Hi all, Here's my next project. The Rio Grande had a bunch of these and they weren't used to haul anything; rather, they were used to allow standard gauge locomotives to switch narrow gauge cars and vice versa. The Grande had several yards with three rail track and those yards are where these cars lived.   Here's a pic of a narrow gauge locomotive hauling a standard gauge car with an idler in between:   I have decided to build one in 1:29 scale. Here's an end view of the car I a...

I have several various types of "passive" track cleaners, including manual, railcar, and engine, but none of them "spin an abrasive" like the LGB track cleaning engine.   I did have one of those, but it was troublesome, even after LGB "fixed" it, and the abrasive disks have gotten so expensive as to be prohibitive (>$20/pr and I could go through a couple at a time).   I figured that there had to be a more economical way to accomplish this.   There is a company (Cratex) th...

OK, the Mik is astern of us and it is on to new projects, in particular the long-foreshadowed "Rehabilitation of the Missile Sponges!"  "Missile sponge" was a Cold War era U.S. Navy term for ships that were supposed to suck up incoming missiles to allow the carriers and, for a while, the battleships, to close for the kill.  Here, it refers to the three locomotives to which we gave the crew and most of their friends full access, in effect, absorbing the blows so more  expensive tra...

Hi folks The purpose of this forum is to act as a repository of drawings, images, files, etc, of anything railroad related. You can either upload the file, or post a link to it as a message.

Thought I would start a new thread since we are now talking Metal. to be specific we are talking a Shape ways Process they call "Steel" this is actually a stainless steel and nickel mix if I understand correctly. it is done by distributing a binder to a layer of metal powder, followed by additional layers of metal powder and binder. the end result is sintered to bind the material together, resulting in shrinkage.  Below is my current cad file; it shows two cross head locations because s...

A good friend and fellow 7/8 scale fan has opened an Etsy shop were he markets 3D resin printed figures. They come unpainted. Here are five of them I recently painted for my RR.  

Devon's been pressuring me on the sidelines to participate in this years challenge. I've tried to bow my way out by making a claim for strict prototype modeling and have no such use for a tin can project.   But then Devon politely reminded me of my on going feed mill project that I'm currently trying to finish. Or rather trying to get the parts together again after 10+ years in storage.   In sharing what I thought was a good excuse not to participate in the challenge this year, Dev...

So my wife has wanted to display her Christmas village stuff in a neat little scene for many many years instead of just sticking them randomly on a shelf. I finally got on board and we made this display this year.     This gave birth to an entirely new theme for my On30 layout which I can say is just about to start breaking ground. I scrapped any idea of a realistic looking operations layout. I am going full on Christmas year round whimsical layout. First I have an endless supply ...

Small Engine shed and machine shop. My 7/8 Climax fits just perfectly.    

  Just ran across this in the latest Micro-Mark catalog, anyone familiar with it. Looks like quite a tool and of course it has Micro-Mark's traditional "quite a price", but if it does what it says it will, hmmmm.  After reading the ad my first thought was "wonder how fast I could cut a finger off, Devon, don't look at this ad   https://www.micromark.com/Wondercutter