Model Railroading on the Cheap

There was a family acquaintance back home on the farm by the name of Lester Cobb. There is a gristmill in the corner of the layout at Hillton Junction that I call the Cobb Corn Co., Lester Cobb Proprietor, whose motto is “When you deal with Les Cobb—you get more corn”. (I could not resist the…

The Y&H has a shop for light rail car repairs at Hillton. If needed, it can also be used as the paint shop for WREX jobs. A small rail born crane and its old flat car boom tender is housed there.  Here we see both sides of a boxcar under repair. Perhaps the car needs…

   I like modeling the steam era because of my memories. Today, grain like wheat and corn are shipped in covered hopper cars. In the 1950s the railroads used 40-foot boxcars for this. Some of us remember how grain was shipped in boxcars. Here is my attempt to replicate some of those scenes from my…

    My coal tipple is just a Walthers paper flat along the room wall, disguised with hand painted sky board background and a ‘paper’ wood board fence. These were pasted on to a board to help hold them straight. This industry is for loading hopper cars; I have other industrial spaces for emptying them. It’s…

Stories about the industries found on my room sized layout and their perceived activities.   This chapter will show how you don’t have to have a big layout to have lots of freight operation.  Parts of this chapter were done a few years earlier but the story still has value in support of the overall theme…