Take a ride along the rails of Lou Sassi’s On30 Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes model railroad, as SR&L No. 15 shoves an extra train hauling a GoPro Hero 6 Black action-camera. To learn more about how Lou scratch built the camera car used to capture these stellar low-angle views, be sure to read the […]
Host Gerry Leone may be dangerously close to finishing off the town of Westcott, but he’s still found plenty more to do with scenery, structures, lighting, and those little details that help turn a space into a definitive place on his HO scale model railroad. But at the end of this episode, Gerry’s efforts come […]
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 […]
In the 60-plus years that N scale has been around, there has been a great deal of change in couplers. Rapido, an early manufacturer of N scale models (not to be confused with today’s Rapido Trains), let other companies use its coupler design. The wedge-front coupler, which was used on most N scale models (except […]
Prototype locomotives and freight cars have body-mounted couplers, but that hasn’t always been the case on N scale models. Truck-mounted couplers were the standard for many years. Today, almost all N scale locomotives and most newly tooled freight cars have body-mounted N scale couplers. The primary reasons for making the switch from truck-mounted couplers to […]
News & Products for the week of November 6th 2023 Model railroad operators and builders can get the latest information about locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, tools, track, and more by reading Model Railroader’s frequent product updates. The following are the products Model Railroader editors have news on for the week of November 6th […]
Railway Post Offices Mail moves by train In the 1830s, shortly after the establishment of the first railroads in the U.S., the Post Office Department began to ship mail by rail. The year 1838 saw some sorting of mail en route between Washington and Philadelphia, but the first Railway Post Office car is generally thought […]
Train sets – the gateway to model railroading: If you look at an author’s biography at the end of a layout story in Model Railroader, more often than not you’ll find that the layout owner got his or her start in the hobby with a train set. Sure, your first train set won’t look like […]
Central Vermont Railway Southern Division in HO scale | In Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area, a dedicated group led by Paul Weiss is passionately re-creating the Central Vermont Railway’s Southern Division as it existed in May 1956. This historically accurate project showcases meticulously replicated scenes from New London, Conn., to Palmer, Mass., portraying the […]
Scenery basics for model railroaders: There are a wide variety of easy to learn techniques that will make your model railroad scenery look realistic. Often folks look at photos of beautiful model railroads and assume right away that it’s just too hard, they could never do it. Well, that just isn’t so. Certainly model railroading […]
Model railroad track comes in many scales and varieties. At top is a section of Kato N scale Unitrack, an all-in-one type. Next is a piece of Atlas HO sectional track, and at the bottom is a piece of O scale track from Atlas O. The basics of model railroad track: Many hobbyists get […]
Also in this issue: ON TRAINS.COM, pg. 6 The latest features on our website FROM THE EDITOR, pg. 8 Creating a model railroad that lives on NEWS AND PRODUCTS, pg. 10 HO scale NYC class J3A 4-6-4 Hudson by Bachmann Trains reviewed, plus the latest new products ASK MR, pg. 18 How do I model a […]
