A 2000 BMW Z3

Besides trains, there are cars. Here's a 2000 BMW Z3 with 22k on it.

Mike's Train House: Little Joes in HO

Finally, someone is doing an Electric in HO for the midwest modeler and they couldn't have started with a better model. MTH will be doing them in both Milwaukee Road and South Shore schemes. From MTH on the O scale version,

By the late 1940s, the engines on the Milwaukee Road's electrified Rocky Mountain Division were nearly three decades old and tired, and diesels were the wave of the future. Management was intending to pull down the overhead wires and dieselize the entire division. Then along came a big electric named Little Joe, and the wires stayed up for another quarter-century.


The Joes were actually built for another customer half a world away, Russia's Trans-Siberian Railroad. But by the time they were ready to deliver in 1948, the Cold War had frozen sales to the Soviet Union, and builder General Electric was stuck with twenty 5,500 hp locomotives designed to run on 3,300 volts DC - most built to Russian 5' track gauge. As the Milwaukee Road was one of the few American railroads with overhead DC power (at 3,000 volts), GE offered the entire order, including spare parts, to the Milwaukee at the fire sale price of one million dollars. At least one unit, painted in GE demo colors, was tested on both of the road's electrified divisions in 1948 and acquired the nickname "Little Joe" after Joe Stalin.


But the Milwaukee came up with reasons not to make the purchase, and in 1949 three units went to the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend Railroad for freight service. They lasted until 1983, earning the honor of last electric engines in US mainline common-carrier freight service. Brazil's Paulista Railroad bought five more Joes, nicknamed them Russas and operated them until 1999.


An upsurge of traffic from the Korean War convinced the Milwaukee it had made a mistake, and in August 1950 it purchased the remaining 12 Joes, without spare parts, for the original million-dollar price. All went to the Rocky Mountain Division between Harlowton, Montana and Avery, Idaho - ten designated EF-4 for freight service and two as EP-4s for Olympian Hiawatha passenger trains. Engineers loved the new Joes because they were more reliable than the road's ancient boxcabs and much less stressful to operate.


Originally the freight units worked in pairs, with a boxcab helper added on the division's tougher grades. But later in the 1950s a GP9 was attached to the Little Joe pairs and controlled from the lead Joe; this combination could run straight through electrified territory without adding or dropping helpers. By the following decade, Joes were simply cut in ahead of the freight diesels at the beginning of electrified territory, with the Joe's engineer controlling all units. Eventually, however, second-generation diesels brought an end to electrification, and on June 15, 1974, the last Little Joes folded their pantographs - ending 58 years, 6 months, and 16 days of Milwaukee main line electrification. While most of the Joes were scrapped, three survive today: one Milwaukee Road unit in Deer Lodge, Montana, and South Shore units at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois and the Lake Shore Railway Historical Museum in North East, PA, just ten miles from the GE plant where it was built.


New for 2010, the M.T.H. Little Joe duplicates the brute strength and dependability of the original, complete with a detailed die-cast metal body and, for the first time in HO, operating pantographs that raise and lower automatically according to the direction of travel.

Daily Life Along the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad (Newberry Library)

Huge collection of images. I can spend hours with this site.

The Monon

A Monon site. I wonder how many remember that RR? I'll come back to this. Just a link I don't want to forget.

Belt Railway Alcos

Nice video... they're like steam engines.

SOO dollar caboose Elkhart Lake Wisconsin

Ethanol Train in Freeport, IL

Ethanol trains: as boring a train as a train spotter can spot.

BRC Alco C-424's at work

Potlatcher's video of BRC alcos at Clearying Yard.

I'd hear these pass by every day when I lived in La Grange Park by the IHB tracks. Always knew they were coming. They sounded unlike any other locomotive.

Green Bay and Western Depot and Corporate Headquarters

A very impressive model of the Green Bay and Western Depot in Green Bay offered by Engine House Services.

I have pictures taken there as a kid. I'll scan and post those.

Ken's idea for a Model Railroad

Thanks to Ken.

MRL's M-L in HO Scale

A nice video by someone who knows to model the whole train.

Bob Coolide's Trains

A guy who really gets around with his camera.

Naperville 2007

Lots and lots of pictures here.

Prairie Scale Model Railroaders

They had a nice brochure on the counter at Lombard Hobbies yesterday and a nice website.

Structures and Trains by Fred

A new hobby shop in Geneva, Illinois.

Not a lot of inventory but it looks like Fred will be doing workshops. That's a business model for a hobby shop not too common around here.

Our next workshop is scheduled for Thurs. November 29th at 7:30. We will begin construction on the Black River Junction layout that was featured in Model Railraoder starting with the January 2007 issue.

Like any layout we will start by constructing the benchwork. Be a part of this project and learn how really simple it is to build your own model railroad. Unlike the layout in the series we will be using cork roadbed and code 83 Atlas FlexTrack.

Structures and Trains by Fred
DATE: November 29th, 2007 Address: 12 North Second Street
TIME: 7:30 PM Geneva, IL. 60134

For Information: 630.208.9011 or 630.584.3429

Future Work Shops:

Black River Junction (We will actually build this layout )
Structures: Plastic & Craftsman Kits building, Painting and Weathering
Digital Command & Control
Scenery Construction

Wish him luck... I'll try and visit one of the workshops.

Lombard Hobbies

The new front to the store. Jeff reopened a few weeks ago and I got hooked on some great deals on Athearn Genesis F units. He ought to consider inhouse marriage counseling at the store because it's tough to explain a great deal on Athearn Genesis F units when a guy gets home.

FRN Blog

A nice Railroad blog by a blogger who stopped blogging. It takes work....believe me.

GP9s in TP&W and CRANDIC schemes

Walther's announcing paint schemes I thought we'd never see.

M.T.H. To Release HO Triplex In 2008

MTH takes some flak in comments over at Model Railroader,

This model is the least asked for model in any poll I have seen, but here it is!!!!!!!!!

WOW! I can't wait to run out and NOT buy one of those!!
I hope any future releases are a little more grounded in the reality of the hobby

It's not on my wish list, but it's a very neat looking model. I might become an Erie fan.

Davis Junction Illinois July 2007

EJ&E steel coil cars and a DM&E gondola at Davis Junction.

Al Warren's HO Scale CNW layout

Some nice pics of a CNW layout here.

Dennis Storzek: Station switching in days of yore

Dennis posted this great picture of Cal Zephyr being switched at Oakland Mole in 1954. via Passenger Car List

CA&E Pictures

Some pics I had sitting on the computer. No idea from where I downloaded them. I remember them tearing down the gas tank in Forest Park. That's the tank in the background of the bottom picture.

Chicago and West Towns

A site with lots of pictures. Also Central Electric Railfans new book by James Buckly.

John Flinn: World's loftiest train ride a breathtaking feat

From today's Chicago Trib on the new Lhasa Express,

The atmosphere here holds between 40 and 50 percent less oxygen than at sea level. Extra oxygen is pumped into the unpressurized rail cars as they roll across the Tibetan plateau, but it's not clear that it does much good. All around me in the dining car, passengers were suffering the hangover-like symptoms of altitude sickness: throbbing headaches and severe nausea.

I was feeling relatively chipper due to Diamox, a prescription drug that prevents altitude sickness. Even so, I was lightheaded and a little dizzy. Back in my compartment, I plugged the oxygen hose into the wall and inhaled deeply. Almost instantly my mind cleared. But the effect lasted only as long as I breathed oxygen from the hose.

The surrealness was heightened by what looked like hundreds of enormous golf tees lining the tracks. They're an attempt to solve the railroad's most vexing problem.

Four hundred miles of the route lie atop a particularly unstable form of permafrost that thaws during the day and freezes at night, causing the tundra above it to rise and fall by inches. To try to prevent tracks from buckling and cracking, Chinese engineers elevated more than 100 miles of it and installed the giant golf tees along other stretches. These are cooling pipes that use solar energy to turn liquid ammonia into gas, chilling the ground and preventing the permafrost from melting.

Grinnell Railway Express Club

An M&StL doodlebug downloaded from the Grinnell Railway Express model railroad club.

I graduated from Grinnll College in 1976. The old M&StL line ran right through the campus.

Check their webpage and you'll see a nicely done model of the Rock Island and M&StL depot. It now houses a restaurant. The old Railway Express building houses the club.

Naperville - Prototype Modelers Seminar

Photo's here. Great stuff! Inspirational....

Small Illinois towns don't forget rail roots

Trib's Don Davenport today on railroad museums in Galesburg, Mendota, Amboy, Union, Thomson, and Rochelle. The IC depot at Amboy is very classy structure,

Even casual passersby pause to admire this beautiful two-story brick and limestone depot built in 1876. Onetime headquarters for the Illinois Central's Northern Division, the 19-room structure featured passenger facilities on the first floor and housed division officials and staff on the upper level.

As times changed, division headquarters were moved elsewhere; passenger service ended in 1939, and the depot closed in 1967. Freight trains used the line into the 1980s. The tracks have since been removed.

As disuse led to disrepair, concerned citizens began efforts to save the historic station. It has been returned to life as the Amboy Depot Museum, filled with railroad memorabilia and local history items.

The telegrapher's office features a variety of telegraph keys, timetables and photos of train wrecks that occurred at Amboy. Original benches grace depot waiting rooms; there are original railroad documents, photos, railroad lanterns, switch keys and a great deal more.

A steam locomotive, a 1920s-era caboose and a century-old IC freight house on the grounds are open to tour.

Sitting at East Main and South East Avenue, the depot is open year-round, 1-4 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and holidays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Admission is free.

Amboy is about 110 miles from downtown Chicago. For additional information, call 815-857-4700.

Baghdad Hobby Club

What do some servicemen stationed in Iraq do to pass the time? Hobbies! Specifically, model trains! Here, Lt. Patrick Anderson works with some of our HO scale hopper cars. Patrick and a few others in the outfit have also built an operating layout using KATO UNITRACK.

And Kato has pictures of it here. (On the lefthand menu of the Web site of the Japanese model railroad manufacturer Kato USA, click on the Customer Photo Gallery and go to the Baghdad Hobby Club at the bottom of Page 2.)


via Allen Johnson

cross posted Bill Baar's West Side

Playing with trains

When I belonged to the Oak Park Society of Model Engineers many years ago, you couldn't say play with trains; it was instead operating the layout.

I'm older now. Playing is just fine with me.

Sam Posey's written a book about it and the Mcwetlog reviews it here.

Broadway Limited CZ Pass Cars

Model Railroader reviews them. They're stunning models.

Model Slums

Somebody models 'em. They look great.

Milwaukee Rd rib-side cabooses

The Milwaukee Railroader's First Quarter 2006 issues carries a story on building Milwaukee Rd rib-side cabooses from Cabooses Northwest.

Pictures of them available here.

Coincidence to see them because a few weeks ago I was talking at the hobby shop about scratch building some but hesitated because I thought putting the work into that would gurantee someone bringing them out (and doing a better job of it).

Looks like just mentioning the thought was enough to do the trick.

Bloomingdale Airline

Tremendous site dedicated to documenting C&NW and Milw Road switching districts in Chicago. This is just fantastic. Especially the part on the Bloomingdale Airline; one of my favorite pieces of railroads in Chicago.

C&NW Caboose at Proviso yard 1943

There are more C&NW pictures here at the Library of Congress's Bound for Glory online exhibit. This is one of my favorites.

And more here...

Rochelle, Illinois March 12, 2006

Chicago Aurora & Elgin RR substation in Elgin, Illinois

B & G Train World, Elgin, Illiniois, Feb 4, 2006

I spend a lot of time here. It's the only full service hobby shop in the area. Friendly helpful bunch of folks. All of them Model Railroaders.

Elgin's Watch Factory Station

South Shore Caboose

Some great pictures of a South Shore Caboose taken by Chris Trott and posted at SnapShot Chicago.

Trost Hobby Shop closing

Trost Hobby Shop over on 63rd Street is closing tomorrow for good. The Berghoff, Fields, and now this....

via Gapers Block Yet another longtime Chicago landmark closing

Cross Posted on Illinoize

Lombard Hobbies, Sep 30, 2005

Lombard Hobbies on St Charles Road in Lombard Illinois is one of my favorite hobby shops. They have some of the best prices and always a deep discount on something special. Usually something special I've been looking around for.

Recently arrived Athern SD45T-2s in UP colors. Jeff's elbow is in the corner of the picture but he didn't want to be in it. He's discontinued their webpage too. Said it was too much trouble, so to buy anything you need to make a trip to Lombard, Illinois.

Nobody's layout is ever finished. But all you really need is to be able to run the trains. Here's theirs.

Stuff I bought then smuggled into the house to avoid budget confrontations.

CA&E Ardmore Station, Villa Park, Illinois

One of my favorite stations. Now used by the Chamber of Commerce in Villa Park for offices. The new Metra Station in Elburn Illinois seems inspired too me by this structure.

M&StL at Grinnll, Iowa

Lyndon "Cash" Groth has a nice webpage devoted to the Minneapolis & St. Louis, Iowa Central, and the Chicago & Northwestern railroads.

You'll find some nice pictures of the joint M&StL and Rock Island Depot in Grinnell, Iowa.

I whiled away the hours at this Depot while a student at Grinnell College in the early 70s.

The old M&StL tracks cut right through the middle of campus. When I was a student the C&NW had taken over the M&StL but there were still three or four trains a day.

Now it's the Union Pacific but the traffic seems to be steady based on this article on Students and Trains.

At Grinnell College, trains have been a part of campus life since the school's 1846 founding.

Cargo trains pass through campus, running north and south, two or three times each day, said Dann Hayes, director of media relations. There is another line that runs east to west through the town of Grinnell.

"Because of that, cross trains have to go extra slow, which is a bonus for us," Hayes said.

The trains blast their horns at least two intersections before arriving on campus, giving plenty of warning. To further ensure student safety, procedures to deal with train collisions have been outlined in handbooks that will be distributed in every classroom, office and at every telephone at the school, Hayes said.

"For the most part, I think it's just common sense."

Wayne's Dunham Depot

From the Daily Herald of September 25, 2005 about preservation efforts for an old train station.

Train depots have plenty of history in Wayne. Karen Armbrust said the first one, known as Dunham Depot, was built in 1850 when one of the village’s founding fathers, Solomon Dunham, wanted a rail line closer to the land he owned.

The newer, bigger depot that the village is now trying to restore into the museum was built in 1884 and eventually boarded up after the last stops in 1950. A few years later, Karen said, it was moved to the Dunham Castle property by family member Jane Dunham.

Anyone interested in getting involved or seeking more information about the museum project can contact the village at (630) 584-3090.

The picture is not on the link but it's a spitting image of the old Revell Small Town station.

GACX Express Reefer HO kits

Steve Sandifer compares Walthers and Broadway Limited cars in a link I found posted on yahoo's passenger car list.

Elburn's Metra Station a look alike for CA&E's Ardmore Station

Elburn's Mayor Willey's blogsite has a drawing of Elburn's new Metra Station. It looks like the Metra folks were inspired by the Chicago Aurora & Elgin's Ardmore station in Villa Park.

Of people, rails, and places

Here's a blog by a fellow who enjoys Russian trains: Of people, rails, and places. Problem is he writes in Russian. No matter, I look at the pictures.

Fox River Trolly Museum

Below are some pictures taken today at the Fox River Trolly Museum. Hard to believe it's forty years old now, and that I remember visting when I was just a kid. I have a picture taken then of CA&E Car 20 I'll dig out and post. Afterwords I'm sure we went to Morris's for Bar-B-Que.

Sad_South_Shore_Car 

CTA_Interior 

CTA_Car 

CTA_Articulated 

CAE_Car20_Front_View 

CAE_Sign 

Branchline's Railway Express Agency Reefer

Branchline has some pictures up of their soon to be released model of an REA Reefer. I didn't realize the green/silver scheme was the 'as delivered' scheme. It didn't hold up well and the cars soon repainted the standard REA solid green.