Modelingthesp

 Last week the 32nd Naperville meeting, essentially a Railroad Prototype Modelers meeting or RPM, was convened at Naperville, Illinois. Founded by Martin Lofton and conducted by him and his wife Patricia for 16 years, the meetings since have been managed by several different people. It now seems established at the very nice convention facility of Northern Illinois University,...

John Allen, as even younger modelers must know, built and publicized his Gorre & Daphetid Railroad layout (the name meant to be read as “Gory & Defeated,” a name he later regretted). It was often shown in the Model Railroader (MR) of the day, most notably in the back-cover ads for Varney products (about which more in a moment). And after John passed away, Linn ...

Last weekend the SP Historical & Technical Society had its annual convention at Visalia, California. Like all organizations post-Covid, attendance was well below what it once was, but the 120-person attendance was better than last year and certainly an encouraging sign. I definitely enjoyed the meeting, but then again, I almost always do. Here’s the convention logo, with ...

At most railroad depots, several kinds of business might be done, from selling passenger tickets and checking baggage, to working with shippers and consignees regarding cars being loaded or delivered. In this post, I want to address the latter part, the freight side.

Most SP enthusiasts will know the very informative film the company made, This Is My Railroad. At...

I have posted many times about open-car loads, and often about military vehicles. Today I’m not talking about the military ones, but about other kinds of vehicles, including rail vehicles. There was a similar post about five years ago (see it at: