Great Model Railroads

REMEMBER THE OLD GAME “OPERATION?” The one advertised as “The goofy game for dopey doctors?” Players would take turns using electrified tweezers to remove plastic pieces representing the patient’s funny bone or breadbasket without setting off the buzzer. Though I knew several people who owned the game, I never met anyone who actually played it. The box was always beat up and pieces were missing. As model railroaders, we still play a game called Operation, and though it still uses electricity and tweezers, if you’re doing it right there are no wrenched ankles involved. We select the layouts we feature in Great Model Railroads based on the quality of modeling shown in the photos submitted. A great model railroad can qualify on that criterion alone; actually being an operating layout isn’t necessary.…

AROUND THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, when the mountain-climbing Allegheny Midland had occupied my basement for a quarter of that time, I decided it was time to model a different type of rail-roading. I had spent the early 1950s living along the New York, Chicago & St. Louis RR (Nickel Plate Road) St. Louis Division and got to witness the last four years of steam operation. I also saw one of its two nocturnal Cleveland-St. Louis passenger trains pulled by a single Alco PA-1. That looked like a good modeling candidate to me. Glenn Pizer and I had founded the Nickel Plate Road Historical & Technical Society (nkphts.org) in 1966, so I had access to a wealth of information to accurately model this prototype. Many manufacturers had produced accurate models of…

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of model railroading is good communication between the maestro controlling the pace of operations and those carrying out his or her instructions. I model a single-track railroad that was dispatched using timetable and train-order (TTTO) rules, so the chain of command is the superintendent (me), chief dispatcher, dispatcher, operators, and train crews. I’m usually busy answering questions, fixing something, or just keeping out of the way. That works because my chief dispatcher, Jim Schweitzer, keeps his finger on the pulse of operations and coordinates train movements between the yardmasters and dispatcher. The yard at Frankfort, Ind., is divided into eastbound and westbound yards, so general yardmaster Jim Dalberg is the one with whom Jim Schweitzer communicates to be sure everything stays fluid – especially the…

I’M RAPIDLY CONVERTING my waybills to scaled-down versions of actual waybills that still fit in the same bill boxes used by the popular 2 × 4-inch car cards. They work about the same way as the four-cycle waybills, except that the bills are stacked like a deck of cards in clear plastic sleeves. They can be intermingled with the four-cycle waybills until the old ones are gradually replaced. We’ve been using them for quite a while now, and I find them more realistic and easier to use than the four-cycle bills. I use Micro-Mark wood bill boxes, with one slot for each track where a car can be spotted. Bills for cars to be picked up face outward; bills for cars just set out are dropped into the box behind them facing…

TRAINS OF ALL SIZES have fascinated me since I was a little boy growing up in Denmark. My parents wouldn’t buy me an HO train set because they thought my interest would fizzle out after a short time. (Boy, were they wrong!) I had to settle for a Lego train. Once grown and finally able to afford it, I started modeling HO scale in 1986. My first house was very small with no separate train room, so I put it in my 10 × 11-foot bedroom, suspended from the ceiling and covering the whole room. It had a pulley system to lower it for construction and operation. It was very cumbersome to lower and raise. After the pulley anchors came loose from the wall twice – resulting in the layout crashing…

THE STAGING YARDS are automated with a system I designed and built. At the end of each track is an infrared occupancy detector that cuts off the power so the train stops and the sound goes off. When the train must leave the staging track, there’s an override function which turns the power back to the track for two minutes, long enough for the entire train – including distributed power – to clear the detector. Controlling the routes in and out of the staging yards can be done from the dispatcher screen or from a panel on the fascia. I was lucky to have acquired a couple of Lenz LW100 Tower Cabs about 20 years ago. They were discontinued more than 15 years ago because the parts manufacturer discontinued the main processor…