Red Rock Mountain, just southeast of Hidden Valley. On top is the turntable and engine facilities. Scenery was made from recycled packing material. William Zuback The scratchbuilt power house building contains most of the controls for the D.E.U. Line below. Access is through the top. William Zuback It’s a busy day at the Hidden Valley […]
Will the U.S. rails-with-trails movement continue gaining momentum? Or will rail safety and congestion issues stop it in its tracks? In the September 2005 issue, Trains Magazine looked at the issues surrounding locations where recreational activities and active rail lines coexist in a shared space. Want to sample some of these trails yourself? Below is […]
At 17 feet, 5 inches, the caboose cleared all bridges and power lines on its 20-mile road trip. Steve Hendrix Preserving a 25-ton caboose in my backyard wasn’t something that I had always planned on. Sure, I liked trains as a kid and even have a small model railroad layout. But an HO-scale train circling […]
International steamship companies like Hanjin Shipping contract with U.S. railroads to move containers from ocean ports to inland terminals, and to ferry containers moving between Asia and Europe across the North American continent. Howard Ande Larry Gross is Senior Vice President – Marketing for trailer manufacturer Wabash National Corp., provider of the RoadRailer intermodal system […]
THE GENERAL ELECTRIC Rectifier was the first of several brick-shaped freight locomotives made by GE to satisfy the limited market for freight-hauling electric locomotives. In the mid-1950s the Virginian Railway, a regional carrier known for heavy coal trains and electric locomotives, sought replacements for its fleet of aging “square head” freight motors. Pleased with the […]
THE NEW YORK CENTRAL Hudson! Now there’s a locomotive nobody has done for a while. All kidding aside, the New York Central J-class Hudson is a locomotive that virtually everybody but Atlas O has produced. You have your choice of scale, semi-scale, or toy-like; prewar, postwar, or modern; and in S or O gauges. The […]
THE BUDD RAIL DIESEL Car (RDC) has a time honored place in railroading as well as toy train operation. Prior to World War II, America’s railroads tried to stem losses from passenger service on under-populated branch lines by use of various motorized car units that were collectively dubbed “doodlebugs.” These units often looked like baggage […]
STEAM VERSUS diesel, Godzilla versus Mothra, great taste – less filling. These are some of the significant battles of our time. Almost on cue, MTH Electric Trains and Lionel have released two O gauge locomotives that will challenge all but the gentlest of curves and the sturdiest of bridges. MTH offers the first three-rail model […]
Car trucks and carbodies Do you remember running boards and full-height ladders on box cars? They are known in the railway supply trade as freight-car components, and while running boards and full-height ladders have followed the telegraph key and the steam locomotive into railroad technological history, other components remain as key elements of the freight […]
SURE, EMD’S POPULAR GP7 and GP9 diesels sealed the fate of steam power. But often overlooked is Alco’s contribution in the battle against steam, the RS-1 road switcher. Atlas O has built a scale-sized model of Alco’s first real road switcher, the RS-1. Noted New Haven railroad historian J.W. Swanberg once wrote that the RS-1 […]
WAY BACK IN 1965, I showed Joe, my next door neighbor, my prize birthday present: a James Bond Shooting Attaché Case (made by MPC, no less). Joe, a grownup insurance salesman, opened it up, smiled, and said, “Boy, Bobby, you could commit mayhem with this!” Opening the box for the Operation Iraqi Freedom train set, […]
ONE OF THE MOST distinctive experimental locomotives of the 1930s was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s S1-class Duplex-drive 6-4-4-6 locomotive. Originally developed as a replacement for the railroad’s venerable K4s 4-6-2 Pacific locomotives, the big S1, of which only one was built, was designed to be a high-speed passenger engine, capable of hauling a 1,200-ton train at […]
