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

My efforts to correct a pair of troublesome switches near the outer end of my Santa Rosalia Branch layout are continuing. In the previous post on this topic, I showed the beginnings of replacement, after the offending switches had been removed and discarded. (That post can be viewed at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/trackwork-wars-part-11.html .) An important issue unresolved at the end of that post was the realignment of the MP1 switch machines that power these two switches. The decision I made was to move both MP1s, but not very far. This can be best illustrated with a ..read more

I recently had an interesting question sent to me by email. The essence of the question was, “Is it realistic to operate three-compartment tank cars?” I did send the questioner a link to Richard Hendrickson’s article in Model Railroad Hobbyist on the topic (“Multiple-compartment tank cars” in Model Railroad Hobbyist, in the issue of February 2015). But it occurred to me that I could add some comments here. Multiple-compartment tank cars of any kind were relatively rare; by one estimate about 95 percent of all tank cars in the transition era were single-compartment cars. Nevertheless, tank cars ..read more

In a recent post, number 9 in my series on this topic, I showed the work done in leveling some track in the area between my layout towns of Ballard and Santa Rosalia (you can read that post at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/02/trackwork-wars-part-9.html ).  But even as that work was being completed, I realized it was not all of the problem. There remains some variability in the track gauge that still can cause derailments, and in a few places the track gauge becomes too tight. Thus this post. For example, I have used the clear plastic “test car” shown in the previous p ..read more

In alternate years, the layout owners around Puget Sound, Washington put together an operating weekend called, for obvious reasons, SoundRail. I attended this years, as I have done four previous SoundRails. I’ve always liked their emblem, combining rail with the waters of the Sound and Seattle’s iconic “Space Needle,” dating from the 1962 World's Fair. This year, my layout assignments began with Joe Greene, located way up in Sequim, on the upper edge of the Olympic Peninsula. This is a wonderful layout, modeling the C&O in Appalachia in 1974. The job I drew this time was the excellent pap ..read more

In a recent post about the steel express refrigerator conversions of Pacific Fruit Express, I mentioned the Chrysler freight trucks applied to 25 of the cars when they were converted to passenger express service. These were visually distinctive because of the use of an external hydraulic snubber, which projected upwards on the side frame. (You can read that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-steel-express-cars-of-pfe.html .) Here is a photo of the prototype truck (PFE photo, CSRM). I mentioned in that post that I had made representations of Chrysler trucks for my own car ..read more

In the previous post, I discussed the most fundamental principle of bridge design, the importance of beam or bridge depth, relative to length. The key point is that the stiffness of a beam (or bridge) depends on the width to the first power, but the depth to the third power. You can read that post at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/03/understanding-bridges.html . Probably the most familiar type of large railroad bridge is the truss bridge. This is really just a beam bridge, but with unnecessary material removed, leaving just the material that ensures the depth of the “beam ..read more

I have an all-black Broadway Limited HO scale model of a Southern Pacific 4-8-4 locomotive, Class GS-4. That is how these engines were painted once the red and orange Daylight paint scheme began to be removed in the early 1950s. But as I received it, the model is lettered in the pre-1946 lettering scheme, with the road name as “Southern Pacific Lines” in relatively small lettering (9 inches tall) and with a small, lower number on the back of the tender.  Here is a view of one such prototype GS-4 locomotive, taken at Glendale on November 24, 1943. Locomotive 4431 is at the head end of No ..read more