Published in San Francisco Chronicle on October 17, 2010

Mike Stokinger A long time railroad buff and friend of many, died Sunday September 26th, he was 56 years old. There will be a gathering of friends to celebrate Mike’s life at the Josephine Randall Museum on Wednesday, October 20 from 6:30 to 9:00 pm.

From the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club blog:

Last week, the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club lost a long time member and friend: Mike Stokinger. Mike was not only an active participant with the GGMRC but also a great person and very much involved with building the organization and ties with the model railroad community and friends of the GGMRC. Help us remember him and his love of model trains by stopping by to see the passion that he lived for.

From The Peter Pan Express in April 1997 Salon

I recall Mike Stokinger, the genial treasurer of the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club, who described his love for trains in such different terms. “There’s something very soothing, very musical about them. When you’re in a train, you’re in a cozy enclosed space, you’ve got movement, this hypnotic hum of sound and it’s almost like being in the womb.”

My memories of Mike

I grew up in Noe Valley in the 1970’s and took classes at the Randall Museum. Open houses at the GGMRC were rare and big events. The line typically ran down Museum Way and the wait seemed like hours. I grew up, moved away, school, etc. but made it back to the Bay Area in 1996 and was a member of the GGMRC for a few years in the late 90′s.

Mike was a great guy. We had him over for dinner one night and he brought over a projector, a screen, and 4-5 slide carousels (several hundred slides) of his recent train trip to Chicago on Amtrak as well as photos from his trip to China. Mike managed to make a three hour slide show very entertaining. Mike was always passionate about passenger trains and I fondly recall his long strings of name-train cars snaking around the layout. I’m very sad and sorry he is gone and agree that he will be missed.

Ryan is another of our railroad-minded students and he chose to model a railroad yard. We used a classic John Allen Timesaver track plan and we added an Atlas turntable at one end.

We built the layout on a block of pink foam-board and glued 1/4″ plywood on the sides and bottom making a light but extremely rigid foundation.

Ryan soldered all the electrical connections.

Here the ground has been painted and the track has been airbrushed. Ryan is cleaning the paint off the tops of the rails.

The temptation to run some trains as soon as possible was irresistible.

Next we ballasted all the track.

Then we got Ryan started building some structures. He quickly mastered the plastic buildings.

We have placed the buildings on the layout and we’ll blend the bases into the scenery in the coming weeks.

Ready for some more scenery, grass, trees and trains.

My grandmother died over ten years ago and while she was born in the teens she was pretty young in the 20′s. I want to have a body of stories and information about the era so that my model work will reflect the correct “feeling” of that time. Since first-hand information is hard to come by, here are the resources I’m using.

Literature:

Dasheill Hammet stories are very readable and give some insight into life in the 20′s. A bonus is that many of Hammett’s stories are set in the Bay Area and they imply a seedy grittiness that I want to portray.

History:

Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. A very good recent (2002) survey

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. Very interesting, especially when you consider that it was written in 1931!

Local history:

Both Sides of the Track: A Collection of Oral Histories from Belvedere and Tiburon.

A Pictorial History of Belvedere 1890 – 1990 a California Island Town.

Any number of the local Arcadia Publishing books…

In a separate post I’ll discuss what books I use as source material about the local railroads.

Note: This review is my own opinion, unsolicited, and based purely on my experience as a customer.

I’m generally sad about the state of model railroading magazines. In August of 2006 I started a series of blog posts analyzing what has happened to Model Railroader to make it the raging wad of mediocrity it is today. I grew up loving MR. I have 46 years of MR back-issues in the loft bookcases of my office.

I have 32 years of Narrow Gauge & Shortline Gazettes and a few decades of Railroad Model Craftsman. They have ebbed and flowed as well but overall are reading now much as they did many years ago.

I’ve been open to the idea of other model railroading magazines and have subscribed to several. None stood any test of time.

I have something to be happier about.

Joe Fugate and friends started Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine in January of 2009. Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine (hereafter MRH) is published quarterly (bi-monthly in 2010) as a free download in PDF format using many of the rich media extensions available in that format.

I really liked the first issue and I wished them well in the tough world of model railroad publishing but I must admit I said to myself “I bet they threw everything into that first issue and the content will dwindle over the next few issues.”

I got busy with life, work, and other non-modeling pursuits and while I downloaded the 2nd and 3rd issues I did not read them.

This week the 4th quarter issue came out and I started to read it. And read it. And look at it again. It is great. I learned something new, several times. It was fun to read. It is what I think a great model railroading magazine should be.

I double checked by sitting down this morning and reading through all four issues back-to-back. I’m really impressed. I’m really happy I have these issues on my hard drive. It’s exciting to have a new magazine where I’m actually curious what the next issue will bring.

I carefully read Joe’s editorials and articles to see if he actually delineates the secret sauce. In issue #1 he says that it’s the rich media. In another issue he says it’s because he advocates “layout modeling.” I think he’s missed on both. It’s the content. Not only are the articles excellent quality but they have room to breathe. In a medium where megabytes are cheap MRH can allow an article to go long, go deep, have more pictures. Print can’t compete.

I highly recommend Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine.

Go look. It’s free and I feel really confident that you will find it time well spent.

Have you gone yet?

We just went this morning and it is a very nice display of the work and life of Walt Disney.

Photography is prohibited inside but some folks over at Mouse Planet have a great set of pictures and a detailed description.

My rating of the museum? It is a MUST SEE for die hard Disney fans.

For everyone else the quality and richness of the environment and displays is very impressive. If you are an autistic or aspie (and/or have one in your family like we do) bring earplugs because the audio in the displays can be a bit overwhelming otherwise. The price  is appropriate for the quality of the displays ($20 for adults, $12 for kids) but may be too high for some families.

Dan, a couple questions for you. I recently got back into model rr after only doing it as a kid…and those were the days when we’d run them like racecars to see if we could get train cars to tip off the track around corners!

[...]

So, I started from scratch and made a L-shape layout in a corner so far. It’s about 6 feet long on one wall and 8 feet on the adjacent wall.

Here’s my question.

I see that you use cork roadbed under your track. But What do you use for scenery ground? What I mean is this: do you glue the scenery to the plywood base, or do you use a styrofoam, or that putty compound?

If you use sytrofoam or something else, does it completely cover the plywood base, or do you use it only to attach certain scenery like a peg board?

Do these make sense? Please help…any helpful hints would be great!!!

I know there are much more complex ways to build layouts but bare plywood is a worthy start and I think it is super important to be able to actually achieve a certain level of “doneness” in the scant time modern life gives us and bare plywood is FAST.

I would use cork under the track. Next I would paint EVERYTHING (except the track!) with a coat of dirt colored paint.

Here’s Nick doing just that with his micro layout.

You can see two peanut butter jars full of two different colors of latex house paint. I get these colors by going to my local hardware store and they invariably have a stack of “rejects” where they mixed a can of color and the customer did not like it so they had to do another. They sell these for $5.00 a gallon. I look them over for a nice dirt brown/olive. I’d still buy a can at full price if they don’t have any rejects.

Anyway — paint over the whole layout with the base color so you cannot see any bare wood anymore.

Next I use a brown dirt-colored fine paper mache product mixed with real dirt and white glue to make a “mud” and paint this everywhere too.

To make hills you can build them up out of Styrofoam (very messy) or just use wads of paper and cover them with plaster cloth like Nick is doing here.

Then paint and mud the hill. Sprinkle real dirt and then glue it down by soaking with white-glue-water mix — with a few drops of Mr. Clean to break the surface tension so it soaks in better.

This makes a great “base” and then you can add rock castings, trees, grass, bushes as you go.

Keep an eye out for our next steps with Nick’s layout: we’re almost ready to build up the terrain.

The Carquinez Model Railroad Society is located at 645 Loring Ave., Crockett, CA, across from C & H Sugar.

The Carquinez Model Railroad Society’s layout is HO scale, DCC operated, and is inspired by the Southern Pacific line from Oakland to Truckee.

In less than two years the club has completed the bench work for all three levels, installed track, and wired the mainline on the first two levels. We have about 500 feet of double track mainline currently operating. Trains move between the levels via the two large helixes. Work continues adding more track to the second level and planning for the third level.

Also please check out their new web site at: www.carquinezmrs.org

Thank you,

Greg Ockander

Corte Madera Creek trestle. Facing east, north is to the left.

One of the clearest remaining artifacts of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in southern Marin County is the Corte Madera Creek trestle and bascule span.

I’ve always been attracted to the railroad-to-water interface and this captures a lot of that charm and has a lot of small elements that could be incorporated into a layout.

Built in their current form in 1923, these were designeted by the railroad as two bridges: the North and South Corte Madera Creek approaches and both were specified by the railroad as structure number 14.61 with a combined length of 1,252 feet.

The bridge was originally two side-by-side bridges (the trestle is one track but the bascule may be seen to be two-track) for the orginal dual track main line but was single track for as long as I can recall, back through the 1970s.

I assumed the number 14.61 referred to miles from either Tiburon (SF&NP mileposts) or maybe Sausalito (NPC or NS mileposts) but this location is about 5.6 rail miles from Tiburon and 8.5 rail miles from Sausalito so I’m stumped. The mystery was solved when I found that Milepost 0.0 is the San Francisco Ferry Building, south across the bay so the 14.61 signifies “miles from San Francisco.”

Google Earth kmz file to the location

The bridges are largely intact other than the recent removal of the rails and 165 feet of the north end that crossed East Sir Francis Drake Blvd — thanks to damage caused by an idiot colliding with the bridge in a too-tall truck.

There is a foot/bike path nearby which is a nice spot to take pictures. The bridge is climbing a short sharp grade leading up into the tunnel number 3 on the way to San Rafael.

Almost the same view in 1949 with NWP 178 and leased SP 2336.

Note the galvanized steel caps on the piles. This is where the truck-damaged section of the bridge was cut away.

The book arrived promptly (I’ve had excellent luck buying used books through Amazon). It’s a first-edition and in condition as described by the seller.

Then I look inside and see the previous owner has written his name: T. Wurm.

T. Wurm, Ted Wurm? Ted Wurm is (was?) a prolific author of many railroad books with most being written in the 1950s and 60s focusing on the history of small western railroads. 

Link: Search for Ted Wurm books at Amazon

I have several books he wrote but I never expected to have one of his personal copies.

Exact RTR (ready-to-run) models of NWP engines are not available. Consistent with my overall modeling philosophy (plausible but free-lanced), I’m going to examine the engines of the NWP and build engines for my layout that are consistent with the spirit of the prototype. My goal is to build plausible and reasonable, while not exact, models. Understanding the prototype well enough to build things and make decisions consistent with the way the builders and mechanics of the NWP did things is what I enjoy.

The Americans on the NWP in the 1920s fell into two broad groups: old engines built in the 1870s and 1880s — some twelve engines and a “new” group of seven built between 1904 and 1914.

The Old Engines

By the 20s, the older 4-4-0s had been in service between 40 and 50 years and had been significantly updated and altered from their as-built appearance. As built the engines would have looked much like these shown below:

Grant 4-4-0 1873

Baldwin 4-4-0 1871

Both of these engines are standard “catalog” offerings and are therefore typical engines. Compared to the mechanical standards of the 1920s these engines are missing many pieces of equipment:

1920-29 Standard Equipment:

• Engine brakes
• Knuckle couplers
• Air pumps and associated hardware
• Electric lights, generators and associated equipment
• Oil burning modifications (in the NWP case)

While engines may have left the factory looking pretty similar, railroads would generally shop engines only when something broke or needed to be done to meet new requirements (compatible couplers, air brakes, etc.). Individual engines in their 50 year trek to their 1920 appearance would have been shopped and upgraded on unique schedules. In this way each of the old Americans on the NWP looked quite different from each other by the 20s.

NWP 8 Engine 8 was an 1881 Baldwin product with 63” drivers, 15×24 cylinders and weighed 71,000 lbs. By 1915 it looked like this:

Engine 8 has received minimal modification beyond the standard equipment listed above, a new metal cab, and a new pilot. This is probably not what the engine looked like by the 1920s but I love the proportions of this engine and will likely model it as seen above.

NWP 9 An 1883 Grant product, number 9 had 59” drivers, 16×24 cylinders and an 86,300 lb. engine weight. Number 9 was heavily modified in its lifetime and in the 1920s probably looked something like this 1935 view.

Engine 9 has an entirely new boiler and obviously mismatched pilot truck wheels.

Transition between the Old and New 4-4-0s

Boiler location: In the 20th century as scientific principals were increasingly applied to locomotive engineering, an emphasis grew on firebox design, boiler pressure and superheating. For the classic 4-4-0 (shown in cutaway below) the location of the firebox low between the engine frames severely limited the size of the grate and therefore the amount of boiler horsepower that could be generated.

The solution was to raise the boiler centerline so that the bottom of the firebox was completely above the engine side frames. As early as the 1888 view shown below this techniques came into use. However, while wider than before the firebox is still constrained to fit between the driving wheels.

One of the ultimate limitations on the 4-4-0 design is that increasing the firebox size further was never seen as practical. On more modern engines with different wheel arrangements the boiler was raised even higher so that the firebox and grate could be carried completely above the driving wheels and widened to the width of the engine. NWP 4-6-0 number 181 below shows this kind of configuration.

Extended firebox: Comparing the Baldwin 1871 with the PRR 1888 drawing also note the difference in how far the smoke box (the part of the boiler the smokestack is mounted on) extends forward. To hopefully enhance complete combustion, the “extended” smoke box became common (but not universal) on new and rebuilt engines.

Superheating: Superheaters were added to locomotives by changing the boiler design such that steam lines were fed back into widened fire-tubes in the boiler increasing the temperature of the steam and thereby increasing the amount of work the steam could do. This reduced fuel and water consumption for a given amount of power produced. On an old engine superheating is typically only signified by the change from slide valves to piston valves .

Variously updated 4-4-0s on the NWP in the 1920s

This is not a complete breakdown and I picked the following engines because I find them the most interesting.

NWP 10 was a twin sister engine to number 9 (Grant numbers 1665, 1664, respectively) but by 1920 appeared highly modified and updated.

Fully updated with all the modern (1920s) conveniences. Slide valves (superheated), new boiler, air and electrical equipment.

NWP 17 was a Rogers 1889 product with 63” drivers, 17×24 cylinders, and 87,300 lb. engine weight.

In this 1927 view the engine appears to still have its original boiler since the steam dome is old-style location directly over the firebox and the smoke box is not extended forward. The engine has air and electrical equipment.

NWP 20 was a Rogers 1884 product (older than 17 above) with 62” drivers, 18×24 cylinders and 93,800 lb. weight.

In this 1923 photo the fluted domes on number 20 might lead you to think that this is the original boiler. However, my best guess is that the boiler was added around 1917 and the old domes were apparently reused.

NWP 21 was a Baldwin 1904 product with 69” drivers, 18×24 cylinders, and 117,350 lb. weight.

What a difference a few years makes! Number 21 is much heavier than the older engines and in this 1936 photo looks quite modern with the exception of the slide valves.

NWP 22 was a 1908 American product with 69” drivers, 18×24 cylinders, and 128,500 lb. engine weight.

Fairly modern engines but still with slide valves in this 1931 view so presumably not superheated.

NWP 52 was one of the last batch of 4-4-0s purchased by the NWP in 1914. These had 63” drivers, 19×26 cylinders and a hefty 158,500 lb. engine weight.

These engines were more than twice the weight of old number 8. Note the modern piston valves and Walschaerts valve gear.

Southern Pacific 4-4-0s

For comparison and more modeling ideas I have some photos of 4-4-0s from the Southern Pacific since SP was one of the NWPs corporate parents and some mechanical influences are evident.

SP 1421 is shown in 1924. The thing I like is the headlight moved to the center of the smoke box front per SP practice.

SP 1358 is shown in 1923 and other than air and electrical is looking pretty old fashioned indeed. The relatively un-altered appearance of this engine is my justification for carrying forward NWP 8′s ultra-cute 1915 appearance forward to the 20′s.

Despite the railroad’s diverse beginnings the motive power roster was remarkably simple in the 1920’s and 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 locomotives provided nearly all mainline power. The only trend through this period is as 4-4-0’s built in the 1880’s wore out they were retired while 4-6-0’s were purchased and maintained.

The chart below shows the numbers of different engine types in this period. Note that the NWP had five 0-6-0 switchers and five Moguls (2-6-0) in this period so their lines overlap.

Averaged over the 1920s, here is a pie chart of the different engine types. Americans and Ten-wheelers clearly dominate.

On my NWP I plan on having lots of 4-4-0s and 4-6-0s but I’ll also have a 2-10-0 or two (surely those cheap Russian decapods would have been attractive?), some 2-8-0s and one small 2-8-2.

.

he wrote

Three observations

1. When comparing page counts how do you factor in Great Model Railroads, Model Railroad Planning, and other “special” issues that didn’t exist at one time? Arguably MR is now a 14 or is it 15 issue a year magazine now.

2. I would also point out that using the August issue as comparison is a bit odd — I bet that has the lowest news stand sale of any issue (since I suspect less model railroading is done that month) and thus they probably tend not to put their best articles in that issue.

3. Third observation is that had I ranked issues years ago, before beginning my layout, I would have placed far less value on articles about benchwork, tracklaying, wiring, yard design etc than I would now. Soon I will be deeply involved in structures and I imagine my ranking of articles will change once again. Just a point
   Dave Nelson

These are good points and bear expanding on:

Page counts and special issues: No, I did not include the new special issues in the page/cost comparisons but these special issues are not part of the 12-issue annual subscription. Even subscribers must pay extra for them. I might feel better about my subscription dollars if MR spread the content in these issue into the 12 issues through the year. No doubt Kalmbach would need to charge more but at the same time the quality of the magazine would be improved.

Why look at only August? I agree it is probably the low mark of the year. People tend to be on vacation in July and August. However, this should be true over all 40 years I looked at. If I compared December issues to August issues that would obviously be a problem. Despite all that, there were some really good August issues! Really it was random timing that led me to choose August — I had just recieved my August 2006 issue when I started the series.

Why look at only one month of the year? This review ended up being a LOT of work just looking at 40 issues. There’s no way I could have done a resonable job including more months and I was interested in including as many years as possible.

Dave’s last point: that what constitutes a “good” article is changable and prejudiced by what you are interested in TODAY. I absolutely agree. That’s why I gave up on ever reducing my MR collection to a file collection of “just articles I like.” I tried that once and almost immediately regretted it and had to spend a lot of time and $$ on eBay getting the whole issues back. As far as affecting how I reviewed the issues? Obviously the reviews of the issues are my personal opinions.

I have been feeling for many years that the quality of the magazine has declined. I was interested in whether I would find that old issues were bad too, in which case MY standards had changed, or whether I really liked those issues better. For my part, I found a real trend downward in quality in MR.

However, one thing that Dave wrote REALLY got me thinking:  those “special” issues. I have bought several of them over the years and they have good material. If MR included all that great content — and yes, charged more – I would very likely feel better about the magazine.

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 1

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 2

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 3

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 4

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5½

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 6

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 7

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 8

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 9

Okay, I admit it; I paid in when Model Railroader sent me an unsolicited copy of the first issue of their “Dream Plan Build” video series. Hey they included “collectible” coins too!

I saw this series as Model Railroader (MR) working really hard to remain relevant in a web age and changing modeler demographics that they do not seem to have a clue how to handle. I liked the first one enough to cough up the $24.90 and see how they go.

What I liked:

There is a fair amount of content on each disk, something like an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes each sectioned into 12-16 articles.

I liked the modeling clinics. However, like the magazine, the emphasis remains on the beginner.

I liked the layout tours. I always like to see what other people have built. As long as it’s scale.

What I did not like:

Uck. The modeling clinics where the work ended up looking bad. Come on guys, do it over until it looks good! Video is really kind to most model work so it has to be really shoddy to look bad on video.

Argh. The layout tours of Lionel sets with scenery. I dare you: find one where they do not say “reliving a childhood dream…”  Scale railroading is a rejection of the “let’s see how fast the train can go” world of Lionel based layouts.

Snooze. The prototype tours. I model the 1920’s. I am not really interested diesel engines trundling around.

Recycled. The production values, style, and the sections look a WHOLE LOT like the “Tracks Ahead” series seen occasionally on PBS stations. Can you say “leftovers”?

Conclusion:

I wish Model Railroader luck but after a bit over a year and seven DVDs I’m not going to buy any more.

Yes, I did wait until I filled the little coin holder before I quit.

Yes, I’m weak.

This is a boat I sketched for a modeling idea about a small river steamer. I have a 16” hull under construction and this is definitely my favorite superstructure outline yet. I’ll use 1:35 scale and take advantage of all the military miniatures details available.

This design is somewhat inspired by the MARIN.

A very long seminar was a good place to do some drawings of my waterfront town of Tiburbon. Here is a rough idea about the ferryboat loading trestle.

This drawing is hard to read but if you compare to the real location on the layout:

An early drawing of Crazy Horse Canyon bridge.

This bridge and canyon has been worrying me but this initial sketch let me establish how things would look. I made a more detailed drawing in this post and determined I would only need three full towers instead of the four shown above.

I changed the shape of the mountain significantly to be more like the planning model.

Sometimes I do a full-on high quality drawing like this one of an NWP picnic car based on a photo.

The final drawing ends up a composite of the pencil drawing and digital drawing since I continue the finer detailing on my computer using a Wacom stylus pad.

This is an idea of a typical building in Tiburbon. Since there is almost no dry land beyond the roadway the buildings will all be built over the water.

I found an ad somewhere for this magazine Model Railroad News (MRN) and went to their website where I signed up for their “3 free issues” offer. MRN has been published since 1995 so while it was new to me it’s not really a new magazine. 

For this review I looked over their “About MRN” page and decided that this part of their description most accurately describes what Model Railroad News does:

“Model Railroad News provides timely, in-depth coverage of new products, model railroading news, and includes highly regarded product reviews.”

MRN has chosen a pretty tight focus and within this focus I think they do a good job. They do not do “how to build my first 4×8 layout” or “buying my first air brush.” What you find here is lots of news about what manufacturers are doing and the product reviews are detailed and very well photographed.

After reading my three free issues I must agree that MRN’s explicit focus on product reviews and industry news works much better than Model Railroader’s implicit semi-random move in the same direction.

If this sounds interesting to you I recommend you try out the three free issues. I know from corresponding with some people around my “What’s messed up with Model Railroader” series that this magazine could be exactly what they are looking for.

All of these are dictated by the size of locomotives you *want* to run. Availability of locomotives ends up dictating other crucial choices like the railroad being modeled and era – if you want to faithfully model a particular railroad during a particular time you can be stymied by the lack of appropriate model locomotives.

Why is this an obstacle? Of all the things a model railroad needs the locomotive is the one item that is the hardest to build from scratch. Therefore locomotives are the one item where the modeler is the most reliant on manufacturers and importers to supply what the modeler wants.

I model the 1920s and consider myself an advanced modeler. I have no problem building freight cars, passenger cars, houses, boats, bridges, track, power supplies, DCC electronics, layout wiring, etc.

But scratchbuilding a locomotive worries me — mainly because it is so easy to do it badly. The level of precision and design required in making a reliable mechanism (especially in the smaller scales) is very high. For this very same reason, there are only a fairly small number of mass-produced locomotives available.

It is an expensive proposition to bring a mass produced model locomotive to market. In the 1960s, as labor costs rose and the quality and detail demanded by the modeling consumer rose it became extremely expensive, and therefore extremely risky for manufacturers to bring new models into the market. From the 1970s through the early 1990s there were very few new mass produced models introduced.

During this period the batch production brass market thrived. These importers reduced the risk of bringing out a new model by making small batches. While the cost for these items was high, so was the quality.

A recent change is that China currently provides very cheap labor for manufactured goods and this has been applied to the production of mass produced model locomotives that sometimes approach the quality of batch-produced brass models but at 10-20% of the cost (hundreds of dollars versus thousands of dollars).

Despite this opportunity I do not see manufacturers taking advantage of this situation by bringing out a wider range of locomotives. Take for example the fact that there are now at least FOUR models of the 4-8-8-4 “Big Boy” available (Trix, Athearn, Precision Craft, Rivarossi), two USRA Mikados, etc. I agree that there are more new locomotives available, but it seems like manufacturers are still being very conservative.

In the HOn3 Group at Yahoo! (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HOn3/) there was a thread going about what eras people model and what models get commercially produced. In particular there were calls for more (or ANY) early narrow gauge locomotives in HOn3 such as basic Baldwin 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s.

These small engines were popular on narrow gauge lines from their beginnings in the 1870’s-1880’s through to around WWI. By then, most surviving narrow gauge railroads had started moving to heavier motive power: 2-8-0’s, 4-6-0’s, and especially big 2-8-2’s typified by the D&RG K-class engines. These later, larger engines are really just about all you can get in HOn3.

Has anyone tried making HOn3 engines produced in China like Bachmann’s excellent HO models? Yes, and guess what they produced: D&RG K-class Mikados.

Why be so conservative?

Maybe it’s the customers fault? In the same thread on the HOn3 group mentioned above several people estimated that a retail price for a classic 3-foot gauge Baldwin 4-4-0 would be $250 with a “street price” of something like $150. This tracks closely to the pricing of Bachmann’s new modern standard gauge 4-4-0s.

When the same group was asked how much they would be willing to pay for a classic 3-foot gauge Baldwin 4-4-0, the response seemed to be “much less than that.”

I can see that marketing to model railroaders is not for the faint of heart.

It is so hard to keep making progress on a big “spare time” project like my model railroad in the face of life’s distractions. You know: work, family, chores, sleeping, new computer games, etc.

I generally hate posts of other people’s posts but a guy at work passed this link around recently and it has really helped me. Summary: just grab something, anything, and do it: Rands In Repose: Trickle Theory

The examples are geared towards software developers (my day job) but I feel this appraoch is applicable to anyone who feels overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them.

As an example, this morning I was kicking myself for not getting “more” done. There are two issues in that statement: I actually get a lot done, it’s just that I spend a lot of time doing things that are not really that important in the long run.

Just Grab Something and Do It

This morning I spent 30 minutes and processed images I shot in July and got them ready for posting to the blog as a layout building progress report. I feel better already.

Here are some examples I find flipping through all the marked articles I tagged for this series of blog postings.

Great layout building series. I’ve mentioned the bad ones. Here are the good ones I remember from the last 40 years.

• Brandywine Transit series by Walter R Olsen — a traction / trolley layout from the mid 70’s. I’m sure some of the techniques are a bit dated but I think this would still be a reference point for starting an HO traction layout.

• Jerome & Southwestern by John Olson – I still look at the book collection of these articles.

• San Juan Central by Malcolm Fulrow – obviously I liked this since I based my layout on this one.

What was good about these was that they were visually inspiring (or at least technically inspiring in the case of Brandywine) and you really got the idea you could do it yourself.

Great model building techniques. These could be in the form of how-to articles, cover photos (discussed in this post), or simply drawings.

Here are some examples:

August 1966: From Timber to Tidewater by James Sabol. A great article describing operations on logging railroads.

August 1976: The transofrmation of a caboose by Merk Hobson. How to scratchbuild in wood. Timeless good techniques.

August 1982: Building your first wood structure kit by Bob Hayden. I read over this article every time I start a wood craftsman kit.

August 1998: The HO scale Lilliput Logger by Iain Rice. I don’t hate ALL 4×8 articles. I love Iain’s work and his track plans are inspiring. I have all his track plan books too.

August 2005: Painting and weathering plaster by Bob Mitchell. This is a simple article but I know I’ll want to review it before working on my next plaster kit.

Other good articles:
An article series from another magazine is currently saving by butt as I’m building my turnouts are Didrik Voss’s articles on measuring and adjusting turnouts in the September and October Scale Rails.

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 1

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 2

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 3

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 4

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5½

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 6

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 7

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 8

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 9

Instead of listing specific issues I tried to get an idea specifically what it was that would make me think an issue was just not interesting.

1. A worthless 4 x 8 track plan inserted just to pad out the issue.

In several issues (at least three issues) that had NO interesting articles you could find a 4 x 8 track plan. Is it written somewhere that MR needs to publish a 4 x 8 foot track plan every year?

2. A (Stupid) Railroad You Can Model article.

The typical example is the Yancy RR described in the August 1974 issue. “You can model every track switch (both of them) on the prototype” And this is GOOD because …????

WHO wants to model a railroad that has virtually no traffic, no scenery and no significant history?

What I want are ideas on how to convey that I’m running the Santa Fe on 10 feet of bookshelf space. I want railroads pulling ore out of the mountains, lumber from the hills, or moving tonnage over the Rockies – NOT shipments of dog food.

In fact, the August 1979 issue is choice for WORST August issue. It has EIGHT articles about the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville Railroad, a stupid railroad nobody would want to model.

I’ll pay $1 to anyone who can prove to me they actually devoted an entire layout to the pathetic FJ&G RR.

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 1

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 2

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 3

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 4

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 5½

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 6

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 7

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 8

40 Years of August in Model Railroader – Part 9