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I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour we’ve taken of Amtrak’s short consists throughout the railroad’s history. Starting with the modern era, we then went back in time to the 1970s, then the 80s and 90s. This month, we’re looking at my favorite era of short Amtrak consists. Is it because that’s when I grew up? […]
Common name: Snow-in-summer, Mouse ear, Silver carpet, Chickweed Latin name: Cerastium tomentosum Plant type: Groundcover Plant size: 6-8″ high by 1-2′ wide; can be invasive USDA Hardiness Zones: 3-10 (short-lived in Zones 8-10) Cultural needs: Full sun (light shade in hot Zones), well-drained, moderately rich soil, water well after soil dries somewhat Snow-in-summer is an […]
Keep scenery looking its best: There are two main issues with aging scenery – dust build-up and fading. Battling dust is an inevitability and an uphill battle if scenery work is continuing elsewhere in the room. Both dust and fading occur gradually over the years and can be hard to spot. Water and rolling stock […]
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 […]
By Will Everitt An N scale locomotive resource celebrates an anniversary N scalers have questions. How does Athearn’s Big Boy compare to Broadway Limited’s? How can you tell the second run of Kato’s GP38-2 from its first? How do you remove the shell of a Fox Valley GP60M? What’s the (crazy!) production history of Con-Cor’s […]
I’m going to share 21 must-have gardening tools. Railroad gardening is a niche of general gardening with many overlaps. What I’ll cover in this column are the tools that fit particular jobs that come with gardening in general, but especially railroad gardening. You don’t necessarily need all these tools but most of them can find […]
Easier access to sneak track: Like model railroaders in other scales, most of us N-scalers are natural-born cheaters when it comes to layout planning. We set our design parameters, but then we start compromising them. Hey, it won’t hurt if we make this one curve a little tighter, or this aisle just a few inches […]
Classic Trains’ series “Diesels that didn’t” explores diesel locomotives that didn’t make it to large-scale production due to a variety of factors. However, some of those diesels made it to mass-production in the scale model world. Let’s take a look at the products offered to those modeling the diesels that didn’t. Electro-Motive Division BL2 HO […]
The 2400-series Lionel passenger cars have always been popular with operators and collectors. In the postwar era the plastic streamliners have been run in green with yellow trim, yellow with red trim, and silver with black trim and gray roofs. Q: I bought a great set of 2400-series Lionel passenger cars. They look fine and […]
Designing structure interiors with artificial intelligence: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a burgeoning tool with many possible uses. My last article on the topic, ChatGPT and the model railroad, explored the use of text-based chat tools like ChatGPT for model railroading purposes, including generating layout concepts. At the end of that article, I used an AI […]
Create mountains in your garden railway: If you want to model a mountain in order to add some cool accoutrements, like cribbing, cog railways, or trams, the civil engineer in you needs to survey your yard and figure out where best to place it. Would you like the mountain far away so it won’t block […]
Resurrecting N scale engines: Several years ago I bought a couple Athearn N scale Electro-Motive Division (EMD) F45 locomotives that came with factory-installed Digital Command Control (DCC) sound decoders. I was thrilled. Only two railroads had ordered these big engines, and one was my beloved Santa Fe. (The other was Great Northern, also well-liked.) The […]
