MTH Premier line Canadian National 4-8-2

LET’S FACE IT: Most U.S. railroad enthusiasts don’t know much about the railways or trains run by our Canadian cousins. This is unfortunate, since the railroad history of the Great White North is just as interesting as that of the Lower 48. Until recently, the major toy train manufacturers applied Canadian National and Canadian Pacific […]

Read More…

K-Line Collector’s Club Pennsylvania RR A5-class 0-4-0

THE PENNSYLVANIA A5-class 0-4-0 may be among the smallest steam switchers this side of a tenderless tank engine, but K-Line Electric Trains has big hopes that its attractive switcher will draw new members into the company-sponsored K-Line Collector’s Club. The A5-class switchers consisted of 47 locomotives built in three groups in 1916, 1917, and 1924, […]

Read More…

MRC Model Rectifier Corp. “Pure Power AC” transformer

MR. ELECTRICITY can be a tricky old soul. For decades the electric train hobby was based upon the easy-going, plain but reliable unmodified sine wave. “Sine wave,” you say? Well, like the ocean, electricity moves in waves. The normal fluctuation of AC electricity in a traditional toy-train transformer forms a pattern known scientifically as a […]

Read More…

MTH Premier line Union Pacific M-10000

yellow and maroon

THE M-10000 UNION PACIFIC streamliner looks like something out of Astounding Science Fiction rather than the trade journal Railway Age. It was the first of the modern streamlined passenger trains, and its unique design, old enough today to qualify for full Social Security benefits, still stands out. Author Robert Reed, in The Streamline Era (Golden […]

Read More…

K-Line Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy

K-LINE’S O gauge Big Boy locomotive is made for John Q. Trainguy or Susy Q. Tinplater: the operator with a tight-radius layout and an equally tight budget, but who longs to operate trains at the Big Boy level. MTH and Lionel in their RailKing and LionMaster lines have used selective compression to build articulated locomotives […]

Read More…