Five inexpensive garden railroad tools

Grouping of old toothbrushes

Here are five tools for a garden railroad you can make or obtain cheaply. 1. Make a ballast broom If you do a lot of reballasting (or ballasting) on your railway, take an old 4-inch paint brush and attach the handle with screws to an extension pole about 3 feet long. This becomes a mini-broom […]

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Common scales of large scale trains

common_scales_lead

Common scales of large scale trains: Most of us have had this experience as we got started in garden railroading: You go to the hobby shop or look online, looking for equipment for your new railroad. It’s all large scale and it all looks good. But the more you look, the less comprehensible your choices […]

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Build plywood tipper cars

tipper_cars

Eric Schade Starting in the December 2018 issue, author Eric Schade explains how he built tipper cars from scratch. Download his drawings here and follow along to build your own cars. […]

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PDF: Build the Arnold S. tugboat

Build the Arnold S. tugboat

Download the plan to build a 1:24-scale tugboat. Part 1 Part 2 Note: This PDF is formatted to print on your home printer. Most pieces are formatted to fit on a 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper. For larger parts of the plan, you will see “break lines.” Line up the break lines to create […]

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Build a sugar industry caboose

caboose_plans

Thomas A. Yorke Thomas Yorke presents the third of three scratchbuilt projects in the August 2018 issue. Download these full-size drawings of his caboose and follow his instructions in the magazine. You will also need the basic flatcar drawings from the April 2018 issue for this project. Note: This drawing is broken into two pieces. […]

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Build industrial-railway tank cars

tank_cars

Thomas A. Yorke Thomas Yorke starts the second of three scratchbuilt projects in the June 2018 issue. Download these full-size drawings of his tank cars and follow his instructions in the magazine. You will also need the basic flatcar drawings from the April 2018 issue for this project. […]

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PDF: Build Gull Pond Station

Download the plan to build a 1:22.5-scale station. To learn more about converting this to another scale, see our free conversion chart.Click on the icon to download this PDF project.Part 1 Part 2 Note: This PDF is formatted to print on your home printer. Most pieces are formatted to fit on a 8.5″ x 11″ […]

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