Lionel’s O gauge Wabash passenger set

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Once again Lionel is thinking outside the box regarding starter set road names. This three-car set gets points for offering something other than, say, the Santa Fe. It serves up the Wabash. The Wabash was a bridge route that ran from Buffalo, N.Y., to Kansas City, with branches to Omaha, Des Moines, St. Louis, Chicago, […]

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O gauge Alco switcher by RMT

CTT-PR0212_Alco-switcher

One great feature of the O gauge world is the uncanny knack of some enterprising folks to identify a needed toy train and then manufacture it. Whether you’re talking about hobbyists who create a cottage industry of making reproduction prewar and postwar train parts – or someone like Jerry Williams, who saw a market for […]

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The Ambledown Valley Railway

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Fairford, a Lynton & Barnstaple Manning Wardle 2-6-2T on the embankment and bridge between Hinton Magnolia tunnel and Higher Buxton. On the left of the line is Juniperus communis ‘Compressa’. Near it grow the red, fleshy leaves of a Sempervivum sp. Opposite, on the other side of the line, the bronze winter color of Cryptomeria […]

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To Chicago with Dad

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Grand Trunk Western 4-8-2 No. 6040 on the Maple Leaf stands beside Santa Fe E1 diesel No. 2 on the Kansas Cityan at Chicago’s Dearborn Station. Frank M. Rogers I think I was a railfan by the time I was 5 years old. My father had been a fireman on the Milwaukee Road since he […]

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New twist on intermodal

Motorists on I-94 must have done a double-take when this flatbed truck carrying Flagg Coal Co. No. 75 came rolling past on August 16, 2011. The 0-4-0 tank engine built in 1930 was headed to its home in Indiana after a weekend of operations on the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wis. Photo by […]

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Milwaukee Road swing bridge drawing

Milwaukee Road draw bridge

In the January 2012 Model Railroader, Jim Richards explains how he kitbashed a Walthers double-track swing bridge into an offset swing bridge. The prototype Milwaukee Road bridge Jim modeled first appeared in the July 1947 MR. […]

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Operating paperwork for the Virginian Ry.

Using a Boulder Creek Engineering digital scale Drew records the weights of loaded coal hoppers on a mine-block sheet

Using a Boulder Creek Engineering digital scale, Kalmbach Publishing designer Drew Halverson records the weights of loaded coal hoppers on a mine-block sheet. Model Railroader‘s HO scale project layout is based on the Virginian Ry. in Spring of 1955. It’s a 4 x 8 operating layout with a number of places that it can be […]

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