An easy coupler height fix for prewar American Flyer
So I picked up this oddball car at Marty's Model Railroads a couple of weeks ago. It's a Lionel/American Flyer hybrid: A Lionel 807 cattle car on a prewar American Flyer 8-wheel frame. It has the awful...
View ArticleWhen in St. Louis, don’t miss the City Museum
So, not wanting to celebrate the Anheuser-Busch-mandated holiday of New Year's Eve but not wanting to sit around at home on a Friday night either, a good idea came up: Go to the City Museum. It claims...
View ArticleMaking a Marx run like a Marx again
After a couple of marathon days at work, I unwound on Martin Luther King Jr. Day by refurbishing an old Marx Canadian Pacific-style tinplate locomotive. At first, its problem wasn't obvious.
View ArticleRecapturing the charm of someone else’s dad’s American Flyer train
My buddy Todd brought over his dad's American Flyer train today. It had been a gift from his dad on his first Christmas. It was from 1938. That was a peculiar year, because it was the first year that...
View ArticleE.R. Johnston, the train dealer, the myth, the legend
Something today made me think of Johnston Electric, a legendary, long-gone train store in St. Louis’ Dutchtown neighborhood that sold Lionel, American Flyer, and HO scale trains. I was in the old...
View ArticleThe Observation Car
I’ll argue that model railroads and toy trains are separate but related hobbies. That said, I still enjoy good model railroading material. I can still steal ideas from them and adapt their techniques....
View Article“It’s your happy place.”
Someone told me today that she didn’t quite get the appeal of model railroading, that it must be a male thing. And that’s fair: Model railroads were first invented by a dollhouse maker so they would...
View ArticleModel railroading as fan fiction
Dan Bowman sent me this a couple of weeks ago, and I found myself agreeing with it: Model railroading is a form of fan fiction. It seems like a good way to look at it. Every model railroad is a...
View ArticleYou still think outsourcing is a good idea?
Don't be fooled by the topic I put this in: This has potential implications for any area of manufacturing. Lionel, the most famous U.S. maker of toy trains and model railroads, has been found guilty of...
View ArticleWhen HO is 1:87 scale and when it’s 1:64 scale
I get a lot of questions about the difference between HO scale and 1:64, and it occurred to me that I missed something. I was thinking of model train HO scale, which is 1:87, which is about 25% smaller...
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