Years ago I bought a copy of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society’s “Railroad History, No. 128,” Spring 1973 issue, that contains James E. Lane’s historic summary of USRA freight cars. The USRA freight cars have been noted in many hobby articles over the years. Some have featured prototype photos and references to Lane's 1973 article. But these are mostly out of print and often touch on only a portion of the USRA freight cars. 

Hi guys i just started building steam engine always did diesels i have  mostly mth with dcc but i got a good deal on Rivarossi 4-8-8-4 i have 6 of them now i went though them got them running great now but i tried 3 or 4 different dcc decoders in them and speakers i not happy with any of them to fake sounding anyone know what the best decoder and speaker to use on a big boy thanx for looking hope i can get so help!!  thanx Andy

I am building a small rural village on my layout, with a small passenger depot and a nearby freight house that would handle less-than-carload shipments arriving and departing from town.  The layout is set in the early 1950s.  I have room to make the spur that serves the freight house be long enough for 3 box cars, with the freight doors lined up with the position of the middle car of the three.  My reasoning is that one box car could be spotted at the freight house for loading/unloading while another waiting to be loaded/unloaded is sitting ahead of the freight house.&nb

Wondering how many people have paid for help with the hobby.  There are a lot of people out there today that will do anything from building a simple model to whole layouts. In todays world some people specialize. .I see this particularly with DCC installations,but for years there have been people painting locos..I recently had an older brass engine tuned up and a sound decoder installed. So much  can be bought "RTR" including buildings, cars,locos etc.