I have once again been favored with access to the Michael Litant collection of route cards, most retrieved from freight cars in service in the mid- to late 1960s. As I’ve said before, the variety of formats, shapes and sizes remains interesting, and can serve as guidance for those of us trying to reproduce the look of these in model railroad operations. 

As the tit...

On my layout, I have chosen to model all of 1953, in that each operating session is on the current month and day, but in 1953. So an April 13 session this year would be modeled as April 13, 1953, and a session this fall on September 15 would be September 15, 1953. One reason for this is so that I can mirror the varying crops being harvested; the area I model wa...

Here I am talking about replacing trucks on freight or passenger cars. Sometimes a car will have been supplied with the “wrong” trucks, say arch-bar when they should have been a newer design; sometimes the sideframes are really not up to snuff appearance-wise; and sometimes they roll, as a friend used to say, “like a rock down a gutter.” Replacing them is what I call re-truck...

I know, waybills aren’t most people’s idea of reading material. What I mean is the way one deciphers information, that is, “reads,” a waybill. I know this comes up on a number of layouts which use prototypical waybills  in layout operation.

First, it’s useful to understand what is on a prototype waybill, even though most model railroad versions are simplified from ...

This story has a long background. Several years ago, I happened to have a Denver & Rio Grande Western stock car spotted at the stock pen in the East Shumala area of my layout, and a visiting operator asked about it. “Well,” I said, ‘it’s kind of a long story, not entirely a happy one.” His response was that maybe I could write it up for the blog. Now I’ve gotten around to...