Modelrailroader.ca

We recently took a day-trip to St. Jacobs Ontario, Canada for a much needed mid-day distraction. St. Jacobs is a beautiful tourist destination boasting a huge farmer’s market, an array of specialty shops, heritage buildings and sweeping farmland.

Tucked away on the fourth floor of ‘The Mill’ is the St. Jacobs Model Train Exhibit – a faithfully reproduced kid-friendly model railway depicting the St. Jacobs area in HO scale. Trains navigate the St. Jacobs countryside via the simple double-oval route and are controlled by an automated timer. The layout is quite large at over 25 feet long and 5+ feet deep. Beautifully modeled and geographically precise, the layout boasts highly detailed urban and rural settings, waterfalls, rivers and mountains.

The St. Jacobs Model Train Exhibit also boasts a collection of model railway equipment in an array of scales, a small historical museum, interactive exhibits and videos.

The St. Jacobs Model Train Exhibit is a excellent tribute to the St. Jacobs area, and a fantastic family destination.

I’m not in the habit of reviewing publications or products, but I thought it would be worthwhile to offer a positive look at Model Railroaders latest publication, 102 Realistic Track Plans.

I have a first printing of the original 101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders and have thumbed through its pages many times. It is one of my favorite references as it offers a diverse assortment of track plans and varied themes. That being said the plans are somewhat dated, and tend to favor spaghetti-bowl track arrangements.

102 Realistic Track Plans does a great job of picking up where 101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders left off, offering an updated approach to layout design.

Despite best efforts, its been a struggle to get to the basement to ‘play’ with trains. With the holidays upon us, all trips to the train room are to retrieve lights or hide presents. Despite this, I did manage to retrieve two more videos of the WHRC that I had forgotten about.

I’m going to be spending some time tidying up the site. This site has been online for over 2 years now and have officially published 112 articles! During that time I’ve found that there are things that have become redundant and others items that are becoming increasingly important.

One of the more ‘major’ additions I made to the modelrailroader.ca is a ‘sitemap‘. This sitemap has replaced the ‘Links’ page. I’ve also removed the blogroll from the site.

I’m going to be reworking these link sections. There are far better ways to include links to my favorite sites – and/or articles – without having to create stagnant link lists.

Being a Google Reader and Twitter fan, it only makes sense that I include features native to these popular applications.

Stay tuned.

I generally steer clear of model railroading related philosophies, but after reading this post I thought the author deserved a mention. David K. Smith articulates some of the issues within the model railroading hobby quite eloquently. Titled “Members Only”, David discusses the apparent divide between ‘model railroaders’ and ‘modelers’ – discussing the difference between those who play with trains like the ‘real thing’ and those who enjoy the hobby for the diverse appeal.

Based on what I read, it appears that I am a ‘modeler’ – a title I’m happy with.

Members Only – 1-160.blogspot.com

Reader’s have undoubtedly noticed that this site has been fairly inactive for the past few months. Trust me when I say it has nothing to do with a fleeting love of trains, just that sometime ‘life’ happens! Since my last post my brother-in-law came to live with us for two months, the basement flooded, and we are selling our house.  As such, there isn’t much time left for trains.  Likewise, I’ve never really had a drive to play in the basement during the summer months.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a pleasant summer – looking forward to the fall train surge!

The last few weeks have seen a sharp decline in RR efforts as life’s usual trappings (work, family, house) have needed some attention. That being said, my track and turnouts did arrive from Fifer Hobby Supply and I want to take an opportunity to laud Mike and Robin Fifer on their business.

I knew nothing of FHS until I became a member of the nscale.net community and read endlessly positive comments about their business. Based on these recommendations I decided to give FHS a try.

There was nothing unique about my order ‘ some C55 atlas track and switches. Despite the recommendations I thought I would do some online price shopping and see how things compared. In the end I found only one store that had the same offerings for a marginally lower price ‘ but as they did not ship to Canada the point was moot (not to mention I had never read a single positive review about them).

The FHS online store indicated that one item was out of stock. I contacted Mike and Robin who took my order in full via email and assured me the stock would arrive shortly. The refused to let me pay for any of the order until it was ready to ship. Shortly thereafter I got an email noting all the items were in stock, and they sent me the final tally including shipping ‘ a very good price!

When my order arrived, it was immaculately packed and undamaged. Based on the size of the package and the distance it travelled I was convinced that that shipping costs were very fair (if not low), and it was evident that FHS hadn’t tried to hide some handling costs to increase revenue. The only added expense was the GST and PST ‘ duty did not apply.

In the end my order cost me about 45% less then it would have had I shopped at ANY of my local hobby shops. Typically I would support local businesses, however the price difference was too great, and upon reflection I grow increasingly aggravated with my LHS as I question why their prices seem so out of line with others. On one hand I’m sympathetic to the inherent costs of having goods shipped internationally and paying rent, but our recent (and sustained) dollar parity hasn’t been reflected in local prices which makes me rather suspect of my LHS prices. If you aren’t going to attempt to pass along your savings to me then I will shop elsewhere.

In closing, Fifer Hobby Supply is a friendly, competitively priced, easy to use online store staffed by genuinely nice people who take pride in their business, value customers, and understand the benefit of good communication. I wish you continued prosperity and look forward to placing my next order.

I’ve spent some time over the last few years surveying a number of different software solutions intended to help users design their model railroad – most recently trying Altas’ RTS. Each of the programs I’ve tried have offered a fairly comprehensive set of tools, and allowed users to draw simple track plans. Beyond that scope, most of the programs tend to get far too complicated – at least for casual use. It strikes me that despite best efforts, designs never quite work in practice, and serves the users best as guides rather then blueprints. As such, I’ve will continue to rely on Adobe Illustrator as my program of choice.

As I iterated here, Illustrator is not a program that many people use – at least not in relation to its big brother Photoshop, and it is geared to the graphic design industry, not CAD. That being said, I have found that it’s easy to lay out basic radii and switches and get a sense of what will fit in a space using the program, and to use these drafts as a guides, as ‘real’ track planning is done on the baseboard.

With that, I did happen across a fairly useful little plug-in for Illustrator intended to help users draw track plans. Developed by Rick Johnson (senior illustrator at Model Railroader Magazine), this plug-in helps draw switches, crossovers, basic curves, strait track sections and stubs. Elegant, simple, and fairly comprehensive (you can specify the turnout size by simple holding the turnout number down while clicking) this inexpensive plug-in works well, and removes a great deal of headache.

Rick offers the plug-in as a shareware release with a limit of 100 uses before he requires the user to pay $15 to register. The 100 uses is more then enough for any user to adequacy try the tool, and the $15, well, money well spent!

http://rj-graffix.com/software/plugins.html

What a pleasant surprise ‘ my order from the Tichy Train Group arrived ‘ one day before Christmas! I now have everything I need to finish the NES. I’m estimating that I need 20-30 hrs to complete the layout (yes, I know, a layout is never complete) and I would love to finish it over the next week ‘ before I return to work.

The two most pressing projects are to finish the town, and to design/build an industry for the autumn spur. I’m thinking I’ll build a feed mill ‘ or something similar. I’ve been browsing through images online and I think I have a sense of what I’d like. I’m not too worried about building an exact replica ‘ just something that captures the essence.

Anyway, thanks for visiting and offering your comments and support over the past year. I’ve made a number of new acquaintances in the past months, and I wish them, and everyone else, a Merry Christmas!

From time to time I am reminded that the North American model railroad press and their modelers can be quite insular – we seem to have a set number of approaches, techniques and products that we habitually use, as well as a basic modeling ‘standard’ that we try to achieve. Like most modelers I have been working happily within this ‘standard’ and generally gauge the quality of my work by comparing it to the work of others. That being said, there are moments when the work of another individual changes my notions of modeling success, as these modelers produce work that is unique, impressive and inspiring. Josepf Brandl is one of those modelers.

I’m not quite sure how I discovered Brandl’s work – he has had a few articles published in Model Railroader – and I’ve seen his name mentioned occasionally in the depths of some European railroad forums – but he was virtually unknown to me. It was by complete chance that I stumbled across his book Almost Real / Fast Wie Echt, while searching amazon.co.uk for model railroading related materials. I ordered the book on a whim and I can say that is has drastically changed my perspective on the hobby.

The book is coffee-table style, having a minimal amount of text (in both German and English) and countless pages of full colour images. The book doesn’t focus on modeling (although it does mention a few techniques) as it elects to summarize the particulars of 6+ layouts, while outlining a brief biography on Brandl.

The lack of ‘how-to’ information seems unimportant once you start looking at the images, as its not just the modeling techniques that make Brandl’s layouts so impressive, it’s his approach. Rather then modeling cramped industry-heavy urban scenes, the majority of Brandl’s work focuses on modeling great sprawls of countryside. Subscribing to the theory that ‘less is more’, Brandl allots an immense portion of each layout’s footprint to scenery – keeping the railroad aspect of each layout to a minimum. This ratio of scenery to track is what distinguishes his work from all other work I’ve seen and makes it so effective. Trains weave through valleys, span rivers, climb mountains and move through tunnels realistically as vast amount of natural scenery creates plausible and lifelike landscapes.

This ‘landscape-first’ approach is what makes Brandl’s work so distinct. Most of layouts I see in the North American press seem to place an inordinate amount of importance on operations, or prototypically detailed motive power etc., but never on creating natural environments. Many of the articles regarding scenery don’t focus on how to create realistic results, but how to create the most ‘acceptable’ results in the least amount of time. We tend to favour scenically homogeneous, track-heavy layouts that can support a multitude of operators, and claim prototypical accuracy – but are set in unrealistic landscapes that undermined all ambitions of realism and foster a ‘toy-like’ perception that is too often associated with the hobby.

I earnestly recommend this book as it offers a welcome glimpse as to what a model railroad could be in light of what we are used to. I know that as I consider future projects the contents of this book will definitely influence my decisions.

You can download a free copy of one of the chapters here: http://www.einsatz-verlag.de/

I’ve decided to import my posts from Pete’s Pumpkins to this site – to keep and archive of the blogger work and gather my modeling efforts in one place. I will keep the other site updated regularly, and this site will update every day or so after that. As soon as I’m done this micro layout, I’ll get back to work on the NES.

Thanks.

I am currently in the process of updating the site – adding a bunch of new content, and attempting to organize information in a logical fashion. During this time, don’t be surprised if things break, are missing etc. Bear with me!

Thanks!

Stealing away from some time from day to day obligations, I recently attended the Kitchener Model Train Show. As I haven’t been to a train show in a while, it was nice to get out. The show was overall pretty good, with no shortage of vendors offering varied memorabilia, used and new goods, and a good number of deals! I picked up a switcher for a steal (and it works) and poured over lots of used magazines and books. (more…)