How to use some basic airbrushing techniques

Hand holding an airbrush

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page In this video Model Railroader associate editor Cody Grivno shows you how to get started using an airbrush. You’ll learn about some of the different types of airbrushes, how to mix paint, and proper airbrushing techniques. […]

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A new way to unload sand

This story was related to me by those personally involved in a new but somewhat less-than-satisfactory method of unloading sand. The time was in the middle of the Great Depression. The locale was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the “U.P.” The two unloaders were the sons of a local Methodist preacher, long in spirit and […]

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A South Bend tradition

SSL100

Two of the South Shore Line’s air-conditioned M.U. cars stand at the road’s downtown South Bend, Ind., depot on La Salle Street in 1967. H. G. Goerke; J. David Ingles coll. It was about 14 years before this evocative photo was snapped by my late train-chasing buddy Hank Goerke that I first stepped off a […]

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Steam in the atomic age

CV461

CV M-5-a 461, the same class of 2-8-0 entrusted with atomic loads, nears Amherst, Mass., with a Palmer-Brattleboro local in 1950. Robert P. Brittin, Douglas J. Brittin coll. As a child in the mid-1950s, I was privileged to witness several “secret” military moves on the Central Vermont Railway. Given the high state of security surrounding […]

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Two more ways to wye

Louisville Nashville freight 864 from Norton Va to Corbin Ky meets Southern First 88

Louisville & Nashville freight 864 from Norton, Va., to Corbin, Ky., meets Southern First 88, a coal turn from Andover to Yuma, Va., on the wye at Appalachia on May 23, 1969. Although wyes are commonplace on prototype railroads, they can be challenging to model. Ron Flanary A “wye” describes an area where three turnouts […]

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An aggravating situation, with a 1940s solution

ATSF3243sfw

Santa Fe 2-8-2 3243 climbs west toward Summit, Calif., in 1952. Chard Walker In the early 1940s, when steam locomotives were supreme, I worked on the Santa Fe around Los Angeles. At Redondo Junction, today the north end of the “Alameda Corridor” to the L.A. and Long Beach harbor facilities, Santa Fe’s Harbor Branch left […]

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How to use cardboard strips for model railroad scenery

Side of model train layout with cardboard strips

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page Model Railroader associate editor Cody Grivno shows you how to use a web of cardboard strips and plaster cloth to make a sturdy model railroad scenery base. Cody used this technique for a stretch of scenery on the Model Railroader HO scale club […]

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How to use cardboard strips for model railroad scenery

Side of model train layout with cardboard strips

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page Model Railroader associate editor Cody Grivno shows you how to use a web of cardboard strips and plaster cloth to make a sturdy model railroad scenery base. Cody used this technique for a stretch of scenery on the Model Railroader HO scale club […]

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‘Foreigners’ at Bensenville . . . and beyond

MILWonEL

West of Huntington, Ind., on the Erie Lackawanna, in March 1976, an EL U25B and GP35 back down to an eastbound freight brought in from Chicago by Milwaukee Road F units. Mike Schafer When I started with the Milwaukee Road in 1971, in road service, the railroad was desperately short of motive power. To help […]

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Build a quarry branch

Winter Hill 1

Model Railroader’s HO scale Winter Hill project layout Model Railroader‘s 2013 project layout is located on our HO scale club layout, the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy. It’s a 2 x 12-foot scene with many interesting aspects including making the quarry pit for Larson Stone Co. extend into the aisle. Registered users can click the following […]

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