Frank Hodina asked if I would be interested in writing a monthly series of blog posts on planning, designing, and building my model railroad. I quickly agreed, despite the fact that my layout is still under construction, and it could be another year before it’s fully operational. Over the course of the series, I’ll describe the planning and execution of what is becoming the Burlington-Washington Subdivision of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
Tag Archives: prototype
Owens-Illinois Duraglas covered hoppers
Eric Mumper joins the RCW bloggers with an upgrade on an HO scale brass covered hopper.
The Owens-Illinois Duraglas covered hopper cars have been a bit of a fascination of mine for many years. My layout has the Streator, Illinois, bottle plant as an industry and Chet French found many of these cars coming in on the Wabash hauling soda. Where they were loaded would be great to find out.
Deciding on a new layout adventure
Clark Propst returns to the blog with his tale on starting a new layout. Here’s Clark’s story.
Tony Koester wrote: “If you’re primarily a scenery and structures person, then maybe something like this — essentially a diorama with some movement — might be just the ticket.”
It took me decades to discover I am what Tony wrote, but add in freight car guy, too. I’m a modeler first and an operator second. Being practical, I can’t see buying and building models, and not using them. You don’t have to be really good at something to enjoy it. You just need satisfactory results. Striving to do better next time is the key. My next time came when we sold our home and my prototype layout took a one way trip to the landfill.
Georgia & Florida Howe Truss box car
Al Brown steps in to show us his work on a Georgia & Florida box car.
Georgia & Florida box car, number 7392, is Sunshine Models kit 39.18 with some details added in the construction process. In some cases, I didn’t have the right parts, so these were scratchbuilt.