railroad to stay lush, with wall-to-wall plants they bought from Miniature Plant Kingdom. At this stage, six years after its initial construction, the trackplan still works and access is easy, but several unruly or languishing plants have been replaced. Jerry started with […]
At the turn of the 20th century, stunning, cathedral-like structures were commonly served by passenger-rail carriers. These stations were hubs of activity in major cities, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles and in between. The hustle and bustle within the walls reflected the height of passenger-rail service in the United States at the […]
Do you need to camouflage full-size items near your railway? Even though the 12 x 43 feet space in my yard is designated for my garden railway, I must share it with a couple of essential items that are full size, namely the composting bin and a storage bin. Every time I run my trains […]
Jools Holland and his railway empire Like many of you, my interest in model railways started as a young boy. In the Swinging Sixties, my father built me a small layout in our tiny, terraced house in not-particularly-swinging Greenwich on the River Thames in old Southeast London. Over the years I maintained an interest, and […]
CHICAGO — It’s a measure of how large CREATE’s 75th Street Corridor Improvement Project is that, even having been divided into more manageable parts, it’s still too big, from a financial standpoint, for one of those parts to be fully funded through the federal government’s Mega Grant program. So, when CREATE — the Chicago Region […]
LUCERNE, Switzerland — We went up another mountain today. Once again, our view from the top was almost completely obscured by clouds. And once again, no one minded much. This time around, the Trains/Special Interest Tours “Majestic Switzerland” tour made its way up the Brienz-Rothorn Bahn, a 7.6-kilometer, 800-mm gauge, steam-powered rack railway (that’s 4.7 […]
The caboose Steel caboose No. 3674 was built in 1941 for the former Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, originally numbered 90091. It was rebuilt in Grand Rapids’ Wyoming Yard by 1970 and brought up to the railroad’s modern standards, renumbered as 3674. After 16 years along the rugged main line between Russell, Ky., and Huntington, W. […]
Ten must-see railroad engineering landmarks: While unfortunate to lose the steepest, U.S. standard-gauge climb in North Carolina’s Saluda Grade, there are thankfully many other railroad engineering landmarks across North America that continue to stand the test of time. Whether experiencing them by train, trackside or a mixture of both, here are our ten must-sees from […]
Get in and out of your garden railway: Isn’t it usually when guests are watching that things get stuck in inconvenient areas of the railway? When we can easily get into those remote regions, without crushing that umpteen-hour project, it’s pure joy. However, one size does not fit all when it comes to solving railway […]
There is more to understanding railroad wayside signals than simply “green means go, red means stop.” To appreciate what the signals you see along the track are telling you, you first have to grasp a few basic concepts. Railroad traffic control boils down to three situations: trains running in the same direction on the same […]
Signaling has entered a golden age in the hobby. More options exist now than have ever existed before for modelers to add signals to their railroads. Resources and online groups allow access to information and photographs at an unprecedented level. Possibilities cover the full range of options from a single stand-alone manual signal to a […]
The Lionel Legacy H-15-44 accurately captures in O gauge a transitional model for the locomotive builder. With help from industrial designer Raymond Loewy of Pennsylvania Railroad S1 and GG1 acclaim, Fairbanks-Morse built a road switcher that could, for a time, be found pulling passenger trains. The Wisconsin-based company would continue with this same profile through […]
