How to clean track on your garden railway

A drywall sander with a green Scotch-Brite pad next to gauge-1 track.

There are dozens of methods used to clean the rails in the garden. There are track-cleaning locomotives, track-cleaning cars, polishing wheels you can fit to the underside of a truck, blocks, poles with pads on the end—enough innovation to make a mousetrap inventor think his job is simple. These can be broken down into “manual” […]

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What’s next in the battle for Kansas City Southern?

Train with Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific locomotives passes one with Canadian Naitonal power

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Last year, a pair of infrastructure funds sought to take Kansas City Southern private. Last month, Canadian Pacific struck a $29 billion deal to acquire KCS. And today Canadian National topped that with an offer worth $33.7 billion. What’s next in the battle to acquire the smallest but fastest growing Class […]

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ScaleTrains.com HO scale CSX GE ES44ACs

Three locomotives lined up on a track

In 2019, CSX Transportation unveiled its Pride in Service locomotives, three General Electric (GE) ES44ACs painted to commemorate the service of military, first responder, and police personnel. Now, HO scale modelers can add these colorful locomotives with available dual-mode sound decoders to their fleets, thanks to ScaleTrains.com. The prototype. General Electric introduced the ES44 line […]

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Athearn Genesis 2.0 HO scale SD80MAC

Electric locomotive

An HO scale Electro-Motive Division SD80MAC diesel locomotive is the newest addition to the Athearn Genesis 2.0 series. The model features prototype-specific details, light-emitting-diode (LED) lighting, illuminated number boxes and ground lights, and see-through etched-metal pilot steps. A short-run diesel. The mid-1990s saw longtime locomotive manufacturing rivals Electro-Motive Division (EMD) and General Electric in another […]

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RailSmith N scale P-S 56-seat coach

two passenger cars side by side

A lightweight Pullman-Standard coach that saw service on the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Union Pacific, and others is available in N scale for the first time thanks to RailSmith Models. Built to PS plan 7510 starting in June 1946, these 56-seat day coaches replaced heavyweight coaches on name trains after World War II. A streamlined […]

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‘Amtrak Cascades’ to add two round trips on May 24

Talgo trainset in Amtrak Cascades paint scheme

SEATTLE – After months of periodic sellouts at the 50% capacity limit on a single Seattle-Eugene, Ore., round trip — the only daily Cascades corridor service for more than a year — the Washington and Oregon Departments of Transportation plan to add two additional round trips on May 24. But because Talgo, Amtrak, and the […]

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Digest: BC agency TransLink outlines ambitious long-term expansion plans

TransLink logo

SkyTrain network could double under TransLink long-term expansion plans British Columbia transit agency TransLink has unveiled options for long-term expansion that could double the size of the SkyTrain rail transit system, or see more than 400 additional kilometers (240-plus miles) of SkyTrain, light rail, and bus rapid transit routes. The website Daily Hive reports the […]

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Kickbacks

Tracks on coal transfer dock at night

Kickbacks Cars of coal are unloaded dockside by the Chesapeake & Ohio at this massive facility in Newport News, Va. Once unloaded, cars roll out of the dumper toward the camera, up a steep kickback track, and reverse direction down to the empties yard. Later they’ll head west for another load. Photo by W. A. […]

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