ONE NEAT THING about the larger scales is that you can enjoy a quality product in ways that you can’t in, say, N scale. You might have the world’s most detailed car or engine, but you need a magnifying glass worthy of Sherlock Holmes to appreciate it. Enter S-Helper Service. The firm’s freight cars contain […]
THE WILLIAMS E60 electric locomotive has the distinction of being the first modern O gauge electric locomotive offered by any manufacturer other than Lionel. It is also notable that the first E60 offered by Williams Electric Trains predated the creation of Classic Toy Trains by more than a decade! The prototype E60 is a General […]
WALTHERS’ NEWEST additions to its Cornerstone line of O scale structures are attractive, easy to assemble, and flexible enough to fit a wide variety of modeling eras. I assembled kits for the Steel Water Tank, the Interlocking Tower, and the Five Star Service Gas Station. All three plastic kits went together easily. The only tools […]
THE GENERAL ELECTRIC Rectifier was the first of several brick-shaped freight locomotives made by GE to satisfy the limited market for freight-hauling electric locomotives. In the mid-1950s the Virginian Railway, a regional carrier known for heavy coal trains and electric locomotives, sought replacements for its fleet of aging “square head” freight motors. Pleased with the […]
TIME MARCHES ON in both reality and the toy train world. Electric boxcab locomotives often replaced steam engines, streamlined GG1s replaced boxcabs, and finally the venerable GG1s fell victim to the passage of time and were replaced by the AEM7 electric. AEM7 you say? In the mid-1970s Amtrak saw the handwriting on the wall. The […]
IC CONTROLS HAS taken another step to enhance the flexibility of the Lionel TrainMaster Command Control system. IC Controls’ BPC3000 is a block power controller that allows operators of larger, multi-block layouts to run a combination of conventional and command-equipped locomotives at the same time using shared command control components. The BPC3000 acts like a […]
THE NEW YORK CENTRAL Hudson! Now there’s a locomotive nobody has done for a while. All kidding aside, the New York Central J-class Hudson is a locomotive that virtually everybody but Atlas O has produced. You have your choice of scale, semi-scale, or toy-like; prewar, postwar, or modern; and in S or O gauges. The […]
THE BUDD RAIL DIESEL Car (RDC) has a time honored place in railroading as well as toy train operation. Prior to World War II, America’s railroads tried to stem losses from passenger service on under-populated branch lines by use of various motorized car units that were collectively dubbed “doodlebugs.” These units often looked like baggage […]
THERE ARE AN almost infinite number of ways to display your trains. You can go to the hardware store, buy some lumber and braces and attach your own shelves to a wall; you can buy bookshelves and convert them to display cases; you can haunt “going out of business” sales and procure surplus retail display […]
FOR HE WHO stands still in today’s aggressive toy train market, all may be lost, and the staff at Williams Electric Trains has no intention of fumbling around, looking for a map! Williams wants to stay in out in front of customer satisfaction and variety. Williams has unveiled its latest addition to its economical three-rail […]
A DRUM ROLL, please. This product is unlike any locomotive created in the history of Lionel. This is the first articulated engine ever produced by Lionel. It is the largest engine ever done by the firm and may even surpass the fabled no. 700E scale Hudson in its amount of prototypical detail. This locomotive is […]
LIONEL’S CLASSIC GANTRY cranes combine realistic looks with unmatched accessory action. I’ve wanted one for years, and when Lionel announced that it would include an updated version of the last postwar crane (the no. 282R) in its Postwar Celebration reissue series, I made a place on my layout for one. Then I waited, not always […]
