Failures

We tend not to share our failures, except among close friends and family. I’ve had my fair share of hobby project failures across a wide array. I avoided sharing the dismal results, mainly out of embarrassment. But I learned something new with each of those difficulties. I may have changed a technique or materials to move onward.

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Workbench update – May 2020

It’s been a busy hobby month, as travel beyond home has been reduced. I’ve seen many modelers share their recent work over the last month. I’ve snapped images of a few models that have been on the workbench recently.

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Lehigh Valley boxcar fleet

Lehigh Valley boxcars seem to appear frequently in pre-Depression era railroad images. I’ve inquired many times about their pre-1930s boxcar fleet details but most of the Lehigh Valley fans and modelers I’ve met know little about the early 1900s fleet.

The October 1926 ORER lists 13,144 boxcars in the LV fleet. Only 2,040 of those have a 40-foot interior length, most of those are automobile boxcars. The rest of their boxcars have interior lengths of 36-foot, 6-inch, or less. Nearly 3,500 cars in one number series had a 34-foot interior length, which is shorter than I expected for a mid-1920s fleet.

Ray Breyer and I have discussed the elusive Lehigh Valley boxcar fleet over the years. He has pulled data from ORER listings and other sources to summarize the Lehigh Valley boxcar fleet of 1925. This PDF document is available as a resource on the Freight Car Fleets page. We hope modelers find it useful as they build Lehigh Valley boxcars for their fleets. We plan to add more railroad fleet data and details in the future.


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Virtual RPM – April 2020

A small band of Pre-Depression Era railroad modelers has been busy during this time of social distancing. We encourage each other and assist with prototype and model questions. This blog post is a virtual RPM with photos and details of their latest works. All models here are HO scale.

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