Did you ever look to your kitchen as source for free items to make your layout more visually appealing? With just a little paint and some imagination, items like pudding cups, freezer packaging rolls, and fast-food condiment containers can become stock tanks, flatcar loads, and much more! If you are looking for scale items, some […]
Lionel brass hybrid Strasburg 90 2-10-0 The history of Strasburg RR No. 90 starts with the Great Western RR, which purchased the standard light 2-10-0 Decapod from Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1924. After 40 years of traveling through the mountains of Colorado, the steam engine was sold to the Strasburg RR in 1967 for $23,000, […]
A group of five young men, who had been on Facebook O gauge groups and other online groups, decided to form their own group called the “Train Dads.” As you can guess from the name, the group is made up of hobbyists of a younger generation, and who are proud fathers to amazing kids. This […]
If you’ve read Model Railroader magazine for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed the hobby journey for many of our authors started with a train set. For baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, the set was often produced by Lionel or American Flyer. Fast forward a generation or two, and those sets were […]
Want to learn how to make some quick and easy flatcar loads for Christmastime? You don’t need an heirloom set or holiday-specific cars to make your own Christmas train. With a little imagination and a trip to your local arts and crafts store, you can find Christmas cargo that will turn almost any piece of […]
Get your toy trains ready for the holidays While cleaning out my parents’ attic I found my old trains. Even after I had grown up and moved away, Mom and Dad still used them for years around their Christmas tree. Now, however, my trains have been boxed up and haven’t run for five years. I’d […]
This is the one I’ve been waiting for: The Lionel VisionLine Big Boy. Anyone in model railroading knows that the Big Boy is an incredibly popular model. Only 25 of these 4-8-8-4 steam locomotives were built by The American Locomotive Company (Alco) with a primary purpose for high-speed freight and climbing grades over the Wasatch […]
Battery-operated kids train runs on Lionel FasTrack: Want to share your love of toy trains or even your layout without fear of little ones harming your prized possessions? Look for near-O gauge trains that may be compatible with O-gauge track. My kids received this battery-powered Caterpillar Construction Express train set that their older cousins had […]
In the spring of 1936, industrial design guru Raymond Loewy came up with a streamlined winner for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s glamorous Broadway Limited passenger train. Sleek, bullet-nosed, and skirted, Loewy’s upgrading of conventional K4 Pacific 4-6-2 No. 3768 captured the public’s imagination. People lined up to see the locomotive, which was dubbed the “Torpedo.” Learn […]
In 1938, toy maker A.C. Gilbert purchased the American Flyer Manufacturing Co. Production was moved from Chicago to Connecticut (Gilbert was based in New Haven). Gilbert turned the Flyer line upside down in the name of realism. Gone were sheet-metal steam and electric-profile locomotives with brassy trim and oversized features. They were replaced by realistic […]
Four years after the Budd Co.’s Rail Diesel Car made its debut in 1949, Auburn Model Trains announced the first O gauge model. This firm traveled the simplest path in 1953 when it installed a motor inside the shell of one of its streamlined passenger cars. AMT released Rail Diesel Cars in four road names. […]
I must have been 11 or 12 years old when I saw Lionel´s 1938 catalog. I turned to page 16 and saw locomotive 225E at the head of set No. 183E, a three-car freight train, and set No. 182E with three red passenger cars. I fell in love with the locomotive. It wasn’t the Baldwin […]
