Model Railroading on the Cheap

   The Hillton heavy materials track is straight behind the machine shop – the gray frame building at the right edge of this picture. This spur is intended for the machine shop material storage yard.    This East end of Hillton can get busy with all kinds of freight. Here we might see such things…

   The town’s people of Hillton, an industrial rail town, were happy to see a bus station built near the train station. Now maybe people could go someplace. Many years ago I had a plastic two story European style Interlocking building, which I did not care for. So I cut the bottom story off making a…

Experimenting with enhanced depth perception.     Populating the layout with people doing chores adds reality. Showing workers on the job at structures is always rewarding. For a long time I resisted using fancy store bought finely detailed people with suspenders and belt buckles because I thought they were too expensive. However after painting a couple…

I was raised with a Farmall H.      Hauling a row-crop tractor on a stake body truck reminds me of what we did at my first job after graduating from high school at the farm machinery dealer where I worked.  After removing blocking and tie-down wires, we drove them off the side of the flat…

Farmers have used special corn for seed for many decades. Hybrid seeds have been developed for improved yields, or blight or fungus resistance, or earlier or later maturity as well as other specialties.  My father had a dealership with the Dekalb Co. in the late 1950s. Their trademark had always been a nice looking winged…

   Why does a gray haired-old man get excited about rebuilding a HO scale tank car?—I guess the answer to that would be: I was having fun and enjoying my hobby. – At a garage sale I found an old Varney plastic HO scale tank car that caught my eye. Original paint in good clean…

   An old time railroader once remarked to me that when scrap is moving on the railroad, it is the sign of a good economy!  There are more stories about scrap operations later in the book.    Not long after the camper factory was in place the Hillton city fathers realized just how little traffic…

Hillton gets a new industry and the Y&H gets additional shipping.    I found new inspiration after discovering a dozen each of what I considered to be bargain priced HO scale sports car/camper trailer combination in boxed sets consisting of a sports car with matching small camper trailer. Here was an interesting combination of very…

   Maybe the best thing to do with a kit is to use it as a starting point, then go your own way to new detailing heights.  Walthers has an HO scale plastic conveyor kit that has some good and some bad points. The bad point is that there are no flared sideboards at the…

    Another image I have always been fond of is the Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco barns. They have been seen for over a century in the mid-west along well traveled rural highways, an item that I consider to be American Folk Art.  I have photographed several of those barns if found with a clear shot…