Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
I’ve been noticing various types of cranes in prototype photos of team yards and tracks. They do not show up everywhere, but cranes are a detail to consider when modeling a scene in the 1900-1940 years. The 1923 image above documents passenger cars parked at a team yard in Washington DC for a Shriner’s convention. They aren’t easy to spot. but there are several cranes in the background.
Continue reading “Cranes”
While building an HO scale resin automobile box car kit recently, I began a conversation with Pre-Depression Era model railroaders. We discussed details, fleets, and kits. Fellow 1920s modeler Ray Breyer shared data and a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation he had created.
Continue reading “Automobile box cars”
Steven Hedlund shared an interesting review of the Missouri Pacific boxcar fleet. His profile includes subsidiary Lines and historical notes on how the company grew. The MP was a major bridge route between western states and rail connections at St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans.
Missouri Pacific boxcars pop up in many pre-1930 images. Steve reviews several car designs and lettering changes through the first decades of the 20th Century. His Missouri Pacific PDF can be reviewed in the Freight Car Fleets resource section of the blog.
In other Missouri Pacific news, a new book is coming soon from the MP Railroad Historical Society. Charlie Duckworth has curated selected photographs from the Society archives for a 160 page book. Additional details can be reviewed on the Society Store.
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Ray Breyer has authored a mid-Twenties railroad freight car fleet profile on the Chicago & Alton. The line was a busy connector between the Chicago, Kansas City, and St. Louis railroad hubs. Many are aware of the C&A passenger varnish, but the freight car fleet was also important.
As the C&A was once owned by the Harriman syndicate, several of the car designs are related to other Harriman roads (SP, IC, UP). Ray’s Chicago & Alton PDF can be reviewed in the Freight Car Fleets resource section.
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My lovely wife and I hit the road recently to visit our kids and grand kids, and my parents. We drove from middle Tennessee to Buffalo to celebrate a second birthday with a grandson. The Heritage Discovery Center was holding an open house, so we dropped by for a visit the day after the party.
Continue reading “Roadtrip finds”