This subject has come up partly in response to an email question I received awhile back (about a prior blog post) and partly from being in the audience recently for Jim Providenza’s excellent clinic on the topic. But when I thought about how I choose routings for the waybills on my layout, I realized I use a part of the process Jim didn’t address. This post explains it.  Prototype waybills contain a section in which the route of the loaded car is specified, and it is to be in route order. Here’s that instruction on the waybill, all by itself, so you can see clearly what is wanted. I have ..read more

I have been intrigued by Jordan spreaders since I was a boy, and saw a spreader being worked on by a mechanic. Not sure where this happened, maybe near the Southern Pacific’s Burbank, California depot, and I had no idea what this complex machine was. But others who knew railroading explained it to me, and I find them interesting to this day. Today we have a phenomenal amount of information about SP spreaders, because of Ken Harrison’s magnificent opus on a wider topic, Southern Pacific Maintenance of Way Equipment, published by the SP Historical & Technical Society in 2022. (You can read m ..read more

In the first part of this series, a ClassOne Model Works depressed-center flat car was chosen to be modified into an SP Class F-125-1. I showed the addition of steel end decks to one of the “ready to run” models, after removal of the original wood end decks, and drilling of some tie-down holes in the new deck (see that post here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/01/modeling-sp-class-f-125-1-flat-car.html ). A less visible but important aspect of the ClassOne model is that it has roller-bearing trucks. The SP cars, however, were built with and long retained solid-bearing trucks (there is ..read more

At the recent ProRail event, I chatted with several experienced model railroad layout operators, and this subject came up: what makes a good layout description? (Meaning, of course, a description of one you haven’t been to before; or in the other direction, what you should try to describe for first-time visitors to your layout.) For some background comments on ProRail, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/prorail-2024.html . We all agreed that the quality and helpfulness of layout descriptions vary widely. Sometimes you are overwhelmed with details of what is on the layout ..read more

The Prototype Railroad Operating group (ProRail) meeting this year was in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was last here in 2015. I was among the layout hosts this time, and have more to say about that below. As background, this annual event began 52 years ago in Chicago, followed the next year with one in Kansas City, and those two locations hosted their respective 50th anniversaries in 2022 and 2023. For background, please visit: http://www.prorail.org/ . One of the ProRail traditions I enjoy is attending a baseball game on the Thursday before the event begins. This is often a major-league gam ..read more

It’s been awhile since I commented on a waybills topic, and preparing for operating sessions this month (four in all) has reminded me of some aspects I haven’t discussed at all recently. (To find previous posts in this series, the easiest way is to use “waybills, part” as the search term in the search box at right; they will mostly come up in chronological order.) For most purposes, the best overview or guide to the first 100 posts on the topic is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/11/waybills-part-100-guide.html . Part of what I want to discuss in the present post is management of ..read more

As a regular columnist in Model Railroad Hobbyist (the “Getting Real” series of columns by several writers who take turns), my latest column is now appearing, the 27th I’ve written for this publication. It’s about “Modeling Perishable Shipping,” emphasizing the layout details that reflect handling of perishables, and also a little about operations. It’s in the “Running Extra” part of the April 2024 issue. There are two main aspects I am trying to model (and that I described in the article). One, the loading of the cars (what can be seen outside the car), and two, ice refrigeration, both pre-ic ..read more

I'm pretty much done with the previous challenges described in this series, but one more interesting one did surface during my last operating session. There’s an old saying, that using a layout inevitably breaks things. Well, this was another demonstration of that adage. (For previous series posts, see for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/trackwork-wars-part-12.html ). I’ll describe the issue because it was not a simple problem. The interesting aspect of this particular problem is that it involves several different things. First, it’s a really old switch. dating back at leas ..read more

This may seem a rather exotic idea. But I’m doing it. Probably many readers have seen layouts with kites in the air, or airplanes; I can remember visiting a layout with a blimp in the air. Well, why not birds? Of course, nearly all bird species are quite tiny in HO scale. But the California condor, with a wingspan of up to 10 feet (the largest in North America) is a potential exception. As explained below, I decided to give it a try. These birds are mostly black, but like most vulture species, have a bare head. They also have elongated white patches on the underside of the wings. Below you see ..read more

This past weekend I hosted two operating sessions on my layout, which happen to have been nos. 88 and 89 on the layout in its present form. They were especially important to me because of the work I have been doing to correct past problems with trackwork (as described, for example, in this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/trackwork-wars-part-12.html ). I wanted to give the new track a full workout.  Of course, an important preliminary job was to clean up the work area (shown in the post just linked) and restore structures, etc. to their rightful places. And you may note th ..read more