Beating a Dead Horse: NCE or Digitrax?
We’re beating a dead horse in the form of a DCC comparison between Digitrax and NCE.
Layers of Detailed Weathering
OVERVIEW: I began this project to try something different. The subject is a new old stock HO scale Walthers well car kit from 1992. This is definitely different for me since I don’t model any intermodal traffic. MY PROCESS: I got this kit and started assessing it and how it should look based on prototype photos. When I had looked…
Traction Action in Fort Collins
One thing I often like to do on roadtrips is estimate the modeling potential of different areas. Scarcely a trip goes by where I come up short in finding something railroad related that is interesting, unique, and highly modelable! On this latest summer road trip, we visited several places known for their railroad history and we ran across a few…
Weather an Open Hopper
OVERVIEW: Weathering rollingstock can be a challenge sometimes, and one of those challenges are open cars. This HO scale weathering project uses a Bowser 100-ton hopper as the subject for an open car. MY PROCESS: To achieve the ultra flat and smudgy look of the BNSF oxide red paint I used a combination of Bragdon and AIM powders with Tamiya…
Weather Prototypically
This assembled Accurail kit was begging to be weathered prototypically. I was asked to weather this car for my local hobby shop train guy. Since it’s a local road to us, he asked to go as prototypically as possible. OVERVIEW: A quick backstory on these Accurail cars – A few of my local modeler friends and fellow club member put…
Model Train Podcasts: What do I listen to?
TV killed the radio, or so they say. But what if radio didn’t die, it just moved online? That is essentially the concept behind a podcast. They can be live or prerecorded. They can be audio only or they can be videos. However, all podcasts share the same basic concept; individuals making their own radio show that can be shared…
Weather an Autorack Kit
Here’s how I weathered this older Walthers autorack HO scale kit during the assembly. OVERVIEW: This older Walthers kit was still shrink wrapped when I found it second hand, talk about new-old-stock! I find these older kits to be conducive for weathering candidates because you can weather them in much smaller pieces versus handling the whole model. This generally reduces…
5 Reasons to Build a Small Layout
The first rule of model railroading is have fun. This is a hobby, after all, and so it makes no sense to turn something fun into difficult work. With that in mind, the second rule of model railroading is that it’s your railroad and you can do whatever you want with it. I suppose if we added a third rule…
What is HOn3 and How Do I Get Started?
Introducing Narrow Gauge! Of all the different modeling scales that hobbyists can invest in, HO scale (1:87th) is by far the most popular. An aggregate of different polls conducted over the years shows that while HO scale isn’t quite as dominant as it was twenty years ago, today 60-70% of model railroaders still choose HO scale as their primary modeling…
Layout Tour: The Black Hills and Fort Pierre in HOn3
Home layout tours are one thing we love to do whenever the opportunity presents itself. Admittedly, this is a rather rough video filmed in a vlog style which I’m not a big fan of. However, over fourteen minutes I take the camera around my model railroad replicating small sections of the Black Hills and Fort Pierre that used to run…
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