MODEL RAILROADS
I have been modelling American West Coast Railroads ever since I bought my very first issue of Model Railroader in 1986 which had an article about the N-Scale Cumberland Valley of the Reids on the cover. I haven't stopped since and have a considerable collection of trains in my closet.
I’m not a big fan of the Union Pacific railroad and I’ve never gotten over them changing the name of the merger company from Espee to U P. As a result, you’ll find a lot of my modern day modeling tends towards BNSF and CSX. I freak out for anything in red and grey with a dark covering of soot, which was the SP in its heyday. I’ve also toyed with the idea of going freelance with the ill-fated SPSF merger as if it had been allowed to go ahead.
My collection of HO scale trains is quite sizeable, but over the last few years it took a back seat to Life and I’m only now getting back into it again. Boy, have things changed in the hobby while I’ve been on the sideline!
My favorite hobby shops, where I singlehandedly tried to spend the whole of South Africa’s GDP, are:
I’ve been busy constructing buildings and the like that I’d like to use on a layout one day. I’ve made notes and taken pictures of the construction and I hope to turn them into articles for the site. Projects that I’m presently working on include:
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An Espee snowshed
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2 cattle pens, one based on an article in Model Railroader and another on an article in RailModel Journal.
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My HO scale version of the Bendtrack system on which I've been working for a number of years now and had to restart after my computer hard drive packed up and I lost my document.
All of these buildings were made with non-standard materials, i.e. not stuff you’d find in the Walthers catalog. I find it fun to look for items of no use and see if I can incorporate it into a model somewhere. As they say: One man’s junk is another man’s jewelry.
