Modeling from postcards

Black-and-white aerial view of Crookston, Minn., looking east in the late 1920s.

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 […]

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Nighttime Operations on Dave Abeles’ Conrail Onondaga Cutoff

Railroading is an industry that operates around the clock, and modeler Dave Abeles proves that model railroads can roll just fine in the dark too! Watch the night moves from a trackside position on Dave’s Conrail-inspired HO scale layout, and then look for additional coverage of the model railroad in the September 2019 and February […]

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Nighttime Operations on Dave Abeles’ Conrail Onondaga Cutoff

Railroading is an industry that operates around the clock, and modeler Dave Abeles proves that model railroads can roll just fine in the dark too! Watch the night moves from a trackside position on Dave’s Conrail-inspired HO scale layout, and then look for additional coverage of the model railroad in the September 2019 and February […]

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Cody’s Trackside Finds

Four red CN high-cube distributed braking cars in the middle of an intermodal train.

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 […]

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Adjusting coupler height on passenger cars

The height of a knuckle coupler on an HO scale passenger car is checked with a Kadee gauge.

It’s important to mount couplers at the correct height and to do so consistently on all cars. Because of their length, passenger cars magnify the chance for unwanted uncouplings when track isn’t perfectly level. Of course, having made the car height accurate, I don’t want to change that, so to adjust coupler height I move […]

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Operating the N scale Bachmann 4-6-4 Hudson with sound; SD80MAC; iron ore book review

Man holding book at table with model trains.

In this installment, Cody test-runs Bachmann’s new sound-equipped N scale New York Central 4-6-4 Hudson, as well as Athearn’s Genesis 2.0 HO scale SD80MAC. He also looks at Jeff Wilson’s latest book, The Model Railroader’s Guide to Iron Ore Railroads. In addition, Cody shares tips about using Rails Unlimited reproduction railroad industry directories to improve […]

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Operating the N scale Bachmann 4-6-4 Hudson with sound; SD80MAC; iron ore book review

Man holding book at table with model trains.

In this installment, Cody test-runs Bachmann’s new sound-equipped N scale New York Central 4-6-4 Hudson, as well as Athearn’s Genesis 2.0 HO scale SD80MAC. He also looks at Jeff Wilson’s latest book, The Model Railroader’s Guide to Iron Ore Railroads. In addition, Cody shares tips about using Rails Unlimited reproduction railroad industry directories to improve […]

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The Hills Line with James McNab: Modeling prototype operating procedures, Episode 10

James McNab explains the operator's guide for his HO scale Hills Line layout.

Shall we play a game? Host James McNab is up for a round of Operations on his HO scale Hills Line layout! In this episode, he works from a perspective inside the cab of a locomotive to explain some of the prototype procedures crews follow to make running his small model railroad so interesting. […]

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