Garden Railways February 2017

Since magazines first started being archived on DVDs it has been my hope that Garden Railways would one day be able to follow suit. I’m delighted to announce that this is coming to pass, and that the first 32 years of GR, plus a bunch of extras (see below), will be available in just a couple of months. We have been working on this top-secret project for nearly a year. Putting decades of a magazine into DVD format is no small task. While it’s true that our issues in recent years have been produced in digital format as well as print, all of those in preceding years were not. For those years, each and every page had to be scanned—a total of 12,808 for the magazine alone. Those pages, combined…

PRODUCTS Engines & rolling stock Bachmann Trains, 1400 East Erie Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19124, is offering a large-scale speeder in four paint schemes: Union Pacific (#96250), PRR Maintenance of Way (#96251), Santa Fe (#96252), and Maintenance-of-Way Orange (#96253). The unit features a flashing strobe light, operating headlight, and two figures. Price: $139. Also from Bachmann is “Winston,” a newcomer to its line of large-scale Thomas & Friends rolling stock. It features hook-and-loop couplers and metal wheels. Price: $179. Website: www.bachmanntrains.com LGB has announced a new steam-outline Porter locomotive (#L24772) lettered for the Lehmann Sugar Company. The engine has a built-in mfx/DCC digital decoder with functions such as controllable headlights, cab lighting, and a smoke unit, as well as several sound functions. Link-and-pin couplers are included. Price: $369.99. To complement…

Ted Stinson passed away on August 28, 2016, at the age of 79. Ted was associated with Garden Railways magazine from 1986 through 2009, either as an advertiser with his company Northeast Narrow Gauge or, perhaps more importantly, as the producer of more than 100 much loved, full size, pull-out plans that first appeared in our March-April 1992 issue. These plans covered locomotives, freight equipment, passenger cars, railcars, lineside structures, and even a variety of boats—a topic on which Ted was an expert. In real life, Ted was a wellknown and respected educator, especially in math and science. Although I never met Ted, I had many enjoyable conversations with him via telephone. He was a fascinating person who will be greatly missed. Our condolences to his family. A full obituary…

What makes a garden railway? A garden railway is a model railway that is built outdoors, as opposed to indoors, and, as they would not be popular if they were built on the road or pavement, they are generally put in the garden, which is usually safer and more secure. Hence, it is a garden railway—there are no other rules. . .but I suspect you know all this. — Andrew Beattie, Australia, acbbooks@bigpond.com Thank you for your supportive editorial on what makes a garden railway in the October issue of GR. Everyone should feel free to interpret reality, or the lack thereof, for themselves. Live-steam model railroaders benefit from raised railways. Some railroaders have no structures, buildings, or vegetation at all on their railways. For them, it’s all about focusing…

Photos tell stories through composition, lighting, and subject. Last time I discussed using video software to make movies with still photos. Here I’ll talk about elements of good still photography necessary to tell our video stories. Below is a top-ten list of examples of lighting, composition, and subjects to keep in mind when shooting stills. 1. Movie and tv screens are horizontal. Shoot your scenes in a horizontal format. 2. Use a small aperture for greatest depth of field. Some automatic cameras do that for you when a wide-angle setting is selected, while DSLR cameras allow manual selection. 3. Steady your camera. Use a tripod, steady the camera on a rock, or lean it against a tree. Use built in image-stabilization software if you have mounted an action camera to…

Not long ago, I wrote about my railroad and things I would do differently had I the chance to do them over. One of them was the track at Shade Gap, parts of which were too close to the fence, so there was little room for landscaping between the track and the fence. As a result, the “background” for the railroad became the fence itself, which isn’t the most visually appealing backdrop (photo 1). The problems At that time, I was somewhat resigned to the fact that little could be done about the situation without a significant amount of re-landscaping. Fast forward to this past spring, and I found myself with environmental issues that needed addressing. First, there was the issue of subsidence (photo 2). Shade Gap is located in…