Menards Cripple Creek Rail Maintenance Office

structure with green base

After a long day of track maintenance or repairing rolling stock, a rail employee needs a place to sit down and catch up on paperwork or perhaps schedule tomorrow’s activities. The Cripple Creek & Western crew can now do just that — Menards has released the Cripple Creek Rail Maintenance Office (No. 275-9491). The ready-to-use […]

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Lionel releases 2025 Volume 2 catalog

catalog page with locomotive set

Lionel Trains has released a 2025 Volume II catalog. The 44-page book includes new items in the Legacy, LionChief, Star Wars, and Accessory lines. Highlights include a Santa Fe Super Chief set (No. 2622020), which includes two F3A locomotives, two F3Bs (one unpowered), baggage car, Pullman sleeper car, dome car, diner, three sleeping cars, and […]

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Changing the wick in a modern fan-driven smoke unit

Burnt wick taken out of a smoke unit

Is your locomotive struggling to produce a good amount of smoke, even after cranking up the smoke volume and adding fluid? While it’s not the one-and-only culprit, a charred smoke wick is a common problem.  The wick is a strand or braided fiber glass material in the smoke unit’s heating chamber. It generates the smoke […]

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News & Products for the week of August 11th 2025

A blue, white and red model locomotive

News & Products for the week of August 11th 2025   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 11th, […]

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More sources for O gauge figures

model figures in front of model train layout

In the Spring 2025 issue of Classic Toy Trains, there was an article about figures for O gauge, which ended by asking for readers’ suggestions of other ranges of figures. My layout includes figures from a number of sources not included in that article, so I thought I’d share some with your readers. My trains […]

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Lionel’s 1938 remote control automatic couplers

Classic Toy Trains magazine logo

I found this manuscript from the late John Grams in our manuscript files. There was no date on the envelope but it’s likely from the early 1990s. The article discusses 12 Lionel products that, while great inventions, were fraught with problems or didn’t work exactly as advertised. He included the following disclaimer: Lionel trains were […]

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RMT 40′ PS-1 boxcar

red, black, and gray model boxcar

The Pullman-Standard 40-foot PS-1 boxcar was first introduced in 1947. You can learn more about the full-size cars in this WalthersMainline review from the February 2016 issue of Model Railroader magazine. Ready Made Toys (RMT) sent us a sample of its Pullman-Standard 40-foot PS-1 boxcar with Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) graphics. If CPKC isn’t […]

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Cody’s Office | August 2025

Image of man with brown hair, glasses, and gray shirt holding a book with two model trains in foreground and HO scale layout in background.

Welcome to the August 2025 Cody’s Office! Perhaps we should have called this the Consolidation episode, as we’re on program number 2-8-0. This month the show starts with an exciting lineup of products. First up is the HO scale Fairbanks-Morse H16-44 from Rapido Trains. Features on the four-axle road unit include an injection-molded plastic body, […]

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Cody’s Office | August 2025

Image of man with brown hair, glasses, and gray shirt holding a book with two model trains in foreground and HO scale layout in background.

Welcome to the August 2025 Cody’s Office! Perhaps we should have called this the Consolidation episode as we’re on program number 2-8-0. This month the show starts with an exciting lineup of products. First up is the HO scale Fairbanks-Morse H16-44 from Rapido Trains. Features on the four-axle road unit include an injection-molded plastic body, […]

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News & Products for the week of August 4th 2025

A white and red model caboose

News & Products for the week of August 4th 2025   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 4th, […]

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Building an underground copper mine

train with ore cars leaving mine

For well over a century, copper mines and their structures dotted the landscape in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I was born there and several generations of my family worked in the mines. The last one closed in the late 1960s, marking the end of an era for thousands of people.  Most of the facilities were removed […]

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