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Welcome to the first of a three-part series where I’ll show you the various modeling information you can learn from postcards. The cards in this series are all from Crookston, Minn., my hometown and the focus of my modeling research. Similar postcards can be found for most communities. Online auction websites like eBay are a […]
If you’ve been trackside in the past five or six years, you’ve probably noticed blue metal signs at grade crossings. These are called Emergency Notification System signs, or ENS for short. The top two lines of the sign read “Report problem or emergency.” Hazard may be used in place of problem in some instances. Below […]
When I first moved to Wisconsin to start working for Model Railroader, my family and I were in a two-bedroom apartment. I had built a freelanced Pennsylvania RR layout in my apartment back in Pennsylvania that filled a 7 x 11-foot section of our long apartment living room. It was basically a donut, with a […]
If you ask a layman to define a train station, they’ll describe a big building where people buy tickets and wait to board passenger trains. A slightly more knowledgeable person might also mention the presence of freight and baggage facilities and railroad offices. But when we talk about railroad operations – whether of the full-size […]
Eric White couldn’t find a Northeastern style caboose painted for the Lehigh Valley, but a vendor at a train show had several models in another paint scheme. In less than an hour, Eric had a model that was ready for new paint. Watch this video to see how he stripped the original paint. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT […]
In this quick how-to video, Eric White shows you how a little bit of filing can go a long way when trying to fix the pesky wobble on a boxcar. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Ready to run models can be great, but sometimes you need to do a little tuning. Take a look at this. You […]
In this quick how-to video, Eric White shows you how a little bit of filing can go a long way when trying to fix the pesky wobble on a boxcar. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Ready to run models can be great, but sometimes you need to do a little tuning. Take a look at this. You […]
Welcome to Cody’s Trackside Finds, a new series on Trains.com, where we’ll look at interesting locomotives, freight cars, structures, or details that I’ve come across while railfanning. In these entries, I’ll provide some background information on the subject, give you some modeling tips, and most importantly, encourage comments from the Trains.com community. Do you have […]
Why do you stage a model train layout? Let’s be clear about the need for staging. Unless you’re modeling a very small railroad or perhaps a branch line, you’re faced with the need to simulate the connections that the part of the railroad you’ve opted to model makes with the rest of that same railroad […]
Classic Toy Trains Editor Hal Miller prowls the dollar store aisles in search of inexpensive items that are useful on the workbench or layout. […]
Sketching with Steve The good old 4 x 8 train table is a tradition – if not a cliché – for a reason: plywood comes in 4 x 8-foot sheets. When our dads or grandpas bought us our first train sets for Christmas, they often nailed that simple oval or figure-8 onto a table made […]
The stainless steel finish for passenger cars made of plastic is typically silver paint that lacks the mirror sheen of real stainless. Even the plated finishes of the brass models don’t have a realistic stainless look, and plated cars from different makers don’t match. I hadn’t found a finish I really liked, though, until I […]
