News & Products for the week of August 28th 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 August 28th […]
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Roadbed for main lines and spurs: Lots of modelers in all scales take measures to differentiate mainline track from spurs and sidings. Spurs are dead-end tracks leading to industries, loading ramps, and sometimes stations. Sidings are tracks usually parallel to mainline tracks and are double-ended so a train can take the siding, stop, and wait […]
3D printed structures in N scale: In the heart of Tehachapi, Calif., near the Union Pacific’s double-track main line, stands a steam-era Southern Pacific 65,000-gallon water tank. It was brought to the town from another location on the railroad after a major earthquake destroyed its predecessor on April 21, 1952. Without it, Tehachapi had a […]
A Pullman-Standard 4427 high-side three-bay covered hopper is making its debut in the Atlas O Premier line. The model, acquired when Atlas O purchased select M.T.H. tooling in March 2021, features plastic and die-cast metal construction and a mix of molded and separate, factory-applied detail parts. Prototype history The PS 4,427-cubic-foot capacity three-bay covered hopper […]
News & Products for the week of August 21st 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 August 21st […]
Meet Jerry Dziedzic What was your first train set (or locomotive)? How about three, in different scales? Like so many youngsters, a Lionel circle around the tree greeted me one Christmas morning. I suppose this was in 1956 or 1957. My dad had fun, too. He used two sheets of plywood to build an 8 […]
See what you’re really modeling: Does this ever happen to you? You’re driving down a street you’ve gone down a hundred times before and you notice a particular house for the first time. “Where the heck did that come from?” you’re wondering. My point is we can look right at things and not really see […]
Derailments of the curious kind: Several months ago, my operations chief Gordy Spiering and I were orbiting a couple trains on my N scale layout for a group of visitors and the same boxcar kept derailing at the west end switch in the town of Tehachapi. In a situation like that the show must go […]
An N scale loading ramp for Bakersfield: In 1979, Jim FitzGerald, remembered fondly by many of us N scalers as Mr. Ntrak, introduced me to the Tehachapi Loop and its environs, and my model railroading fate was sealed forever. I wrote a remembrance of Jim in the May 2014 Model Railroader for my N Scale […]
Tips for Body-mounted couplers on auto racks: When N scale got its start in Europe in the 1960s, its originators conceived it in the tradition of toy trains, with truck-mounted couplers that could negotiate sharp-radius curves. Some N-scalers began switching to body-mounts after Kadee introduced its N scale knuckle coupler in the early 1960s. (Kadee […]
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