Join us for our monthly Track Talk Live with model railroad experts and long-time train enthusiasts Steve Doyle and Doug Hodgdon on Tuesday, September 26th at 7:00 p.m. CST. Steve and Doug will be answering your model railroad questions live on the air in this fun, interactive, and informative Q&A. Feel free to submit questions… Read more »
Ah, when spring returns to the Northland, it’s time to refresh acquaintances with the BIG trains in my neighborhood. There are many local locations that I’ve explored for decades and which have fueled my lifelong passion for trains, big and small. A great spot for me is what was Great Northern’s Minneapolis Junction in northeast… Read more »
Editor’s note: This blog is part 2 of a series on installing signals for an interlocking plant. You can read part 1 of this series here. We decided to use searchlight signals manufactured by Tomar Industries. We added a 4′ scale base made out of Plastruct tubing to help raise the approach light signal mast… Read more »
This is a new HO scale E-7 diesel. It’s well detailed and runs well with sound, but it looks too toy-like to me. There are as many ways to weather a locomotive as there are model railroad track plans! I want to show you a quick way to make your engines look less toy-like. It’s… Read more »
The July 25th Track Talk Live event has been rescheduled. A new date will be announced on our Facebook page!
Want to build a helix, anchor a shelf layout or build an N or HO scale layout in a small area and don’t know where to start? Those were just some of the dozens of topics from viewers that were explored on June’s Track Talk Live with Steve and Doug. Have a question about any… Read more »
Perhaps you have a scene or series of scenes on your layout that have not aged well. They may be covered in dust or just generally need a little touch up. You’d be surprised how easy it is to clean up an old scene on your model railroad layout. In this post, I’m going to… Read more »
I recently made an inspiring trip to the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, that I would like to tell you about. The Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum is an organization that’s been in existence since 1934. At its inception it was housed in the St. Paul Union Depot which hosted the… Read more »
The MRA team of Doug Hodgdon and Steve Doyle (“Clickety and Clack”) hosted the May Track Talk Live at Steve’s “CB&Q/Lines East” S-Scale layout. Viewers representing virtually all of the scales submitted live questions from across North America. Among them, the crew discussed troubleshooting faulty locomotives, DCC-running versus DC, inspiration for layout aspects, tree-making and… Read more »
On my model railroad of the Bluff City Southern there is a bottleneck, but it’s a fun bottleneck. The five railroads that I model come together at this bottleneck. It’s the wye at Bridge Junction leading from Memphis into Arkansas across the Mississippi River. When I designed the layout I knew that a busy junction… Read more »
