Links

Preserved EMD Model 40 Diesel, Travel Town, Los Angeles, CA

I'm assuming you're familiar with the various places you can find links to well-known layouts, manufacturers, and so forth, so I don't want to spend a lot of time duplicating those sources. But I will link here to sites that I think are especially good, but not well known, as well as to sites connected with my other interests.

Good and Unusual Model and Prototype Railroad Links

F&SM Gallery at The Gotham City Sub You probably know about the main site covering George Sellios's Franklin and South Manchester, certainly one of the outstanding layouts now in existence. This site has a lot more photos of Sellios's layout.
A very good new (as of March 2006) John Allen site.
List of Heavy-Duty Rail Cars at RICA The Railway Industrial Clearance Association (RICA) maintains a list of heavy duty flat cars, depressed center flat cars, well-hole cars, and schnabel cars at this site.
Large Flat Cars An excellent site with many photos of heavy-duty flat cars, loads, and special moves.
On Line Version of the TTX Corporation's Equipment Guide A good resource for this very common contemporary equipment.
List of World Wide 30 Inch Gauge Railroads If you're interested in On30 or HOn30, this site is building a list of all known prototypes, with links to web pages where available, as well as other sources of info.
The Model Train Collector's Resource A site covering AHM, Tyco, Bachmann, Cox, and other mass-produced trains from the 1960s and 70s, which can be found at swap meets and train shows, and which can sometimes be used as inexpensive raw material to create interesting models that are still up to current standards. If you shop carefully and use creativity and elbow grease, that is.

Sites Covering Union Pacific "Patch Job" Repaints

An interesting contemporary subject: up to the SP and C&NW mergers, the Union Pacific hadn't done partial repaints or renumberings of locomotives from acquired roads. However, after about 2000, UP has begun to apply partial repaints, or "patch jobs" on ex-D&RGW, C&NW, SSW, and SP locos. Information on these repaints has been hard to locate.

Arkansas Trains
Utah Rails A list that hasn't been updated since 2001.

Model Railroad Blogs

Cleveland Trains is a railfan blog, but the site's color scheme makes it almost impossible to read -- an all-too-common mistake.
Cold Spring Shops a mainstream blog with political and intellectual commentary, often with titles based on rail jargon, and that sometimes includes model railroad related comments. There's also a section of his site that shows photos of his O scale modeling.
Ed Harrison's From Prototype to Pike Mostly covers his N scale layout based on Cajon Pass, and actual happenings in the Cajon Pass area of Southern California.
Electric Nose A UK modern-era modeler's opinions, containing On My Workbench a blog covering his modeling projects.
Tigard & Grants Pass Railroad A blog covering the Sn3 layout of a Southern California model railroader.
The Vermillion Route A blog started in late 2005 covering construction of an HO layout based on turn-of-the-century predecessors of the Missabe Road.
Where Worlds Collide a UK blog that sometimes contains model railroad commentary.

Recommended Computer Operation Packages

MINIRAIL
RailOp

Railroad and Model Link Directories and Search Engines

Rail Links at Trainweb.com
RailroadData.Com A searchable, categorized directory of railroad websites. Featuring links to over 5,000 railroad websites, RailroadData.com is one of most popular railroad resources on the web. Features include a search engine, lists of new and popular sites, site ratings and more.
RailServe.com: The Internet Railroad Directory- Over 8,000 rail-related links, search engine, free classified ads, BBS, Train Simulator Add-Ons, ICQ List, and more!
Trainboard.com

Get a Life

Dilbert
James Lileks I like his daily opinion pieces, but scroll down to the Urban Studies to find good model railroading raw material.
Instapundit
The U.S. Episcopal Church
St.Thomas Episcopal Church, Hollywood, CA
The Orozco Frescoes at Dartmouth College

My Blog

I started a bog with general-interest posts, likely little or nothing about model railroading, on December 1, 2003. If you're interested, you can find it at In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood.

Links to Some of My Writing Elsewhere on the Web

The Dartmouth Review is an independent newspaper that primarily publishes material by Dartmouth undergraduates. It is one of the numerous conservative-alternative campus papers now published at colleges and universities. However, as befits the institution that served as the model for Animal House, the history of this paper is colorful, and its opinions are often unorthodox. I got fed up with a Dartmouth alumni event in 1999 and sent them a rant about it, which they kindly printed. I've sent them pieces now and then since that one as well, the most effective way I can see to stay involved in my alma mater's affairs.

Trying and Failing to Go Home Again, The Dartmouth Review, July 8, 1999.
A Report From the Time Before Course Guides, The Dartmouth Review, March 1, 2002
The Year I Rubbed Elbows with Stanley Fish The Dartmouth Review, November 3, 2002.
The College's Anti-Intellectualism: Bourgeois Administrators Run Amok The Dartmouth Review, February 3, 2003.

Articles in the Model Railroad Press

"One Reader's Opinion" column, Model Railroader, August 2000.
Review of MINIRAIL, Model Railroading, August 2002.
“Larry’s Truck and Electric: A New Look at an Old Industry,” Railroad Model Craftsman, January 2004, p.97.

March 3, 2006

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