Jacksonville Terminal

A great site if you like trains from the Southeast including some very helpful pics of models.

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.