Tabla de contenidos para March 2023 en Model Railroader

MORE REVIEWS & VIDEOS • Videos• News & Reviews• Community• Shop & more. Should you include graffiti on your layout? Model Railroader Editor Eric White discusses the merits of including graffiti when modeling the modern era. This contentious topic is the source of frequent discussion in the model railroading world, with some prioritizing realism, and others opting not to include the graffiti for aesthetic purposes. While no definitive answer exists, this piece includes opinions from contributors on both sides of the question. Add your opinion on the topic in the Comments section. Athearn HO scale General Electric Dash 9-44CW Watch the Athearn Genesis 2.0 HO scale General Electric Dash 9-44CW diesel locomotive, shown in the Canadian National red, white, and black paint scheme with “wet noodle” herald, in action on…

What goes into modeling a breakfast cereal factory? Q Has Model Railroader ever done a feature on modeling a cereal plant such as Kellogg’s or Post? I’m building a 12" by 10'-6" shelf layout that will be entirely that one industry. But I’m not sure how best to lay out the various structures and car spots for covered hoppers, boxcars, food-grade tank cars, etc. John Buckley, Montague, Mich. A Yes, we did. Check out the article “Switching for breakfast” in our annual special issue Model Railroad Planning 2014. (I hope you have that one in your back issue stash, because our warehouse is sold out.) In that article, authors Lawrence Bolton and Bill Neale presented room-sized N scale and HO scale track plans based on the Post Cereals factory complex…

Welcome to the third installment of the Bishop Street Branch, Model Railroader’s 2023 project layout. In the first two articles, I covered the history of the line, shared how the benchwork was built, and explained how the track and wiring were installed. Now it’s time to bring the model railroad to life with scenery. Effective scenery execution is largely a matter of picking the right materials, understanding simple techniques, and avoiding common pitfalls. Portland, Maine, is similar to much of the mid-Atlantic and Eastern Sea board, with topography ranging from fairly flat to modest rolling hills. Vegetation along the Bishop Street Branch consists of deciduous trees with some taller evergreens on the western end of the line. To bring a visual twist to things, Dan Mills (the client) and I…

I SAW A SMALL PHOTO of a diner in the book Faster Than the Limiteds, which is a complete history of the Gary Railways (Thomas Bullard and William Shapotkin, Central Electric Railfans, 2004). I thought it would be an interesting modeling project. This was an opportunity to combine my interests in model building and local history. I located the owner of the photo negative in Arizona and purchased an 8 x 10 print, shown below. The caption said the diner, photographed in 1939 near Hobart, Ind., was originally Gary & Southern No. 2. This was a wooden car built by the Niles Car Manufacturing Co. in 1912 and retired in 1929. I wasn’t able to come up with any more information about the diner, including its exact location. My goal…

Athearn Genesis 2.0 HO GE Dash 9-44CW Athearn has released a General Electric Dash 9-44CW diesel locomotive in its Genesis 2.0 series. The model shouldn’t be confused with the Dash 9 kit Athearn offered in its blue box series back in the 1990s. The Genesis model is newly tooled and features light-emitting-diode lighting, railroad-specific details, and trucks with rotating bearing caps. General Electric produced the Dash 9-44CW and variants, such as the Dash 9-40C, Dash 9-40CW, and Dash 9-44CWL, from 1993 to 2004. During that time, more than 3,650 units were built. The locomotives have a 16-cylinder 7FDL16 diesel engine, GMG197 alternator, and 752AH traction motors. Our sample is decorated as Canadian National No. 2588. The full-size unit, serial number 50367, was built by General Electric (GE) under order No. 1877…

Those of you who are relatively new to the hobby of scale model railroading probably envy those of us who have been enjoying it for the past hundred years or so. Obviously, we know everything there is to know about how to design a track plan, build our benchwork and scenery, lay track, wire our railroads, and so on. That might be true were it not for one important factor: progress. Quite recently, I found myself thinking that I am relieved that my railroad is working as well as it is, because a lot of new features that have come along recently are well above my pay grade. But no one is expected to know and do everything. Trains.com and Model Railroader are here to help, and National Model Railroad…

Painting figures with acrylics Some years ago my three model rail-roading soulmates – Bob Hamm, Pete Darling, and Biagio Pace – and I, all founding members of the notorious “Tree Group,” had a competition in HO scale figure painting. Bob went so far as to clothe one of his engineers in a red and white polka-dotted railroad cap! I figured if we could carry HO scale figure painting to that extreme, why not give O scale a try? Even though I had dabbled before, I watched Dave Revelia’s excellent video, Painting Figures with Dave Revelia, on the subject. [The DVD is out of print, but used copies can be found online. –Ed.] A photo of Dave’s work in Fn3 large scale appears in the September 2015 edition of Trackside Photos.…

A completed layout – what I call a “photo-finish” layout – still presents opportunities that can go on, proverbially, forever. As I walk the aisles of my layout enjoying the views, ideas sometimes occur to me for improvements or additions. So it was with a recent visit to the coke ovens scene on my HOn3 Lizard Head Division layout. I had built a typical mountainside crevice in my scenery, and I mused over the fact that such a crevice is often the location of a mine tunnel entrance. In technical terms, that’s called an adit (pronounced “add it”). Suddenly it occurred to me that installing an adit would improve the coke ovens scene. Why no ore bin or other structures? Not every adit was the main entrance to a mine.…

When I was growing up in Rhode Island, I always had an interest in trains, both model and real. Perhaps that’s because I rarely saw them in real life, only on television and in movies. The train tracks in my corner of New England had fallen into disrepair after years of neglect. I know there are many reasons a person becomes a model railroader. For me, scenery is the driving force. Watching a steam engine creep through well-done scenery is all I need. As the running gear turns and the engine and its cars peek in and out of view through trees, hills, and small villages, I get lost in that and my imagination fills in the blanks. Running an operationally accurate layout is fun but doesn’t excite me like…

Spring training is right around the corner, reminding me of my schoolboy years when I covered my high school’s games for local papers. Away games in Suffern, N.Y., were a special treat because I could peek at Erie Lackawanna’s operations between innings and some-times between pitches. Alco road switchers leading strings of Stilwell coaches on commuter schedules made it a busy location. But the Ford Drill is my most vivid memory. Erie Lackawanna’s lead to the sprawling Ford assembly plant in Mahwah, N.J., immediately across the state line, curled close enough beyond the right field fence that a long fly ball might have rolled to the track. Even when I had to keep my eyes on the game, the Drill’s normally assigned Electro-Motive Division SW9 entertained me with its lovely…

Alco RSD-15 diesel locomotive. This six-axle road switcher from Broadway Limited Imports is available now. The Paragon4-equipped N scale locomotive is decorated for Lake Superior & Ishpeming (red and yellow); Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (blue and yellow and as-delivered black with zebra stripes); Bessemer & Lake Erie (orange and black); Canadian Pacific (maroon and gray in one road number); Chesapeake & Ohio (blue and yellow); St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt, gray and red); Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range (maroon and yellow); Penn Central (black); Pennsylvania RR (Brunswick Green); and Southern Pacific (gray and red). The model is offered in two numbers per scheme unless noted. The RSD-15 ($299.99) has a high or low short hood as appropriate, light-emitting diode lights, and factory-applied handrails and grab irons. Broadway Limited Imports,…

You’re looking at my HO scale Gulf & Pacific RR. This is my third, and hopefully last, layout. I’ve been a model rail-roader since my teens, watching my father build and run the original Gulf & Pacific. I drew on skills developed from being a licensed architect to envision and build this layout as I went along. I chose to model the 1960s, as that’s the time period I remember and loved the most. I consider my strengths to be detailing and lighting the buildings, streets, and rolling stock. I also think this is the most interesting aspect of the model railroad, as I greatly enjoy “nighttime” operations and photography. The layout is in an enclosed room within the garage that has no windows, only one door, and dimmable light-emitting…

The face of the freight car landscape changed in 1995. That’s when railroads began shifting from 100-ton cars (263,000 pounds Gross Rail Load [GRL]) to 110-ton cars (286K GRL). This led freight car manufacturers to design larger-capacity rolling stock. One early example is the Trinity 5,161-cubic-foot capacity covered hopper ❶. Since the three-bay covered hopper made its debut in 1995, approximately 33,000 have been built. The car is still part of Trinity’s product lineup, and has led to the design of other three- and four-bay covered hoppers, including the 5461, 6351, and 6541. Plants involved in the production of the 5161 covered hopper include Bessemer, Ala.; Greenville, Pa.; Ft. Worth, Texas; Saginaw, Texas; and Monclova, Mexico. The Trinity 5161 covered hopper has a round roof that helps with the car’s…

Want to see your work in Trackside 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.…