An Alco PA diesel and Berkshire 2-8-4 diesel meet on Tony Koester’s HO scale Nickel Plate Road model train layout. This timeline will help you choose an era for your model railroad. Tony Koester 1950: Dieselization. Ten Class 1 railroads had already dieselized before this year, including the Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay; Chicago, Indianapolis […]
Land of the giants O gauge brass 2-10-10-2 from 3rd Rail In the January 2010 issue, we reviewed Lionel’s O gauge version of a Santa Fe 2-10-10-2, which in the world of real railroading was pretty much a failure. Today we are reviewing 3rd Rail’s O gauge version of a Virginian Ry. 2-10-10-2 that in […]
Q I’ve read that when some railroads sent their steam locomotives in for a complete overhaul, they changed the main drivers to a disc type. Why would they do this?— Alex Jamieson, Chatham, Ont. A Changing to disc-type drivers was done on a case-by-case basis. The older style spoke drivers had a tendency to break […]
HO scale locomotives Electro-Motive Division GP9 diesel locomotive. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe; Baltimore & Ohio; Canadian National; Louisville & Nashville; and Pennsylvania RR. All available with dynamic brakes except for L&N. Digital Command Control, directional lighting, and E-Z Mate Mark II magnetic knuckle couplers. $89. October 2010. Ready-to-run. Bachmann, 215-533-1600, www.bachmanntrains.com Alco RS-3 diesel […]
LIKE THE PEACEFUL ELOI BEING DRAWN TO THE UNDERGROUND TEMPLE OF THE MORLOCKS in the H.G. Wells’ classic novel, The Time Machine, so do hundreds of thousands of people descend into the dim, man-made caverns of New York City. They are fired through the dark, rolling along in chariots of steel through narrow passages only […]
I read a lot of pleas for help from beginning garden railroaders, both in the form of letters to Garden Railways and queries on Internet discussion groups. Building a railroad can seem a daunting task, especially if you compare your patch of dirt with the finished showpieces featured in the magazine. Whenever I’m asked this […]
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 […]
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 […]
A Roundhouse “Fowler,” fitted with a coal-fired boiler by John Shawe, at work on the author’s garden railway near Toronto. Jeff Young photo When we acquire a small-scale live steamer, it is usually to run on an established garden railway. The selection of your live-steam locomotive was probably influenced by the physical characteristics of the […]
A Roundhouse “Fowler,” fitted with a coal-fired boiler by John Shawe, at work on the author’s garden railway near Toronto. Jeff Young When we acquire a small-scale live steamer, it is usually to run on an established garden railway. The selection of your live-steam locomotive was probably influenced by the physical characteristics of the existing […]
Intermountain Railway HO USRA composite gondola kit The latest HO scale car from InterMountain Railway Co. is this nicely detailed model of a United States Railway Administration composite gondola. The model combines sharply molded parts with ease of assembly and has an innovative choice of materials. Upon opening the box you’ll find an injection-molded plastic […]
What is an operating session? Operating sessions attempt to mimic the activities we see on a full-size railroad. To support a successful operating session, a garden railroad must have certain characteristics. There must be multiple industries where cars can be spotted. The more unique industry locations on the railroad, the better. These car spots must […]
