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Tag: Build a Garden Railroad
A Lionel GE locomotive history
The Lionel-GE locomotive history arguably goes back more than a century. The first General Electric models made by the toy train manufacturer in electric and diesel profiles were separated by about 60 years. The internal-combustion model came almost a decade-and-a-half after GE started making that type of engine. Lionel GE locomotive history General Electric entered […]
Locomotives We Love: Lionel No. 2065 steam engine
Roger Carp is Senior Editor of Classic Toy Trains and the author of numerous books about the toy train collecting hobby. What toy train locomotive means the most to you? My favorite toy train locomotive is the Lionel No. 2065 steam engine. This small Hudson isn’t the biggest, heaviest, or most expensive, but everything desirable […]
C&O book showcases photographer William M. Rittase
The railroad industry has created more than its share of publicity photographs over the past 150 years. Here, standing in Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Memorial Library, I’m surrounded by tens of thousands of them, mostly 8 x 10 black-and-white prints, all of which came flooding into the company after the 1940 launch of […]
Railroads that live ‘forever’ … on paper
Like trilobites and brachiopods, the paper carcasses of 19th-century railroads seem forever locked away in the sediments of corporate archives and government files. They fill the pages of old Official Guides and Poor’s Manual of the Railroads by the hundreds. Nearly all of them are dormant — but some are not. Consider the case […]
Trains, June 2023
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The history of Heritage Fleet column and toy trains
The history of the “Heritage Fleet” column is an interesting one. This regular feature in Model Railroader magazine between March of 1987 and March of 1990, helped toy train enthusiasts and scale modelers discover classic miniature locomotives, cars, and more designed and sold in the first 50 or so years of the 20th century. In […]
Lionel Sandy Andy Automatic Gravel Loader
The Lionel Sandy Andy Automatic Gravel Loader was part of the catalog in the late 1970s. It’s a shame it didn’t last longer because it’s among the most interesting products the company ever made. It’s not neat because of what it does; after all, Lionel produced numerous coal and gravel loading and dumping structures over […]
Aiken, S.C., keeps its railroad traditions
On a day when snow is flying back home in Milwaukee, I’m 900 miles away, luxuriating in 70-degree temperatures and enjoying the refreshing shade of the huge live oak that hugs the generous eaves encircling one of the South’s most distinctive train stations. The building is a replica, but don’t hold that against it. […]
Kitbash a Texaco gas station
I had an idea to kitbash a Texaco gas station using pieces of a broken Wells Fargo Pola building. I wanted the station to look like something from my memories. I had a drawing of a similar station that I’d made back in the 1980s. My building looks similar to this drawing. First, I carefully cut […]
Trains, May 2023
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Jeff Schmid was a railroader’s railroader
Presumably, David P. Morgan never met engineer Jeff Schmid. The late editor of Trains magazine died in 1990, just as Schmid’s career as a BN engineer was spooling up toward greater things. But D.P.M. had Schmid down to a “T” when, way back in 1956, he described a gallant New York Central engineer he encountered: […]
