Interurban Era

A really fun auction find, I managed to score a trio of blueprints for both the F7A & B, plus an SD45

A couple of years ago, I wrote about "shopping" for used locomotives for my 1968 era Alta California railway using historical documentation showing off when real locomotives were vacated from various railroads. Using this and other data, I built a realistic roster with a blend of old and new diesel locomotives.

*Link is set to PUBLIC, so despite the link preview, you'll be able to read it.

West River Railroad Gas Car 1120 at Brattleboro, VT in 1938

These "doodlebugs" were used on small branchlines all over the world for local passenger and mail service. Usually the motor would be inside the car body. USUALLY the exhaust would be upward firing, and USUALLY it'd have a muffler. I can only imagine the cacophonous rattle of this thing chugging along the branchline must have sounded like echoing off the hillsides.

Do any of my engine nerds know what type of truck/ heavy equipment engine that is?

Truly a predecessor to the T-bucket hot rods to come after WWII.

There's nothing like filling garden scale (1/20.3 through 1/32 scales) freight cars with 1:1 goods, in this case a selection of cheeses I won randomly a while back.

In a larger sense it's fascinating to see a case in the modeling world in which scale difference within engineered track gauge more or less work. The 1/20.3 scale gondola above models the "G" scale track as if it were 3' narrow gauge track. Most LGB stuff is 1/29 which models Metre gauge/ 42" gauge equipment, mostly from the famous Swiss RhB. USA trains and LGB both make 1/32 scale stuff, which uses the exact same track as 1/20.3. 1/32 or No.1 gauge models the same garden scale track as if it were regular standard gauge track.

Some of the world's finest models of any object are some German models in No.1 gauge. Watchmaking on an utterly grand scale.