CSX Transportation CSX Corporation was formed on November 1, 1980. Subsidiary CSX Transportation absorbed Seaboard System Railroad on July 1, 1986, and Chesapeake & Ohio, the only corporate survivor of the Chessie System Railroads, on August 31, 1987. Conrail (Consolidated Rail Corporation) After the failure of Penn Central in 1970, the government formed the United […]
FOR HE WHO stands still in today’s aggressive toy train market, all may be lost, and the staff at Williams Electric Trains has no intention of fumbling around, looking for a map! Williams wants to stay in out in front of customer satisfaction and variety. Williams has unveiled its latest addition to its economical three-rail […]
Visitors gather in the main gallery of the new O. Winston Link Museum during its grand opening ceremony on January 10, 2004. Robert S. McGonigal In Roanoke, Va., an estimated 1000 people attended grand opening ceremonies for the O. Winston Link Museum on Saturday, January 10, 2004. The museum, located in the former Norfolk & […]
ONE OF THE MOST recognized American locomotives is the bullet-faced Norfolk & Western J-class 4-8-4 Northern. Between 1941 and 1950 the railroad, which stubbornly supported steam locomotives while other roads embraced diesels, built 14 J and J-1 class locomotives, keeping them on the active roster until 1959. The notable exception to retirement was no. 611, […]
Caboose For more than a century, the caboose was a fixture at the end of every freight train in America. Like the red schoolhouse and the red barn, the red caboose became an American icon. Along with its vanished cousin the steam locomotive, the caboose evokes memories of the golden age of railroading. There are […]
Traffic control systems Running a safe operation is not as simple as you might think. Every train must have authority to occupy the main track before it can begin moving. There are several types of authorities, but usually only one type is in effect on any given piece of track. Maintenance people must also have […]
ONLY TIME WILL TELL if Flyer enthusiasts will move the setting of their layouts into the late 20th century. If they don’t, it isn’t because there are no contemporary diesels offered in S gauge. American Models has introduced the EMD SD60, the most modern American Flyer-compatible diesel on the market. Electro-Motive made the 3,800-horsepower SD60 […]
LOCOMOTIVES COSTING $1,000 or more seem to capture all the attention today, so we went down to our local hobby shop to find some locomotives that didn’t have “Rockefeller” as a last name. We found three moderately priced diesels that model three notable periods of U.S. railroad history and reflect three periods of O gauge […]
I’LL BE HONEST. When I saw the box with “GP60” written on the label, I sighed. Geeps may be the most modeled diesel in the O gauge world, and here was another. Then I took the Atlas O model out of the box and said out loud, “Holy smokes, this model is stunning!” Once again, […]
Q Why do automobile rack cars have TTX Co. reporting marks but also bear a logo from a railroad? – Gary Gergye, Marietta, Ga. A This started in the early 1960s when autoracks first came into use. Flatcars, with TTX reporting marks, were pulled from the Trailer Train pool, but the racks were purchased by […]
Broadway Limited HO C30-7 diesel General Electric’s distinctive chugging exhaust is included in this great-looking C30-7 model, the latest ready-to-run HO scale diesel locomotive from Broadway Limited Imports. It’s sold with or without a factory-installed QSI Quantum sound system and automatic dual-mode decoder that operates on layouts using either DC or Digital Command Control (DCC). […]
Bachmann’s E-Z Command system makes it easy to outfit a small HO layout with Digital Command Control (DCC). This new system was developed in partnership with Bernd Lenz, the inventor who gave his digital control system patent to the National Model Railroad Association (his system became today’s DCC standard). It’s a simplified “plug-and-play” package that’s […]
