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Wisconsin & Michigan Model Railroad Club Display | Catch up with Host Gerry Leone, as he chats with Dave Rickaby, President of the Wisconsin & Michigan Model Railroad Club, at Trainfest 2025 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! Dave shares details about their Midwest-based, Iron Range-themed HO scale modular layout. Founded in 1986, the club’s modules are built to […]
Milwaukee and model railroading share deep, historic ties. Model Railroader Magazine, Wm. K. Walthers, Inc., and the National Model Railroad Association all had their humble beginnings in the beer city. This rich heritage has fostered a healthy and diverse group of model railroad clubs throughout Southeast Wisconsin that are still active today. Finding these clubs […]
By the time you’ve laid and wired your track and installed your train and turnout control system, it’s easy to let construction of your new layout take a back seat to running trains. After all, the entire purpose of building the layout is to be able to have a place to enjoy operating your model […]
Host Gerry Leone faces a yet another challenge along the opposite side of his recently developed roundhouse space on his HO scale Bona Vista HO scale layout – finding another way to hide a train as it emerges from a hole in the backdrop! See how Gerry borrows the “air rights” concept from Model Railroader […]
Master Model Railroader Gerry Leone is back to give us an exclusive tour of the progress he’s made on the famed Bona Vista HO scale (1:87.1) layout! You’ll want to watch this update to see the latest work on a layout that’s featured in the pages of Great Model Railroads 2026 special issue magazine, now […]
We pick up where we left off in part one. Having recently completed the roadbed, track, and wiring on our East Troy Industrial Park project layout, we advance now to… Digital Command Control Digital Command Control (DCC) is the best way to power and operate a brand-new model railroad. The biggest advantage of DCC is […]
There’s nothing quite like that feeling of running a “first train” on a new model railroad. Although the scenery is still bare benchwork, the look and sound of those first wheels rolling under their own power along nickel-silver rails produces a thrill that never gets old. By the time we reach the conclusion of this […]
Facts and features Name: Chesapeake & Ohio New River Subdivision Scale: HO (1:87.1) Size: 19 x 24 feet Prototype: C&O New River Gorge and coal mine area Locale: Thurmond, W.Va. Era: 1957 Style: walk-in Mainline run: 102 feet Minimum radius: 30″ (24″ in Waynes-burg Mine wye) Minimum turnout: No. 6 Maximum grade: 1∕8″ per foot […]
You never know where change will lead you. What started out as an attempt to fine-tune my existing HO scale layout ended with a new house and a 2,600 square-foot, four-deck model railroad – the Sunset Valley Oregon System (SVOS). I started my previous Sunset Valley (SV) layout in 1959 and worked on it for […]
When I first started work on my layout, I built wood and plastic structure kits. I quickly grew frustrated with these buildings as few of them represented those found in Appalachia and along the Chesapeake & Ohio. Considering the lack of accurate building available on the marktet, I began scratchbuilding my own structures from wood […]
Tour the Pennsylvania & Western RR, Bob Bartizek’s impressive O scale (1:48, 3-rail) model railroad representing a fictional subdivision of the Pennsylvania RR in western Pennsylvania between 1949 and 1953. Though it uses 3-rail power and GarGraves Phantom-line O gauge track with a black center rail, the locomotives and rolling stock are all built to […]
I enjoy animating scenes on my O gauge layout, and have come across a great way to get slower, more-precise realistic action: using servos. A servomotor, or servo, is a small, inexpensive device that provides control over the position, speed, and acceleration of a mechanical system. The device is readily available, easy to program, and […]
