Trainfest 2011: Athearn HorizonHobbyTrains.com

Accurail's Trainfest Specials

A picture at left of one of the new Accurail steel reefers done up in Milwaukee colors for Trainfest I clipped off the Accurail site. I don't know much about the prototype this car based on. The Atlas site has a little chat on it.

I'll probably buy a few of these Milw cars and some of the PFE ones when they come out. I remember long lines of the PFE cars on the C&NW through Oak Park in the 60s.

Finding the Perfect Model Railroad Set | Model Railroad Blog

Finding the Perfect Model Railroad Set | Model Railroad Blog

A helpful link for Christmas time when people are searching for sets for their kids.

Rapido HO "The Canadian" Tour Blog

Rapido HO "The Canadian" Tour Blog:

This past Monday, November 7, 2011 Rapido made model railroad history by commissioning from Creaform to perform the first-ever 3D scan of a real MLW/ALCO FA locomotive: FPA4 #6765 at Exporail, Canada's national railway museum in Montreal, Quebec. Jason, Dan and I all were in attendance as were about 30 of our customers who came up to join in the day's events.

Rapido using the kind of technology that's made it the best of times to be a Model Railroader.

HorizonHobbyTrains.com - Trainfest 2010: Fox Valley Models

The Fox Valley Models guys at trainfest in Milwaukee. I've got a Hiawatha plus extra cars, a bunch of the seven post Boxcars, and three out of the four B&O Wagon Top cars. Amazing products and Lombard Hobbies has them at a nice discount.

I hope they do a C&NW 400. There logical ones to do it!

Lombard Hobbies goes online

Hey, they're finally online here!

Congratulations to a great store on a great site. Wish you the best!

What a consist!

Nice video of the odd power combinations we'e blessed with now around Chicago since the EJ&E sold to CN.

...but geez I just noticed this was shot up in Trout Lake Michigan! The EJ&E up in Trout Lake!

40' Steel Plug Door Refrigerator Cars from Accurail

Accurail has some good looking stuff on their website. Forty foot plug door steel reefers. I'll try and zip over to Elburn with my camera and see if I can snap a few pictures of Accurail at work on 'em.

Can you find All Nation's Hobby Shop below?

Stumbled accross this photo of a long gone Madison Street. I remember my Dad telling me not to walk any further west because I'd walk into skid row.

Lombard Hobby's website

Jeff over at Lombard Hobbies said he's got a guy working on a new webpage for the job, and he'll also be selling over the site. About time!  Should be a great way of keeping up with he what he's got on stock.

New C&NW/UP Pool Cars from Walthers

A friend assures me the 400 can’t be far behind if Walthers is doing these cars. Just announced this Month and due Feb 2012.

New links for the blog

Some new and interesting links,

http://elgincarshops.com/

http://dprailmodels.synthasite.com/

http://www.railyardmodels.com/

http://www.greatthirdrail.org/index.html  

http://coastdaylight.com/trains.html

Belt Rail of Chicago viaduct on Wet Jackson Boulevard

Over at Eddie's Rail Fan Page,

Belt Railway of Chicago viaduct on West Jackson Boulevard with old BRC advertising. Chicago Illinois USA. Early October 2006.

Very cool.

Fox Valley Model's HO B&O Wagontop

More pictures over at Facebook from Fox Valley Models...pretty impressive.  I'll need a lot more than one!

Indiana Harbor Belt and Belt Railway of Chicago

Nice BRC video of the Alco Centuries

A pair of C&NW GE C44-9W at Proviso Yards - Feb 2011

Saw these at Proviso on the way into the city and took the picture through the window of the bi=level hence the green tint.

Chicago West Towns down under

How does a guy in Australia get hooked on the Chicago West Towns system? Visit the models at Transit Classics.

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.