HISTORIAN, CRAFTSMAN, ARTIST, EVENT COORDINATOR.

In case you want to describe your model railroading in the style of a Linked In profile!

Building a model railroad can be a multi-year effort with many interdependencies. It requires clear goals, careful allocation of resources, planning, tracking progress, and adjusting as needed. For those working in clubs or building a home layout with friends, managing people is part of the job as well. Even those working alone may need to outsource parts of the project. In my case, that meant hiring contractors for room preparation and working with family and friends to build the benchwork and backdrop. A key part of project management is sustaining progress in a way that keeps everyone — including yourself — motivated.

There are many ways we can frame the pursuit of our hobby to help our friends better understand it. Before this discussion, had you stopped to consider all the skills you’ve built up over the years? Each takes time and energy to develop, but along the way you gain new knowledge, new abilities, and maybe even a few new friendships. Perhaps our non-model-railroad friends are right, and at times we really are just “playing with trains” — and that’s perfectly fine. But we know our hobby also gives us the opportunity to become historians, craftspersons, [c.q.] artists, authors, photographers, event coordinators, project managers, and so much more.

The play value in "playing with trains" is greater in any event to the extent that what becomes available for layout tours or operating sessions is a believable representation of something real, that runs reliably.

IT'S TORNADO SEASON.

Model railroad swap meet season is winding down, as later sunsets and warmer temperatures draw people out of their basements.  One of the final shows of the year in the North West Frontier is the Depot Stove Gang show at Lena-Winslow High School.  The traders run heavily to secondhand HO scale trains, as well as Lionel and American Flyer.  The show offers a convenient excuse to patronize a local craft brewery that knows how to make lagers and stouts.

It's probably a good thing this sort of craft project wasn't a thing when I was in kindergarten or elementary school as I would be tempted to add a dome or two to each of those tank cars.

School administrators are comfortable enough with the traditional forms to post advice in the lunch room.

You'd think some of those things would go without saying.  Such, though, are the times we live in.

And now the students, and their teachers, and the support staff, have a new challenge.  "Lena-Winslow School District prepares to go back to school after devastating tornado."  That storm hit Friday a week ago, as students were gathering for a concert.

Part of the school’s roof was ripped off during Friday’s storm, causing damage and leaving students and staff sheltering inside.

Band director Renee Schultz says dozens of students were already in the building for a music event when the weather quickly turned.

She says the moment the tornado hit was intense.

“It felt like the building got picked up and sucked up,” said Schultz. “There was a pressure change and then it was like how people describe it, like a freight train and the doors shaking and all of that.”

Despite the damage, no one was hurt. Superintendent Tom Chiles says students and staff responded quickly and professionally.

“Their reaction to the whole situation couldn’t have been any better,” said Chiles. “I thought our adults handled it really well and then the kids listened to those directions very well and that’s why we didn’t have any injuries.”

The storm left visible damage to the building, including the stage area and parts of the roof.

Chiles hosted an open house Wednesday which allowed families to walk through the school, ease some anxiety and feel more comfortable after what many describe as a traumatic experience.

“I just felt it was important that if kids really did feel a lot of trauma, to have mom or dad with them when they got back into the same space again,” explained Chiles.

One parent says their six-year-old daughter was at school when the twister hit.

“So, we wanted to make sure to stop back in and make sure she was good to go, and it looks like so far so good,” said Morgan Howe a parent at Lena-Winslow School District.

Chiles says repairs will take time and could be costly, but much of the building has already been secured and cleared for students to return.

The kids listened when the adults talked, and that made tornado day less bad than it could have been.  Classes resumed Thursday.  If the Depot Stove Gang announce tornado relief efforts we'll let you know.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

A partially completed model railroad still offers plenty of play value if the right bits of trackwork are in place and functional.  I can while away close to an hour simply exchanging hot metal cars at the steel works, and running a passenger train around the milk train likewise keeps the operators busy.

That's a highlight reel of what was running during the recently-concluded March Meet.  I tend to have a short train running continuously on the powered display track up high.  The drive units on the rebuilt old-style Atlas F units require more tweaking.

The continued early spring weather suggest more opportunities to carry on with heavy construction and sessions at my workbench.

WINDING DOWN THE SWAP MEET SEASON.

The Chicago area March Meet is likely now the largest O Scale show in the United States, and surely the largest of the winter swap meet season.  The Gloucester Branch was available for layout tours again, and here's a look at a few of the trains that were running.

A longer video with more of the locomotives equipped with onboard power is in preparation.

MARCH IS FOR MODEL RAILROAD SHOWS.

The Karlson Brothers Circus regularly show at Delavan's Train Show.  "The train show and swap meet season tends to run from November into March.  The Karlson Brothers Circus showed at last weekend's Delavan (one of two Wisconsin towns claiming to be midwestern home of the itinerant circus) for the first time in five years.  That ballyhooed March 2020 show never happened, because the politicians panicked."

The past two or three years the show has participated with several other State Line O Scale modellers and at the request of the Mayor, our display is in City Council chambers.

As is our practice, it's up to children of all ages to notice some of the sight gags.

In the past two or three years, the collection of college mascots in the menagerie has expanded.

The Circus World Museum in Baraboo has a short orange wagon with monkey bars in the ceiling, and if you look closely, there is a monkey hanging from the monkey bars.  Yes, some people did contort themselves to get a closer look into the wagon and see that yes, indeed, there's a set of monkey bars up there.

The circus train continues to draw interest from model railroaders.  The locomotive is a Saginaw bronze casting from before the War, fitted with brass wheels and a modern transmission, and the onboard power and sound are now working.

Next up, the big Chicago area O Scale show in another week.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Two months ago, the benchwork for the staging peninsula circling the workbench was in place.

Here come the tracks.

First, ensure that the tracks line up without any annoying kinks or seriously tight curves.  Trust me, I've learned about that second challenge the hard way, more than once!

Here, a few sections of tie strip cannibalized from older Atlas flex track will serve as anchors for the handlaid turnouts to be built.  A curved 83" with a 63" diverging route and two conventional N^o. 10 will bring the four staging tracks into one to cross the liftout section.

Here we are two weeks later, with the points and throw bars installed and most of the spiking done.  Note that I use two strips of circuit board, one for the throw bar and another to hold the alignment.  There is more fettling to do yet.  I have hand-powered some cars through the special work, sometimes without incident.  Good cars will run on questionable track, and questionable cars will run on good track.  I'd rather get the track good as it's installed, and deal with the questionable cars from swap meets, of which there are many, later.

The connecting curve and lift-out section in place.  There will be additional terrain to the right of that curve, to keep anything from going on the floor should the worst happen.  There's another month of working time in advance of the Lombard O Scale show.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

The early snows are good reason to go down cellar and work on the railroad.  Fortunately, I was able to mow the yard and give it a Thanksgiving Milorganite feeding before the snow fell.

Contemporary model railroading practice treats the layout as a stage upon which a cast of scripted performers (the timetabled and extra trains) perform.  Thus, track plans include provisions for staging the trains awaiting their cue.  Many of the photos and videos from our documentation of construction show the staging along the west wall, which is under Rockport at the north end.  Here comes a staging peninsula that will be under West Gloucester and Gloucester in the center of the basement.

We're looking toward the northeast corner of the basement.  Four staging tracks are already in place about halfway around the peninsula.  In the background is the steel plant that has also featured in several posts.

Looking southeast, the four staging tracks will narrow to one.  Yes, the peninsula goes around the workshop.  A post from a year ago looks at what is in place between the steel works and the staging peninsula.

Yes, that's still a cluttered workshop.  And yes, that is a gap in the benchwork.  The four tracks narrow to one where they do in order to cross a single, lift-out track permitting easier ingress to and egress from the workshop.  I'm not as flexible as my younger self was.

LET SWAP MEET SEASON BEGIN.

In Milwaukee, Oktoberfest season begins at the end of July with German Fest, and model railroad swap meet season begins toward the beginning of November with Train Fest.  This year's event took place in the downtown Baird Center, and the vendors were showing their wares and the local modellers' clubs with portable layouts were featuring their sight gags.

That might be one of the more over-the-top Lionel offerings, and I hope that any young lady with an interest in trains will prefer her FT in the Santa Fe Warbonnet.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

There have been a few itinerant circuses touring the State Line this summer.  The Karlson Brothers Circus also went on tour, showing at the Circus Model Builders national gathering in Auburn, New York.

Years ago, when the model builders showed in Auburn, it was in an honest-to-Hoxie Tucker big top, complete with ten large scale circus wagons alongside the models in more easily transported scales.  The summer show was in the Finger Lakes Mall, which in the manner of malls nationwide, has a lot of vacant space available for banquets or exhibitions.

There was light foot traffic through the show hall the three days of the show, and there was ample time to do model building.

A PROTOTYPE FOR EVERYTHING.

Some years ago I found somebody's attempt at building an interurban car that never got finished and wound up as a bargain purchase at a swap meet.

My thinking: perfect control trailer to pair with a doodlebug.

Now comes "Unexpected New York Central" at Hicks Car Works, and among the photographs, a Michigan Railways heavy steel combine, repurposed as control trailer MT-9.

Image linked from Hicks Car Works.

The prototypes all went for scrap.  The model is back in the shop line somewhere, awaiting onboard power to be put on the doodlebug first.

A STEAM STAR REQUIRES A REFIT.

The Illinois Railway Museum's "Uncle Boris" is the primary power for the summer season coach trains.

The locomotive is one of the World War I era "Russian Decapods" that was stranded Stateside after the Great October Socialist Revolution.  (Another two thousand locomotives built to the same plans but with better metallurgy went to the Soviet Union as Lend-Lease in the 1940s.)

WATCH THIS SPACE.

The peak model railroad show season is past for this spring, although model railroad construction season never ends and there's always a swap meet somewhere.

For this year's showing of the Gloucester Branch the recently-configured locomotives with onboard power and radio control did most of the work.  They'll go through their paces for you to close April out.

The steam locomotive might be eighty years old; it has a 21st century motor in it, and the battery and control module are in the tender.  The road-switcher is an extensively reworked Lionel "Train Master" that is more accurate as an H16-66.  The cab unit is from an Atlas starter set of the early 1970s that I bought with some food service job money and brought home on my bicycle.  It has new trucks, a new drive train, and a beefier motor.  The booster is the battery car, just like the big railroads are experimenting with.  As these units go through their paces you might see some of the Atlas mill gondolas of that era that have been going through upgrades.  You'll also see a few of the cars lettered for model railroads.

REDISCOVERING THE SCRATCHBUILDER'S ART.

A few days ago, Milwaukee radio station WTMJ asked a few local business owners about the consequences of tariffs.  One of the people interviewed is in a business of more than passing interest to Cold Spring Shops.

One company that is most impacted would be Williams K. Walthers Inc. which is responsible for designing and selling model trains. Stacey Walthers is the company’s current president and says that she relies heavily on companies such as China, Vietnam and Taiwan to create and paint the model trains that are sold back here in America.

“I have a container that is in transit right now cross the sea,” said Walthers on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News. “We thought that shipment would only be impacted by a 20% tariff, because when it left, it left on March 25th. But it was hitting Canada first. So now that it’s hitting Canada, I’m going to have to pay close to $400,000 in tariffs for my trains.”

The typical cost of a Williams K. Walthers boxcar was $34.98 has now been increased to $61.98. Walthers says that customers who are paying for a hobby will most likely not pay that cost for an item such as that.

The boxcar in question is an HO scale ready-to-run item of some kind.  There are more details in her interview.

Listen to the Wisconsin's Afternoon News podcast Tiny Trains, Big Impact: Tariffs and Model Railroads episode at https://t.co/FdhyJSyLMa

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) April 18, 2025

Those tariffs might push Walthers back to their roots, and modellers back to their workbenches.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Swap meet season continues, with the big Chicago area O Scale show scheduled for Lombard, March 20-23.  The Gloucester Branch offers an open day as part of the layout tours, and this year's feature will be locomotives with onboard power, dead rail if you will.

The power in the video began as a Lionel "Train Master."  A previous owner converted it to two-rail operation, fitting it with a Central Locomotive Works drive and an ingenious reuse of the Lionel side frames, and an open-frame permanent magnet motor.

The motor mount is exactly the right size for a can motor taken out of an Atlas F unit from the 1970s, and there's plenty of space for a Ring Engineering onboard power module and the battery, and a speaker for sound.  Sounds and lights are yet to be installed.  The drive train is in good order.  Enjoy.

IT'S STILL SWAP MEET SEASON.

Model railroad swap meet season is busiest from November into March, with the big Chicago area O Scale show to take place March 21-23.

Here's a project taking shape in time for layout tours.

That's a Bronze Age Saginaw or Central Locomotive Works H10 of the 1940s, with a Ring Engineering control module going into the tender (that wood floor came with the tender when I bought this loco at a swap meet about thirty years ago) and a very smooth running Rod Miller drive train and Locomotive Workshop brass driving wheels, all of which replaced an open-frame motor and the plastic-centred (!) drive wheels that came with the wood tender floor.

COMING OFF THE WORKBENCH.

This Sunset model of the Boston and Maine Lima Berkshire has been on hand for years.  It's probably fifteen to twenty years ago I attempted to install a selector switch in order to run it on command control track or on track energized with the traditional direct current.  Here it goes through some running-in.

I took out the selector switch and replaced some wires that had worn thin.  That ended some annoying shorts.  I did not essay rewiring the headlight and class lights to illuminate separately.

For what it's worth, 4019 went to Santa Fe just before the end of the War.  My layout is notionally set in the summer of 1952.  Model railroading is supposed to be fun.

TRAINWATCHING TO BUILD MODELS BY.

The powered display track at Cold Spring Shops headquarters went into operation first, in part to provide a place for running-in motive power before installing remote control and placing it in service, and in part to provide train-watching while the work of assembling cars or building trackwork goes on.

I've compiled another series of various trains, not all of which are thematically proper for the main layout, going through their paces.

There are certainly a lot of things going on in the world to fret about.  Occasional winter relief is good.  Enjoy.

LIFE GOES ON.

The south end of the powered display track at Cold Spring Shops headquarters represents a section of the South Donetsk Railway somewhere along the boundaries of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian S. S. R.  The bridge over the escape well exit is installed in such a way as to be easily removed or sacrificed in extremis.

In real life, a bridge of that size would have its own antiaircraft defense installation.  Models of a suitable Soviet portable antiaircraft gun exist, and from time to time they turn up on Amazon or other collectible or resale sites.

The instructions are primarily illustrations, although there is advice in English and a few other languages.  Note, though, the package it arrived in.

Despite the exigencies of a wartime economy, a trader somewhere in Ukraine had some of this model to sell, and an Amazon presence from whence to sell it, and the postal service was still handling such parcels.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

The summer heat offers opportunities to repair down cellar and work on the railroad, with the earlier sunsets as the temperate evenings might return cutting into that read outside until sundown relaxing.  Look for more frequent progress reports.

While the temperatures are high, the spray paints flow more easily, and I'm getting several freight and passenger cars ready to be assembled.  That steel works we saw in a recent photo has to have lots of scrap delivered to the Open Hearth, which means there can never be too many mill gondolas.

Those will all roll out relettered for the home railroad.  I've held back one of those green Readings to repaint and reletter in the 1952 fashion.

I haven't let the passenger fleet go fallow, either.

I've always liked the Akron Canton & Youngstown boxcars with the large letters, even at the risk of creative anachronism, and decals are available for both the red cars with white lettering and the yellow cars with red lettering.  If they wind up billed to an implement mechanic in Centre Barnstead on a line that was already abandoned, well, so be it!

Pullman named their 28 seat drawing room parlors after women, often authors or painters.  I borrowed a name from the family tree.

Yes, a new Trains of Summer video is still in preparation.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

I was taking videos up high for a future Trains of Summer upload, and while there took an aerial view of the West Lynn and Revere industrial complex.

At center is the Open Hearth shop of Midvale Steel, with the hot metal track below and the upper level tracks for delivering scrap, refractories, alloying additives, and coal tar, here delivered in two large tank cars.  The box cars occupy the Outward Exchange Siding, which sometimes receives transfers from the New Haven and sometimes serves as a time being track when one crew is working both sides of the Eastern Route Main Line.  The crossover at left middle between Outward and Inward tracks helps those operations. Coming closer to the camera, we see the Inward Exchange Siding, and two spur tracks serving General Electric's River Works.  That will be an access hatch in the foreground.  Two tracks of the Saugus Branch and the Lynn Common Industrial Lead are at right.

Now that the switches at West Lynn Junction, where the Saugus Branch joins the Eastern Route Main Line, are in place, there's enough headroom to work all those tracks from either the Saugus Draw or the West Lynn end, and that alone is enough to keep one or two crew members busy for several hours.  Work continues on extending trackage into the area under the garage.