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Episode 71: Eric Hansmann - I’ve known Eric for over twenty years and have followed his journey through life with great interest so it seemed obvious we should share his story with the millions of ModelersLife listeners.

Three years ago, my friend Ole Pade from Sweden completed an outstanding kitbash of IAIS SD20 103 based on an Atlas SD24.  The prototype 103 had long been a favorite of mine since I once had a chance to spend some time in the cab way back when, but I'd never gotten around to modeling it, so I half-jokingly asked Ole to please give me first dibs if he ever decided to sell his model.

Hermosa

You may have seen the photo I took recently at the grand finale op session of my Siskiyou Line layout (now being called SL1) where I removed the first screw.

Well, the dismantling is getting serious now.

I'm starting in the staging area first, and I'm taking this approach:

1. Removing the wiring
2. Removing the track
3. Removing the benchwork

I'm pretty much done with step 1 in staging: removing the wiring as you can see from the photos below.

AprilI have been thinking how difficult it has been to represent the really large industries that the railroads served here in Hawaii.  The other, sort of never ending compromise, is the all too short distances between towns. If I could have at least a scale mile of track the. It would really seem like running a train.

Give me some space for scenery to put our trains into context with the world and that would be over the top! 

Since I'm about to start assembling structures for my layout, I was wondering about techniques for making broken windows?

Hello everyone, some of you have seen a few of my posts related to the modeling of the Conrail Harrisburg Division in the late 70's. Since I only own Swiss N scale models, I must start my collection in HO from scratch. I would like to have all of my cars ready to operate on this monster I'm planning.

Penn Lake's Bourbon River Subdivision is the Main Line of the railroad.  The double track line connects the helix from Lampson Yard and the future helix to the Anthracite Subdivision. The modeled portion passes through two towns and three interlockings.

I’ve got a couple of 8’ lengths of 85 pound rail kicking around that came from my great uncle Bob’s place. He worked for the Boston and Albany back when his job was trimming wicks and pouring kerosene for signal lamps. I hate to see a family heirloom like that sitting outside rusting and I’m needing a change of pace from the buildings I’ve been working on lately. Time to do something about this.