Model railroads
 

Anyone into model railroading?

I have a friend that is totally into it. My step father was also. Both have made really very cool settings. I can't believe the change in technology. I have a locomotive from my SF. I took it over to my friend and i guess it's completely different and can't use it. But look what he made for me with it...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1313367831.jpg

Had a friend who was into it, got me to buy an MTH "Nickel Plate Road" engine that smoked, had sound, etc. Wasn't cheap and ended up selling it back, that can be an expensive hobby. Maybe if I had a house with a basement. Sinatra was a huge train buff, so is Neil Young.

I knew a chick in college that was into trains and looked like a model, does that count.

Snap!

Not without a pic!

You interested in some vintage German trains...

Are you interested in German made out door garden rail roads?

Warning before clicking... They are the best and completely addictive.

LGB.com - Home

lehmann gross bahn - Google Search

That's really cool. can't quite make out the leading truck. Is that a 2-6-2 Prairie freight loco or a 4-6-2 Pacific passenger loco?

zero interest in trains. but have spent the entire weekend watching godzilla/gamera/mst3k movies. something about building a 1/50th scale japanese city seems like fun.

Does this count?
I made this last Christmas when we had the train set up.
Xmas train ride - YouTube

always have loved trains but i simply dont have the space for it now. im lucky enough to setup a little village and track layout for xmas time..

Scott, that really is way cool!

Yea Scott , You did a nice job on that video, good look at the set up, plus cool sounds as the other train pass.
Well done!!

Cheers Richard

OK, I'll play ... here's what we currently have in the basement. HO scale on top with slot cars going on the bottom. Has 3 tracks on the top with separate controllers. Built for the kids to use and enjoy.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1313377012.jpg


Of course this section is off limits to the kids :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1313377067.jpg

nice!


Back when I was a teenager going to Riverside Community College I worked for these guys in their hobby store:

http://www.rfrailroad.com/about_us.html

I wasn't doing his trains though - he hired guys that actually worked for the railroad for that (usually union guys waiting for jobs to be available - things were slow in the '90s eh?). I was building and selling model airplanes for him.

Doug E that is fresh. Very nice setup, I take it you stand in the "infield" to race with head room provided by cut out in train table. Operating the train on the outside. Thumbs up man, thats a good one.

THAT piques my interest! When I was a little kid the Nickel Plate Road, New York Central and the B&O formed three sides of a rectangle in Painesville, Ohio, where I spent some of my early childhood.

The Nickel Plate was still running steam then, 2-8-4 Berkshire and 2-8-2 Mikado freight locos and 4-6-2 Pacific passenger locos.

I used to hang around the NP station and the NP switch tower a couple miles away at the NP's intersection with the B&O. I got to know the switchmen in the tower and they'd let me pull the switch levers. They were about as long as I was tall and the switchmen used to laugh at me as I struggled, putting all my weight into pulling them toward me then having to literally hang on them to move them toward me. I couldn't push them in the opposite direction because I couldn't hang on them.

I also got to know the engineers and firemen on the Mikado that made the short, local freight runs. They'd let me ride along. They were hand stoked and I'll never forget the first time I saw the raging, roaring inferno when fireman opened the butterfly firebox doors to throw in a shovel of coal. Great memories. :)

I was in Hamburg Germany a couple of weeks ago and spent several hours at Miniature-Wunderland, the train setup in on multiple floors. They do a 24 hour day into night theme throughout, it's pretty neat. I guess it's the Rennsport of model trains....

Wunderland in 4 minutes - model building - model railway Hamburg

e

Mu dad was into when I was a kid. We had a lot of fun building various towns and all the scenery. The railroad was built on a big table that covered our pool table. When we wanted to play pool, just roll the whole train set away. I wish there were pix. THis thing had a working silver mine, two figure 8 tracks, mostly 1800's, but I was given a section where I had a modern town. All the buildings were hand made out of wood. Good times!

That's the one I had, the 2-8-4-Berkshire. It even had real coal on the top of the car. It was cool. They also had a Tinplate line that was pretty slick. MTH makes nice stuff.

I've got a closet full of HO and much older Lionel.

No to high jack the thread, but I've always wanted to get into live steam. That would so bloody cool.

I'm guessing you might mean Fleischmann and Marklin? They're neat, but my interest ls American steam locos because...see my earlier post.

I remember when I saw pics of Euro locos and they looked 'funny' to me, not to living up to big, burly American locos. :)

Oh yeah! But just to look at and fantasize about having on my fantasy country estate.

Sure does. Nice! That station, less the covered portico, reminds me of the old NP station mentioned in my post. It had a small waiting room with wood floor and was painted gray.

Me too. Don't have the time either. Actually, I'm considering a small diorama (?) like Buckterrier's.

I am sometimes tempted to build a small, wall hugging logging or mining layout in HO or smaller gauge-but I'm skeptical of smaller than HO being satisfying (maybe too small).

I've got N, HO, O, and G scale. The Postwar Lionel is by far my favorite.

Jackson

That is absolutely astounding!

The Balboa Park Model railroad museum in San Diego is really cool but nothing like the link.

Nice! Clever and very creative.

I'm gonna look into that one.

Nice site. Are they still in business? If I get up to Riverside (perish THAT thought :)), I'll surely stop in.

Sounds like a way cool job you had!

Strikes me that that your dad and you are superb craftsmen Dave (your gee tar's a knockout). Got any old pics of the layout? Turning any more bowls? They're great too.

If any are around, they are in the boxes of misc photos at my parents. I think there are a few "incidentals" - not the primary focus of the pic...

My dad saved most of the removable scenery, including buildings. I recently dragged a few out.. At the moment, they are accessible. I will try to unpack a few things in the next couple of days and get some pix...

No hijack. I've been toying with the idea of buying an alcohol fired tabletop steam engine for some time now. Larger scale is beyond my scope.

When I was a kid my dad bought me one with a red Bakelite, electrical boiler that you could take apart and reassemble in two configurations: horizontal piston and vertical piston walking beam. I actually found one for sale on the web, but in the process of looking I looked at a ton of.German models, shiny brass, highly detailed and got hooked on getting one of them. Of course, you can never have enough small scale steam power and I got hooked on the old popcorn steam engines, but they're a bit big and beaucoup bucks.

My uncle had a large basement with 80% of it filled with a Lionel layout. For my first train set I asked for American Flyer. I hated Lionel's third rail :) and thought American Flyer made a better scale model.

I hated diesels too. Who would want a diesel? They looked wimpy beside a steam loco and had no valve gear. Nothing moved! Hated them (the full size ones too - two of the three railroads running through my town were still running glorious, steam belching monsters).

I really, really hated the sound of diesel horns (actually still do). They have absolutely no soul whatsoever! Any one who's heard a steam whistle knows exactly what I mean. You could identify the different engineers by their individual display of virtuosity when they blew their two longs, a short and a long. Diesel horns were/are just annoying. :D

Great. Scenery building and building building (ha!) are real art forms themselves. Exquisitely built and weathered locos and rolling stock are overpowered by poor scenery, buildings and details.

Got pics?

What is it that makes Lionel your favorite? Their third rail always threw me off visually.

seems every kid in Germany gets one of these setups..
then the Dad claims it..
mine did..

that place in Hamburg is unreal..

have a Museum dedicated to this about 4 blocks from the house..
SAMRA

Rika

Starting in the mid 60's the the Japanese started making Brass Locomotives, then the Koreans. Those have become collectable.

I could see myself collecting those. About $400 would be the tops for one at auction. But alas Spoons take all my Dinero.

here is a link to a model Railroad at the Deutsches Museum:

Deutsches Museum: Model railway

The write-up says that it was built in 1996. In the seventies there was a much larger one. I don't know if that one is still there, or where it went, and I haven't yet found any pictures.

A bit closer to home..for a few of us anyway.

Northlandz in Flemmington, NJ

Home

A friends Father was big into German trains (he was also IMSA mechanic of the year the 1st 2 years of IMSA) and has passed, and the Son was talking about selling some off since there was so much.. Mostly the bigger, high end stuff..