Tom Everyone innovates in their own way and I regard you as an innovator -- last night I affixed an S scale version of your dirt collector valve to the K style brake system on 3rd Fowler boxcar in a

Peter, One ready source of smaller quantities of casting supplies is metal casting pattern making suppliers. Freeman is one such but there are others. You can also look for design bureaus and ask them

I think John Armstrong's track plan called "The Flying Horseshoe" in MR about 1953 was the first I'd seen with a sincere, once around,plan with John's then idea's on walk around control. George

Mr. Madden, While I have only a passing interest in resin kits (although I love to see the exquisite results from others), I found your post very interesting and informative! Thank you VERY much for

Thank you Tom. May the ride continue for a long time. If not you, maybe someone else would have come along with the same idea – but it was you, and we appreciate it. The world is full of people

Friends, I seem to remember that Lynn Wescott or maybe Paul Larson first popularized this type of layout. Way back in the very 1960s MR had articles on plug-in walk-around

Dennis and all Although definitely not a "walk around" layout you reminded meof the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT - from their Wikipedia page: "At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system

Walk around layouts go back much further than that. I was a member of the Garfield-Clarendon club in Chicago in the late sixties, and the layout they had been building since 1963 was a large

Tom Madden’s post was and is a class act of achievement on multiple levels, and as Dennis Storzek (no slouch there!) comments, the real innovation comes when a discovery is turned into something

Bill My earliest photo of a car with the USRE "United States" map onthe side is from 1962. The LS&I sold PS-1 box cars to USRE in 1961. And I have a note thatsays Tennessee Central 500-564 were leased

Tim, NEB&W and the Midwest Railroad Modelers club in Batavia, started in 1977, were a couple of the early walk-around shelf type layouts. Layout concept for MRRM layout can be attributed to Bill

Jerry Michels wrote: The car bodies are accurate, not so the roof and end color. InterMountain continues to let their factory "wing it" on color. It's not a new event. Tony Thompson

Peter Ness wrote: Don't forget that Ellison had a "complete" layout with decent structures and at least approximate scenery, in a day when hardly anyone did. Reading MR or Craftsman circa 1940

Hi Tom, Thanks for sharing and raising memories. I will plead mea culpa now since I have not become innovator, guiding light or even two-bit contributor to resin casting at the commercial

Don't beat yourself up, Tom. Just as there were automobiles before Henry Ford, and light bulbs before Thomas Edison, there were likely hundreds of guys who tried casting nickels out of Woods metal,

For those of you who may not be aware, Mainline Modeler is available on disc from the C&O Historical Society. Larry Smith

Excellent, thank you Peter. Bill Welch

Just a quick note to sincerely thank ALL who have shared their clinics and photos, still tied to the working chains and not able to get to these events, it truly means a great deal and is immensely

Hi Bill, Wikipedia references a John H. White contribution “ "Railroad Car Builders of the United States". Railroad History. The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. 138 (Spring 1978):

All resonators owe you and the other leaders a large debt of gratitude for pushing us forward from the primordial past of early Atheran, Tyco and Train Miniature products. Thank you very much.