Rapido has returned with the second release of its HO scale New Look buses, and this time the vehicles are packed with an array of intricate details and new features that come together to create a model that impresses with its levels of realism. The New Look buses were originally built by General Motors in […]
Electro-Motive Division’s GP30 was a pioneer of sorts: a herald of the second generation of diesel-electric locomotion on American railways. By 1960 most American railroads had an idea of what worked and what didn’t cut it in diesel operations. Watch Lionel’s Legacy GP30 run here. Builders such as Alco, Baldwin, Lima-Hamilton, and Fairbanks-Morse fell to […]
A standard-cupola caboose is the latest addition to the WalthersMainline series of HO scale rolling stock. The ready-to-run car is offered with two cupola window styles, see-through plastic running boards, and body-mounted Proto-Max metal couplers. The prototype The WalthersMainline model is based on a Great Northern (GN) prototype built by the International Car Division of […]
Jacksonville Terminal Co. (JTC), best known for its magnetically interlocking intermodal freight containers, is expanding its line of cars that carry those containers. The newest offering from the manufacturer is a 53-foot, 17-post National Steel Car double-stack well car in N scale. The cars have die-cast metal bodies, etched stainless steel details, and Micro-Trains Line […]
Here’s a bold idea: Ask some 200 people to take a chance on a new product, test it on their three-rail layouts, and then report what the maker got right – and more importantly, wrong. It’s something I’ve never heard being done in model railroading. But that’s what Midwest-based home-improvement chain Menards has done, releasing […]
Stockcars are among the types of rolling stock some railroads had a lot of. When it was time to move livestock to market, railroads would often make up entire trains of these or string together long blocks of them in their speediest freight trains. Since they were dealing with live animals, it was imperative they […]
Full-sized railroads loved EMD Geeps and kept ordering them from their initial release in 1949 right into the beginning of the 21st century. Railroads looking for new Geeps in the late 1950s bought GP18s until 1963, and now you can add that model to your layout in HO scale from Athearn Genesis. The Electro-Motive Division […]
When Classic Toy Trains Editor Hal Miller told me next up for review was a 4-6-0 steam locomotive, I remember scrunching up my eyebrows. My first thought was that it would be a frilly Ten-Wheeler worthy of an episode of the old Petticoat Junction or Gunsmoke TV series. I mean the wheel arrangement arrived in […]
With scribed wood siding, large windows and skylights, and a wealth of detail parts, Schaake Machine Works is a distinctive new entry to the HO scale craftsman structure market. The kit, from Canada-based Inter-Action Hobbies, builds into a compact, eye-catching industry that would look at home on a layout from the early days of steam […]
Atlas has re-released its HO scale General Electric U23B, this time with an available Electronic Solutions Ulm (ESU) LokSound V5 dual-mode decoder and several other refinements. General Electric’s (GE) U23B was produced from August 1968 to June 1977. Featuring a 12-cylinder FDL diesel engine, it produced 2,250hp. Most of the 1960s was dominated by horsepower […]
An Electro-Motive Division SW1200 end-cab switcher joins the ever-growing lineup of HO scale diesel locomotives from Rapido Trains. The model has an injection-molded plastic body with railroad-specific details; a die-cast metal frame, chassis, and gearboxes; and loads of separate, factory-applied, prototype-specific detail parts. The prototype Electro-Motive Division produced the SW1200 from January 1954 to May […]
Menards Santa Fe O gauge locomotive program is underway. Asking some 200 people to take a chance on this new product is bold. To request they test it on their layouts and report what the maker got right — and more importantly, wrong — takes even more guts. It is something I’ve never heard of […]
