Tabla de contenidos para June 2023 en Model Railroader

Malcolm Furlow, noted model railroader and artist, died in early March from the effects of long COVID. He was 77 years old. Though Malcolm had an American Flyer train set as a child, he didn’t become interested in model railroading until later in life. Malcolm attended the University of Texas to pursue an art degree. He then spent nearly two decades as a professional musician, playing backup for The Beach Boys and Lou Rawls, among others. Following his music career, Malcolm built movie sets and models for Walt Disney Studios. In 1977 Malcolm read a John Olson article about his HOn3 Mescal Lines, which sparked his interest in the hobby. By the early 1980s Malcolm’s byline was regularly appearing in the pages of Model Railroader. The articles often revolved around…

General Motors Diesel SD30C-ECO. This HO scale diesel locomotive is available decorated for Canadian Pacific in 12 road numbers. The modern-era locomotive includes factory-installed air hoses, windshield wipers, grab irons, uncoupling levers, and window glass. The locomotive rides on six-axle trucks with blackened metal RP-25 contoured wheels. Direct-current models sell for $239.95. Models with an ESU LokSound 5 sound decoder installed are $339.95. Bowser Manufacturing Co. Inc., 570-368-2379, bowser-trains.com…

I started my current layout around 15 years ago. Since I live in the middle of the Willamette National Forest in west central Oregon, I focused my early scenery efforts on modeling pine and deciduous trees. When I planted the finished trees on my model railroad, something didn’t look right. Then it dawned on me. My small forest lacked undergrowth. Even though I knew what was missing, I struggled how to remedy the situation. I have a bad habit of not finishing something and moving on to new projects. During the next several years, I worked on other sections of the layout. I stayed away from major tree planting projects until I could figure out the best method to model undergrowth. Then I came down with a severe medical condition.…

Monarch Mine No. 2 on my HO scale Colorado & Southern Northern Division needed a tipple structure to cover its coal loader mechanism. The tipple had to include the massive timber headframe found on the prototype. I also wanted to animate the hoist cables and sheave wheels at the top of the headframe. The coal loader is the twin of the one I described in the July 1999 issue of Model Railroader magazine. Wedged into just 6" of space, the plan shows the tight track clearances that require precise positioning of the tipple. I primarily used styrene and stripwood to build the tipple. Adding animation increased the visual impact of the compact, rail-served industry. Even if you don’t model this specific coal tipple, you can adapt the techniques shown here…

The history of creative locomotive rebuilds is long and storied. From the famous CF7s of the Santa Fe to the Uceta Shops GP16s to many modern iterations, railroads and companies have long looked for ways to reuse old parts. Enter Tractive Power Corp. (TPC), an employee-owned company located in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. TPC’s solution to the rebuilding/recycling process is to build a switch engine directly on top of an EMD HT-C truck from retired SD40-2s. The traction motors are powered by an industrial (Caterpillar, Cummins, MTM, or John Deere) Tier 4 engine. This idea isn’t completely new to railroading. There are a number of small locomotives (often affectionately called “critters” by the railfan community) built on locomotive trucks. Milwaukee Road built a unique electric switcher from an old…

It’s always a good idea to listen to those who have more experience than we do. That means we should be doing a lot of listening. One of my favorite gurus is layout designer/builder and good friend Lance Mindheim. John Moenius of Kansas City recently reminded several of us on a chat group of one of Lance’s pearls of wisdom: It’s a good idea to begin track planning with the end in mind. For many, that means thinking about what an operating session will look like. Lance always asks clients of his layout-building business how they will operate. How often? By themselves or in formal sessions? How long will the sessions last? The most common answer is that people will run trains fairly regularly, by themselves, for about 30 minutes. If…

As I write this, I’m a week past returning from a long weekend of model railroad operations in the San Francisco Bay area. I had the distinct pleasure of operating on Jack Burgess’s famous Yosemite Valley RR, shown above, along with other layouts that may someday share his layout’s fame. Seeing this beautifully designed and built layout was a highlight of the trip, but there are other aspects that draw me back to operating sessions repeatedly. One of my favorite parts is the problem solving. Whether it’s figuring out how to switch an industry or yard, or calculating the timing to get to a siding before another train is due to pass, there can be a lot of thinking going on in an operating session. My favorite jobs combine a…

I consider model railroading to be a close-knit community with a large support system. Every hobbyist can point to a person who inspired them – a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or just a friend. Inspiration can come in many forms, and from all walks of life. Luckily for me, my grand-father is an extremely passionate and avid modeler who has inspired me throughout my 26 years of life in this hobby and out. That man, Tony Koester, is well known to the hobby community for his “Trains of Thought” column in Model Railroader as well as the countless books he has written over the years. He’s known to selflessly pour his experiences and immense knowledge onto the page every month to inspire and help grow the hobby from his perspective.…

My 45-year-old Virginia & Western RR is a relatively large layout that requires continual maintenance for reliable operation. Since this might become too difficult in the future, I wanted to build a smaller railroad that would be portable and easy to maintain. I also wanted a waterfront district to accept merchandise from the car float at Amy Port on my current layout. I found a space approximately 15 inches wide and 17 feet long, sufficient for a shelf-type railroad, directly across the aisle from Amy Port. The new Tidewater District has many industries, a wharf, and a car float that provides the source of rail cars. The railroad is self-contained using a small diesel locomotive for power. Design criteria I haven’t embarked on any new construction on the V&W in…

My friend, Keith, has a layout with Digital Command Control (DCC) but he’s never installed a decoder before. He really liked what I’d written about the SoundTraxx Blunami in my December 2022 column and wanted to install one in his favorite locomotive to run on his layout. Keith also wanted to take it to our club’s layout. This column will focus on how we handled the installation. Keith installed the Blunami in an HO scale Atlas Trainmaster Electro-Motive Division GP38-2 diesel locomotive ❶. It came with a QSI sound decoder and two speakers. He removed the QSI decoder and confirmed the Blunami would fit in the space. If you’re adding speakers, make sure they fit in a baffle and the assembly fits in the locomotive. He bought a SoundTraxx Current…

Send us your photos Trackside Photos is a showcase for the work of Model Railroader readers. Send your photos (digital images 5 megapixels or larger) to: Model Railroader, Trackside Photos, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612; or upload them to fileupload.kalmbach.com/contribute. For our photo submission guidelines, contact senior associate editor Steven Otte at sotte@kalmbach.com.…

HO scale General Electric U28C diesel locomotives. Atlas recently released these six-axle diesels decorated for Conrail (blue with “can opener” herald); Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (red and silver or blue and yellow U28CG); Louisville & Nashville (gray); Pennsylvania RR (Dark Green Locomotive Enamel); Southern Pacific (gray); and Union Pacific (Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray). Each paint scheme is available in three road numbers. The units are also available undecorated. The U28C features road-specific details and factory-applied detail parts. Direct-current models ($189.95) have a pre-installed speaker. Models with an ESU LokSound decoder ($299.95) feature light-emitting diode lighting effects including Gyralight and Mars light where appropriate. Atlas Model Railroad Co., 908-687-0880, shop.atlasrr.com…

40-foot high cube reefer containers. This refrigerated containers six-pack is now available from Jacksonville Terminal decorated for American Presidential Lines Ltd. for $134.95. The containers have scheme-specific tooling including eight different refrigeration units, four door styles, five body side styles, and two variations of front gensets. Details include a separate, factory applied metal fan cover and new prototype bottom with exposed rib support beams. The genset units are magnetic and can be detached. Jacksonville Terminal Co., LLC., jtcmodeltrains.com…

What’s up with that strange tender truck? Q I watch videos of model railroads on YouTube. On a video of a Boston & Maine layout, I saw a strange steamer. A 2-10-2 had a long tender, and on the rear truck of the tender, the wheels had counter-weights and were ganged together with a connecting rod. Why? Robert Beadle A What you’re seeing under that tender is a booster engine, which some manufacturers called an auxiliary locomotive. It’s a small, two-cylinder steam engine, either under the tender or on the engine’s trailing truck, that runs off steam from the main boiler. Its purpose is to help start and maintain slow speed on heavy trains. A steam locomotive can be designed either to run well at high speed or produce a…

The Seaboard Central is a modern HO scale regional railroad set in the southeastern United States between Birmingham, Ala., and Savannah, Ga. during the spring of 2015. The following is the story of my lifelong dream and passion of creating my own railroad in miniature. This is the story of the Seaboard An early start Like many hobbyists, I started collecting model trains, along with anything else train related, at an early age. Initially, I had planned on modeling the Clinchfield RR after being fascinated by this unique coal hauling line located in the Appalachian Mountains. However, what I didn’t realize was what I liked most about it was its size. The Clinchfield was similar in size to the Denver & Rio Grande Western or the Florida East Coast (FEC),…

As general manager of the Columbia, Kootenay & Pacific Ry. (CK&PR), a freelance HO scale model railroad, I decided to add a three-track staging area in a return loop at the west end of the main line. Since my construction crew isn’t very good at cutting arcs freehand with a jigsaw, I asked the engineering department to design the staging loop as a series of trapezoid-shaped panels. The engineering department wanted to fabricate the panels off-site as they had a number of smaller pieces of material left over from previous projects that they wanted to use. With the plan in place, the engineering department started work on the loop. How it works The loop consists of a series of equally sized trapezoidal panels joined on the angled edges to complete…

WalthersProto HO scale EMD SD45 Wm. K. Walthers Inc. has released a new run of HO scale Electro-Motive Division SD45 diesel locomotives. The models, part of the WalthersProto line, feature railroad-specific details, light-emitting-diode headlights, and Proto-Max metal couplers. Our sample is decorated as Great Northern 404, part of the railroad’s 400 through 426 series. The locomotive was built by Electro-Motive Division under order number 7871 in May 1966. The GN received its SD45s in three batches. Units 400 through 407 arrived in May and June 1966. The 408 through 417 were received in April and May 1967. The remaining locomotives, 418 through 426, came on the property in July and August 1968. The GN SD45s delivered in 1966 were different from the rest of the fleet. The locomotives had a ratchet-style…