Jools Holland and his railway empire Like many of you, my interest in model railways started as a young boy. In the Swinging Sixties, my father built me a small layout in our tiny, terraced house in not-particularly-swinging Greenwich on the River Thames in old Southeast London. Over the years I maintained an interest, and […]
In late November 1978, just after the Thanksgiving holiday, I was called off the Auburn extra board to deadhead to protect the Bremerton local. The Bremerton local had been abolished so the company would not have to pay a crew for the holidays (some things never change). I was a newbie, having only hired out […]
I scratchbuilt a large-scale grain elevator in 1:29 scale using PVC pipes, PVC boards, and styrene. To make the silos, I used 4” diameter PVC pipes. After cutting the pipes to the length that I wanted, I drilled holes through each pipe and used 2 threaded bolts to hold them together. The bolts run […]
J.B. Hunt and BNSF Railway today launched faster, more reliable premium domestic intermodal service that they say will eventually convert millions of truckloads to rail. The Quantum service — which revives a name that Santa Fe and J.B. Hunt used when they began their TOFC alliance in 1989 — shaves as much as a day […]
Prototype locomotives and freight cars have body-mounted couplers, but that hasn’t always been the case on N scale models. Truck-mounted couplers were the standard for many years. Today, almost all N scale locomotives and most newly tooled freight cars have body-mounted N scale couplers. The primary reasons for making the switch from truck-mounted couplers to […]
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Ballard Power Systems, which has provided the fuel cell engines for CPKC’s first hydrogen-powered locomotives, announced it has received an order for another 12 engines totaling 2.4 megawatts of power. The dozen 200-kilowatt engines, to be delivered this year, will support CPKC development of additional hydrogen fuel-cell locomotives for switching and […]
ALTOONA, Pa. – The Altoona Campus of Penn State University has donated a former Conrail SD60I road freight locomotive to the Railroaders Memorial Museum for continued use by undergraduate engineering students. Recently moved into the museum, the 3,800-horsepower unit is now available for public viewing in the Harry Bennett Memorial Roundhouse, near the restoration work […]
LOS ANGELES — Commuter operator Metrolink and the LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency, which oversees Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner, have expanded their codeshare program, allowing ticketholders to ride either train service between Los Angeles and Ventura. The new program, which began Monday, Nov. 6, is a pilot program currently scheduled to run through June 30, 2024. It […]
DULUTH, Minn. — The Lake Superior Railroad Museum’s Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range 2-8-0 No. 332 has returned to operation with weekend test runs. The locomotive ran Nov. 4 on the North Shore Scenic Railroad. The museum’s steam crew, headed by Scott Carney, operated the engine between the museum in downtown Duluth and the siding at […]
News & Products for the week of November 6th 2023 Model railroad operators and builders can get the latest information about locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, tools, track, and more by reading Model Railroader’s frequent product updates. The following are the products Model Railroader editors have news on for the week of November 6th […]
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 […]
Mind-blowing facts — New York Central passenger trains We are 50-plus years into the Amtrak era, which began on May 1, 1971. A few Amtrak trains still carry the identity of the conveyances they imitate — California Zephyr, Empire Builder, and Crescent — to mention a few. What lives on today is a contemporary train […]
