Scale Model Railroading

The Outeniqua Choo tjoe, a South African rail excursion billed as the last remaining scheduled steam train, has reopened its service this Fall. The route traveled by the service was damaged in a flood in 2006 and the excursion has not run since. A new route was established this year, running from George, South Africa to Mossel Bay was established. The excursion runs daily excluding Sundays until January 9, and then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from January 11 to March 31, 2010.

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I ran across an interesting site today about a modeler named John Pitts. He models the Illinois Central, and his site has soem great prototype and weathering information, as well as great photos of his layouts. The layout is highly detailed and great to look at. Take a look!

3-D model railroad CAD programs like 3rd PlanIt, and CADRail can make track and layout planning much easier.  They allow you to visualize the look of your layout before ever sawing a board or laying down track.  However, there is another solution out there now that can provide similar 3-D CAD capability for your planning process.  Google’s Sketch Up tool provides CAD capability and the ability to make animated walkthroughs of your virtual layout.  Best of all, it’s free!  The Blissfield Model Railroad Club has used Sketch Up to model their layout, which is under development.  They have posted photos and videos of their layout on their blog.

Feel free to share your views and opinions of the available CAD software out there for the model railroad hobby.  Expect to see a review of many of the available software packages here within the next few months.

Historic project on track
Livingston Press & Argus

Man makes ‘training’ his passion
ABC12.com

Scarborough Model Railroad Club hosts open house
insidetoronto.com

I discovered this software recently that will allow you to control your layout from a PC, including locomotives and turnouts. It’s called JMRI, and works with Atlas Commander, C/MRI, Digitrax, EasyDCC, Lenz, Lionel TMCC, NCE, Roco LocoMaus 2, SPROG, Uhlenbrock Intellibox, Wangrow, and Zimo MX-1. Take a look, and if you find the software useful consider supporting them.

The Minatur Wunderland in Hamburg Germany is the world’s largest HO scale model railroad layout. It’s all DCC with over 60 computers controlling the operation over over 1,000 locomotives, acessories, and over 200,000 lights. It is currently 3500 square meters (that’s about what 28000 square feet?), and there are plans to expand it to 5000 square meters with about 4 (actual) miles of track. The layouts cover both US and European settings. It’s even interactive with buttons visitors can push to activate small vignettes along the layout. There are a number of pictures on the site. Makes me wish I could afford to travel to Germany! If anyone has gone, please post a comment and let us know about your experience.

I ran across a pretty neat blog today for the El Dorado Western Railway, a group of enthusiasts that are trying to restore a Shay locomotive, the Diamond & Caldor No. 4. The have chronicled their work through the blog. They are also asking for support from interested rail fans. Take a minute to read about their work.