The 2026 Naperville meeting

 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, still in Naperville.

As has become standard at these meetings, the Mod-U-Trak groups in HO and N scales each set up large sectional layouts. These are two separate clubs, one in each scale, and they really are not “modular” layouts; instead, they have chosen to have sections that mate with each other and thus make scenic sense as a whole. In the building lobby was the HO layout, seen here from the second floor balcony. 

 In one of the large display rooms the N scale layout was assembled, even larger than the HO layout. It was hard to photograph it to show its size, but here is a view from one corner. Beyond the layout were numerous vendor tables.

There was, as always, a model display, and this year it required a separate room. I chose a moment when not too many observers were present, and photographed about a third of the room. It was disappointing, though, that tables were not elevated for better viewing.

The clinic programs at Naperville have always been very good, particularly this year, when I never had a time slot without something I wanted to see, and often hard choices between two desirable talks. Just to choose a single example, Steve Hile gave another of his excellent freight car talks, this time about Armour reefers. That’s Steve at left, and yes, he’s wearing a “Friends of the Freight Car” shirt.

One of the clinics I enjoyed was Clark Propst describing making 1920s-style 50-foot automobile cars, starting from Roundhouse and Walthers cars. l was especially interested in an SP version, for which Clark removed the original model sides, replaced them with sheet styrene, and then built a representation of Z-bar posts and braces with two styrene strips for each rib, a wider one on top to make the flange. 

Below is a photo of the good-looking SP car, which, with a relatively short under-door stiffener and no end doors, has to be Class A-50-11. Alas, the car number lies outside that number series (SP 69380–69529), but if I know Clark, he will just correct it and move on.

All in all, a really enjoyable meeting and of course the opportunity to renew acquaintances with many long-time friends. I very much enjoyed it. And if it sounds good to you, there will be another one next year.

Tony Thompson 

Naperville 2025

The Naperville freight car meeting, as it originally was, was founded by Martin Lofton of Sunshine Models, partly to provide a venue at which he could sell his kits direct instead of all by mail. But the three-day meeting included a full clinic schedule. He had a talent for finding and inviting a wide range of speakers for the clinics, many of them previously unknown to a national audience. The first meeting was in 1994, and it has continued ever since except during the pandemic. 

Within a few years of its inception, the meeting became one of the emerging Railroad Prototype Modelers (RPM) meetings, an idea warmly endorsed by Martin. After Martin passed away after running the meeting for 16 years, it was taken over by others, who have carried on the tradition very well. Currently Frank Hodina is in charge. The meeting last weekend was the 31st, by my count. Before the pandemic, I only missed a couple of them.

As has been the case for several years now, the meeting took place in the Northern Illinois University’s Naperville Conference Center, a spacious and modern facility. It includes a huge room which was used for vendor tables and model displays. A view of most of that room is below. 

Among the exhibition of very nice models was this mammoth display by Fenton Wells, in part to support the clinic he gave about kitbashing reefers. It’s perhaps appropriately titled “Reefer Madness,” with every model accompanied by a prototype photo. 

The meeting rooms are in a two-story wing of the facility, and it happens to have a two-story-tall entrance hall, in which the Midwest Mod-U-Trak group set up a large HO layout (shown below, viewed from the second floor). Their N-scale compatriots had an even larger layout in another large space. 

Many of the individual modules were very nicely done. Below is a photo, most of which shows the Willow Springs module, with a Santa Fe freight passing under the working signal bridge.  

As always, there was quite a program of clinics, most of it put together by Steve Hile. Below is a single example, Joe Binish about to start his talk about Great Northern’s FT diesel units. I gave two talks myself, on realistic operation for small layouts, and about the new OpSIG Achievement Program (see, for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/10/questions-about-opsig-achievement.html ).

Another nice aspect of this meeting is that layout owners in the area organize a few operating sessions. I operated again on Bob Hanmer’s excellent Great Northern and DMIR layout (which I’ve commented on before: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/an-operating-weekend-around-chicago.html ). I’ll say more about Bob’s layout in a future post.

On Saturday night I was invited for the first time to operate on John Goodhart’s Lake Erie, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad. I was lucky enough to draw the Hamilton switching job, a lot of fun and with interesting challenges. Here’s my switcher, in the middle of some complex moves.

This was another fine Naperville RPM meeting. I enjoyed it quite a bit, as I always have. Next fall, if you’ve never attended, you might think about trying it yourself.

 Tony Thompson 

State of the hobby

Lots of us have been and still are prone to sitting around, say over lunch, or in a bar, slinging gloom about how model railroading is fading away as the old guys pass on — everyone at meetings has white hair — there are practically no more hobby shops — you never see young guys —modern railroads are boring — and so forth. I would bet that most if not all readers of this blog can cite memories of events exactly like this.  

Well, is any of that (aside from the judgement on modern railroads) true? It’s true you don’t see that many young guys at meets; it’s the retired who have the time and money to do that part of the hobby. But are young guys even in the hobby? Sure they are, and I’ll come back to that point in a moment. 

First, an overview of attendees at the Cocoa Beach meeting in January, 2020. Plenty of older men, but middle-aged ones too — and a few young men.

Some of the grumbling you sometimes hear is about the attitudes of younger modelers. How amazing, they don’t think exactly like those who are two generations older. 

I could remind you that at least as far back as ancient Greece, elders have been bemoaning the younger generation, who have no respect for anything, don’t understand how things ought to be done, and are clearly going to destroy civilization in one generation. Really, it’s practically one of the duties of every older generation to complain about the young ones coming behind them — or believed not to be coming forward at all.

But aside from that, what about our hobby? The complaint I mentioned above, about the loss of hobby shops, is quite real, and we all know why: commerce in all standard products (things that you know exactly what they are, and can be bought anywhere) is continuing to move onto the internet. Really, that just means you buy stuff from a different source. And it’s been noted for a couple of decades that model railroad manufacturers are producing and selling as much or more than ever.

For some years now, Joe Fugate, editor of the online magazine Model Railroad Hobbyist (full disclosure: for which I write) has been offering editorials from time to time on this exact topic. This month, he placed another one, in the August issue. You can read it for free in on-line version at http://mrhmg.com .

Joe made several points. He began with the surprising (to many) fact that membership in the NMRA now comprises 30 percent people under 40. It’s long been the case that men tended to enter model railroading when their kids began to be grown up, and they were looking for a hobby — in the past, often in their 40s. This younger NMRA membership suggests that that may be changing. 

Another point is that younger modelers, with home ownership getting ever harder, are turning more and more to modules or switching layouts in the space they do have. The visibility of younger builders of Free-Mo modules illustrates this (for more on Free-Mo, you can visit https://free-mo.org/ ).

The most striking thing in Joe’s editorial for me is that many younger modelers are choosing to model the transition era, though it’s a lot of decades in the past. Why? It’s regarded as the most interesting time in railroad history, much as World War II continues to be the dominant period in military modeling.

So is our hobby fading away? In my opinion, not at all. I often quote an editorial in Model Railroader from the early 1950s, when MR conducted annual surveys of its readers. The editorial observed that the average age of surveyed modelers increased about one year in each successive survey, and therefore that the hobby was on its last legs. Seventy-five years later, it’s still the wrong conclusion.

Tony Thompson 

A new Achievement Program

Most modelers will at least be aware, if not entirely familiar, with the long-running Achievement Program of the NMRA. (I myself recently achieved the Master Model Railroader (MMR) position, as I described in a recent post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/personal-master-model-railroader-772.html ). This post is not about that.

Instead, in this post, I want to describe a new program being put forward by the Operations Special Interest Group (OpSIG) of NMRA, a program aimed at achievements in operating, whereas the parent NMRA program is primarily about model- and layout-building skills. It’s true that the NMRA program has a category called “Dispatcher,” but it doesn’t really demand literal dispatching skills. OpSIG has set out to offer a broader program about a whole range of serious operating skills, and contributions to this part of the hobby.

If you visit the OpSIG website (at: https://www.opsig.org/ ), you can scroll down to “What’s New” and you will find a mention of the Achievement Program; or you can see the scope of the program directly, by going to the website which has been set up for the program (it is located at: https://opsig-ap.org/ ). You can watch an introductory video if you wish — it’s quite informative about the goals of the program — but is some 20 minutes long. You might wish to begin by browsing the screens of the website before sitting down with the video.

There are at present 12 areas of achievement, with a 13th under development, such as Host (of operating sessions), Author (of published materials about operation), and Boomer (about participating in operating sessions on layouts other than your own). None of these achievements require any subjective judgement by officials of an applicant, but simply a presentation of accomplishments. 

As shown on the website, several accomplished model railroaders have consented to serve on a Board of Trustees (I was asked to be among them), and they have contributed to the development of this program. The chairman of the program is Paul B. Weiss, also a current member of the OpSIG Board.

I’ve submitted my documentation for several of the categories. When you are approved, you get rather promptly a certificate, shown below. (I might mention, as an MMR, that this is in stark contrast to the NMRA process, in which acknowledgement and certificates wind through several individuals and can readily take months. ) Here’s an example of a certificate. 

You also receive, in what some may find odd or amusing, a button for each category. I know that there was some debate behind the scenes about this when the program was developing. Even though some would feel that wearing a button like this in public is terminally uncool, there are plenty of others who would be proud to do so. I think it will be interesting to see whether the wearing of buttons does become something you see at operating sessions. Here’s the button for the category above. It’s about 1.5 inches in diameter.

I personally feel that this program really is an overdue recognition that operation is the hobby that follows building a layout (answering the question, “Now, what’s it for?”), or for the enthusiast of real railroad jobs and operations, or even for the model builder who now gets to see those models in use. 

For too long, it’s kind of been the “underground” part of the hobby for those who don’t participate in it, because the magazines we all read can’t portray it very well. They love to show the spectacular scenery, and rarely even mention operation, when presenting layouts. It’s understandable, they are a visual medium, but it means that operation has often “flown under the radar” in model railroading.

I think it’s possible that this new OpSIG Achievement Program can help change that. As a person who greatly enjoys operation, and would like more modelers to discover it, I certainly hope so. I’d urge you to check out the website (again, it’s at: https://opsig-ap.org/ ) and see if it appeals to you.

Tony Thompson 

Layout ideas and design

I was stimulated by conversations at a recent modelers’ get-together in my local area to reflect on how layout designs evolve and how they depend on the owner’s intentions — and how those intentions evolve. Many layout owners concede that they began without much idea of the final goal, however much they might have been inspired by what they saw in the model magazines. 

I should immediately mention that I realize a certain fraction of modelers are really inspired by building scenery, or structures, or complete layout scenes, without any particular interest in operations. They may well run trains here and there as part of the scenes, but without an interest in what a prototype may have done. That’s perfectly okay as a hobby, and some superb modeling has been done in this mode.

There is another subset of modelers who are interested in the locomotives and cars of railroads, and are engrossed with building superb, even museum-quality, models of them, without much interest in operating them in a prototypical manner, or necessarily even building a layout. Here again, it’s fine as a hobby, and the resulting models can be stunning.

On the other hand, there are modelers interested in operation before scenery and structures and rolling stock. I have often mentioned to friends, my experience in the Chicago area, years ago, visiting a layout which was entirely plywood track supports, Homasote track bed, and track. Not a hint of scenery or structures; stations were named with small cards at each location. But complex trackage was complete and running perfectly. We had a busy and interesting and challenging operating session because of the busy schedule, operated by timetable and train order (T&TO).

So where would my preference lie? I appreciate both extremes in layout and modeling choice. But my mind can’t escape recollections of Tony Koester’s comment (in the Foreword to CJ Riley’s book, Realistic Layouts), that modeling railroading implies that we model not only the material objects and environment of professional railroaders, but also “the actions they take to get cargo and people safely and efficiently from A to Z.”

This resonates with me. My own layout choices are primarily aimed at trying to reproduce what the actual railroading job of a local freight crew was like. I have tried to achieve as many components of that as possible, recognizing of course that a visiting operator who has never seen the layout before is in a quite different place from the prototype train crew, who in most cases did that same job every day.

But when a model railroad operating crew, following waybills and other paperwork, spot a box car at an loading dock, they are to some extent doing just what a prototype crew would have done. The photo below, from my layout, is the kind of thing I mean. 

The same goes for other actions that a crew might do in the course of their time on duty, such as spotting freshly loaded reefers at an ice deck to receive the first icing before departing on their journey (the tariff language for this is “initial icing”).

Of course, for a fair number of layout designers and builders, it’s also important that we direct our work in model operations with realistic paperwork, that is to say, prototypical paperwork. I won’t say more on this topic here, since I expanded on my ideas in this direction in a blog post last fall, part of a three-part series on “realistic operations” (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/12/realistic-layout-operation-part-2.html ). The point here would be that layout design doesn’t much turn on paperwork, except in the sense that a layout builder may wish to include space for operators and a dispatcher.

It’s a well-worn piece of advice, to think carefully about what you really want to accomplish in a layout you are designing (or only dreaming about). But inevitably goals and desires evolve with time, and layouts can change with them. I would just encourage layout owners faced with such evolving ideas to grit their teeth, and modify the layout as needed to achieve those goals. You”ll certainly be happier in the long run.

Tony Thompson

The “literature” of model railroading

What do I mean here by “literature?” I don’t mean novels or other creative literature. I mean it in the sense familiar to any professional or academic: the published work in and about the field. This ranges from professional journals to books, volumes of conference proceedings, and monographs. And in professional fields, having a submitted paper accepted for publication will require it to contain adequate citation of the literature, in the sense just described.

What is the point of this? To give credit to the work of predecessors, to show that you understand where the paper you have submitted fits into that literature, and even to mention viewpoints that may conflict with the one you have espoused in your paper. One becomes accustomed to having the citations in mind while writing or reading a professional paper, and checking submitted or published citations to see if they seem appropriate. Having been both an associate editor, and then editor for five years, of a major journal in my field, metallurgy and materials, this used to be a completely instinctive process for me. My late friend Richard Hendrickson’s professional experience as an English linguist was entirely parallel.

But model railroaders, relatively few of whom are professionals in the sense just described, usually have no such experience and usually don’t even have any idea of the concept. Richard was in fact the one who pointed this out to me, and I immediately understood what he meant.

I guess my professional background died slowly. I’ll give one example. When Jim Hediger reviewed the First Edition of Pacific Fruit Express for Trains magazine, he commented thus: “Here is a superb illustrated history of the company whose name is synonymous with perishable freight. Rounding out the work is the most complete bibliography and index I have ever seen in a rail history book.” 

Having acted as editor for that entire book, and collected references from my co-authors as well as researching those for my own chapters, I can take credit for creating that bibliography (and I indexed the book, too). To me, Hediger’s description was a real compliment, and we included it on the dust jacket of the Second Edition of the PFE book. 

This came home to me more recently when a reader of one of my “Getting Real” columns in Model Railroad Hobbyist noticed a long bibliography, and wrote an email commenting on it. And in fact the same would be found in all volumes of my book series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars. Obviously to any experienced researcher, such bibliographic resources can be a gold mine in pursuing information beyond the publication in hand.

Incidentally (I’ll say more about this presently), nearly all that literature cited in those books is the literature of professional railroading and railroad history. That is obviously part of the literature of our hobby.

But in model railroading itself, what comprises the literature? The most obvious answer combines not only books, such as the familiar Kalmbach Media soft-bound books on practically every aspect of the hobby, but also the magazines: Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman most obviously, but also the defunct titles, such as Mainline Modeler, superb resources with many timeless items of information. Today, we need to include on-line resources such as blogs and museum archives.

Many modelers, of course, discard magazines after having paged through them, much as one would do with a weekly news magazine. That means they have no personal archive of magazines, except maybe an occasional helpful issue or article that is saved. But increasingly, magazine archives are appearing on-line, making it unnecessary to keep your own shelves of old magazines. (Though the on-line material often has been digitized at pretty low resolution, meaning that photographs are a complete loss; and on-line archives have a distressing tendency to suddenly disappear.)

As a single example of something I was able to retrieve from archives and greatly enjoyed and benefited from reading, below is the first page of Frank Ellison’s landmark series of six articles, tellingly titled “The Art of Model Railroading,” which appeared in Model Railroader in the issue for June 1944. And yes, I’m old, but not old enough to have read this when it came out.

In these six articles, Ellison was promoting the idea that operating a layout went far beyond building locomotives, laying track, or creating scenery. Instead, he suggested, it would need to be a coherent whole, not only with all those “construction” aspects, but also having flexible electrical control and above all, a realistic operating scheme. This was a pioneering idea, and tracking it down in the “literature” to appreciate it is part of what I’m writing about.

One more example of a magazine article from the distant past that is still worth reading is Doug Smith’s article on freight car forwarding, published in the December 1961 issue of Model Railroader. Smith not only reviewed a number of proposed systems for car forwarding, he went on to suggest ways to update the Ellison car-card system, ideas which are relevant today. And most important, he emphasized prototype practice as the guide we should follow.

It remains my opinion that there is a literature of model railroading, and awareness of it should be the hallmark of any serious modeler, particularly those who write articles — though I wouldn’t foresee serious lists of literature citations in model magazines. The further literature is that of professional railroading, both operations and history. It too is important to modelers, and I’ll have more to say about that in a future post.

Tony Thompson

Model building

I recently received an interesting and challenging comment via email about the context of my recent series of posts about modifying a Rivarossi observation car as a stand-in for a Southern Pacific business car, SP 119, assigned as the Superintendent’s car for SP’s Coast Division during the era I model (1953). I made it clear that I was only modeling the prototype car in broad brush strokes. You can read the concluding post at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/08/operating-sp-business-car-conclusion.html  .

The remark that came to me was about my “slackened” standards in doing such modeling. This really brings up a far more general topic, about model building in general, and what is the purpose of the models we build. That’s what I comment on in the present post.

Like most if not all modelers, I certainly build occasional models with the intent of stretching my skills to their limit, and getting all major and many minor details exactly right. Usually these are models of Southern Pacific equipment, the prototype I model. An example would be my project to model an automobile car of SP Class A-50-17 (for a description, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/01/modeling-sp-class-50-17-conclusion.html ). Here’s a photo:

Other times I only want a representation of a prototype, and I often refer to such models as “main line” models, meaning you will only see them on my layout in a passing train on the main line. The business car referred to above is definitely in that category. Freight cars of some railroads that I don’t find very interesting may also be built as “main line” cars.

Even cars of that kind are worth weathering well and making sure that the most obvious parts of the model, notably the roof, would withstand at least a somewhat close-up view. Then they look good even in a passing train. 

I am always surprised when I visit a layout and see rolling stock with little or no weathering. You may not wish to weather as thoroughly as my late friend Richard Hendrickson often did, but this can certainly raise the credibility level of even a simple model. Here’s one of Richard’s meat refrigerator car models.

Most of my models, however, are much more accurate than the “main line” cars and will withstand scrutiny from a fairly close viewpoint, as in switching moves near the layout aisle. This especially applies to freight cars of the SP and of Pacific Fruit Express. Are these and the main-line kind of models in conflict? I don’t think so.

I suppose the extreme case is the contest model (or a model built to standards that would allow it to perform well in a major contest). I was an NMRA contest modeler for a number of years, and then graduated to contest judging for both regional and national contests, and finished that phase of my modeling career by serving five years as Contest Chair for NMRA’s Pacific Coast Region. I think it was valuable for me to learn the kind of research, discipline and application needed to succeed with this kind of modeling.

Still, I well remember chatting in a contest room with a group of contestants and judges, and one of the contestants mentioned that he was starting to build a layout. One of the others immediately remarked, “So I guess we won’t be seeing you in the contest room any more.” This encapsulates the choice most of us have to make, between building exquisite individual models, and creating, scenicking and operating a layout.

Where I come down on that choice is quite obvious from many posts in this blog, about numerous topics having to do with my layout, and frankly, equally so for my description of models like the business car, SP 119. Such choices are, after all, to some extent purely practical ones in terms of available time and effort.

I will continue to devote varying amounts of effort to different models. That doesn’t mean “anything goes;” on the contrary, I have long had a self-defined “floor” under quality (see for example my posts about standards; here is one example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/07/standards-for-layout-freight-cars.html ). Final results will always depend on personal choices.

Tony Thompson

Bay Area Prototype Modelers, 2024

Once again, as June rolls around, we arrive at the annual Bay Area Prototype Modelers (BAPM) meet, held at the traditional location in Richmond, California. Outside the meeting room, arrivals were greeted by the traditional banner with the BAPM logo:

Like all RPM (Railroad Prototype Modelers) meets, it’s a major feature that you get to meet and greet lots of fellow modelers of a mostly serious hobby attitude. And a special treat is to browse the room full of tables that are loaded with models, and not only to appreciate the model work but also to meet the modelers. 

I’ll mention a few highlights. One young modeler whose work I liked was Colin Minekheim. One of his models was a fine reproduction of a prototype photo in my book, “Box Cars,” Volume 4 in the series, Southern Pacific Freight Cars (revised edition, Signature Press, 2014). That Dick Kuelbs photo is found on page 303. The car shown there is a former “Overnight” car, returned to freight service and renumbered with a boxcar red patch. His model very nicely reproduces that photo, even with the same car number.

He also displayed a neat job of modeling one of the four Alco Century 628 demonstrators that SP purchased and simply “patched” with road name and number, right over Alco’s gold and black demonstrator paint scheme, and put in service. Obviously it’s been hard at work!

Another nice job of a process I always admire, reproducing graffiti on prototype cars, was done by Scott Kelley-Clement. Here is the prototype photo he was guided by:

And here is the model he created, using a Rapido HO model of a Pacific Car & Foundry SP Class B-100-40, and hand-painting the graffiti:

Also of interest to me was a really nice job of showing age in a galvanized roof, a model by Tom Bacarella. My photo, below, barely does justice to how good this looked.

As I always do, I brought a complete HO scale train, headed by a Class C-9 Consolidation and trailed by an SP steel caboose. A number of the cars were the same ones I had shown in 2022 (for which, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/07/my-display-train-at-bapm-2022.html ), so I will only show the newer ones. 

I included a well-used PFE reefer, something I model in moderation but do include in my fleet of PFE cars. The foreground description explains it.

Another car in the train was a recent tank car project, which I reported in a blog post earlier this year (my full description concludes at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/02/modeling-sp-class-o-50-9-tank-car.html ). Again, the description is in the foreground.'

In closing, I’ll mention again the very real camaraderie of these meetings, along with the pleasure of seeing completed and in-progress models. It’s not only fun, you can learn a few things too.

Tony Thompson

What makes a good layout description?

At the recent ProRail event, I chatted with several experienced model railroad layout operators, and this subject came up: what makes a good layout description? (Meaning, of course, a description of one you haven’t been to before; or in the other direction, what you should try to describe for first-time visitors to your layout.) For some background comments on ProRail, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/prorail-2024.html .

We all agreed that the quality and helpfulness of layout descriptions vary widely. Sometimes you are overwhelmed with details of what is on the layout, or are given multiple pages of information about how operations work on that layout. Often it’s difficult to sort through all the detail when you’ve never seen the layout.

Sometimes you receive something like this: “I won’t describe the layout itself, because it was well covered in Great Model Railroads in 2004.” Not too many of us keep publications that far back; and even if we do, we may be reading the layout description on the airplane while traveling to the operating weekend where we will operate on that layout. Needless to say, the reference to GMR is not helpful in that situation.

Now I’m not criticizing anyone whose layout has been in GMR or any other publication; in fact, mentioning that kind of coverage demonstrates that the layout is at least visually quite good. So by all means, such a reference ought to be in a layout description, but not as a substitute for actually describing the layout. 

Photographs can be helpful, though rarely a major part of the layout descriptions one receives. In particular, a panoramic photo of a layout may show a great deal of what the layout is like, though such views aren’t commonly seen. Below is a fine example, the late Jack Parker’s Northern Pacific layout, published as a double-page spread in GMR for 1995.

Even photos of individual scenes on a layout may make you think, “Wow, I’d love to operate there.” By and large, photos of that type are as uncommon as panoramas. To illustrate, I’ll show a photo I took at John Breau’s outstanding layout in Kansas City, showing the local freight I operated, having just completed switching in the town of Dutton, Montana.

A much more familiar example is the superb Tehachapi layout of the La Mesa Club in San Diego. This scene at Caliente captures much of the appeal (and size) of this layout.

Some of this problem is that the magazines we all read are very focused on visual quality, especially close-ups of detailed scenes. It isn’t easy to portray operational qualities in a magazine, and often an article doesn’t even try. That’s why a number of excellently-operating layouts would never be shown in a magazine. But beyond photos, what else conveys the information you want?

We soon agreed, in our conversation, that the basics for a visiting operator include era modeled, prototype railroad if any, and location in the world (if you model Santa Fe, is it in Chicago? Topeka? Raton Pass? San Bernardino? those would be quite different layouts). Of course, scale makes a difference, and so does operating scheme (CTC? Timetable and Train Order? Track Warrants? just run and have fun?) and, to some extent, DCC system (Digi-trax, NCE, Easy DCC, etc.).

How about track plans? Some of us really liked to study a track plan in advance, others felt that a schematic of the track plan was in some ways better, because it shows you how the layout will work. That isn’t always obvious in a track plan. It can also be informative to mention what the layout emphasizes: small farm communities on a branch line, high-speed mainline passenger trains, large classification yards, dense urban switching, and so on.

Layout size matters too. A frequent way of conveying that is to state the square footage of the layout. That of course does convey size, but shape is important too. Is it long and narrow? square? L-shaped? or something else? Knowing shape and dimensions (which a track plan would include), and an operating schematic, does give you a pretty good idea of what the physical layout is like.

Most of us felt that descriptions of the operating scheme can be fairly brief for an experienced visitor. Pages and pages of procedures and copies of multiple forms that are used aren’t essential. I have occasionally gone back after a session on a layout which provided all that paperwork in advance, and found I could understand it far better in retrospect than beforehand.

A couple of people mentioned a common problem, one I’ve been guilty of myself, providing a layout description that is the layout owner’s idea of what the layout is, rather than trying to see it from the perspective of a first-time visitor, and what might be helpful to explain (and what you needn’t explain because it’s fairly obvious). I try to avoid this problem, but probably haven’t quite succeeded.

I have, in a way, written two layout descriptions. One is a description of layout history and background, for visitors at, for example, open houses. A version of it is available on Google Drive (you can find the text at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YUu3bOCnFQgch43CKynJHVgYOLckQZ4H/view?usp=sharing ). I can see some minor modifications that should be made.

My other layout description is really an introduction to how the layout is operated, not a guide for a visitor, and is distributed before operating sessions. Here’s a link to the current version, also on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pz7aKNNZatON-DP22fU42uV0HGXjllSa/view?usp=sharing . How did I do?

Tony Thompson

ProRail 2024

The Prototype Railroad Operating group (ProRail) meeting this year was in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was last here in 2015. I was among the layout hosts this time, and have more to say about that below. As background, this annual event began 52 years ago in Chicago, followed the next year with one in Kansas City, and those two locations hosted their respective 50th anniversaries in 2022 and 2023. For background, please visit: http://www.prorail.org/ .

One of the ProRail traditions I enjoy is attending a baseball game on the Thursday before the event begins. This is often a major-league game, but minor-league ballparks are fun too. This time, naturally, we went to see the San Francisco Giants, playing the Arizona Diamondbacks. We had nice seats in the boxes on the first-base side. Here’s a view in the top of the fourth inning.

I was scheduled to host two operating sessions which, as it happened, were my 90th and 91st on the present version of the layout. I was flattered to see the people who had chosen my layout as one of their operating options, as several of them are people I have looked up to for years. Naturally I put in a lot of hours making the layout the best it could be, despite some hiccups I was aware of (more about that in a moment).

The Friday operating crew was Doug Harding, Paul De Luca, Bob Willer and Rene´ LaVoise, all Midwesterners. After the usual briefing, perhaps enlarged a bit as none of them had operated here before, we settled into the session. As you can see below, Bob (at left) and Paul first worked at Shumala, before we broke for lunch, with Bob as engineer here. I’ve visited both their layouts and enjoyed the operating sessions on both.

On the other side of the layout, Rene´ (at left) and Doug were working Ballard, though in the view below, Doug was snapping a few photos. I was at Doug’s layout for the first time last year, though I’ve known him for what seems like a lot of years.

Everything went fairly smoothly (we did lose a couple of coupler springs), except in the trouble area of trackwork about which I’ve been posting (see the most recent at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/04/trackwork-wars-part-13.html ). 

Before the first session, I had gone over this track with a fine-toothed comb, and found that the curved switch was now distinctly tight in gauge when thrown one of the two ways. I know it wasn’t that way before installation, because I checked it carefully first (a habit I developed in the days when brand-new Shinohara switches were not infrequently out of gauge). 

During the sessions, the engine was run really slowly over it, and it mostly ran okay, but I hated it not being right. I will just have to get back in there again and try to figure out how to correct it.

The second session again had a distinguished operating crew, Jerry Dziedzic and Bob Hanmer, joined by Mikc Chandler and John Walter from  Vancouver, BC. Again, people I’ve know and operated with for years. The crew starting out on the Shumala side of the layout comprised John (at left) and Mike. John was the conductor here, and is holding some waybills.

Meanwhile, at Ballard, Bob (at left) and Jerry were at work. I’m not sure what Jerry was doing in this photo, but I remember that both he and Bob were amused about something. Maybe a switching mistake? Here again, the photos were taken before the lunch break. The weather was nice enough that we ate outside on our patio.

In addition to all of the above, our local committee hosted a dinner for visitors and layout hosts together, another chance to meet or reunite with this community, and a few friends even came by my layout in the evening to see it, if they hadn’t gotten it as an assignment. I mention this as emphasis for the significance of the social side of the operating hobby.

Altogether, this ProRail was really fun, to have long-time acquaintances and friends operate my layout, and of course a chance to renew friendships and make new ones. To me, that’s a big payoff from operating sessions. I know some people find them stressful and a little too challenging, but I find them fun, both the model railroading and the people connections.

Tony Thompson

A model railroading weekend

I’m reporting today on something that I haven’t often reported before, but it occurs to me that it may be informative for some readers to revisit the topic (there is an earlier report at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-bay-area-layout-design-and.html ). It’s a meeting that’s been held in the San Francisco Bay Area for about 25 years, chaired during practically the whole time by our own Seth Neumann. The weekend chosen has always been the ”football-free” weekend before the Super Bowl, for what I assume are obvious reasons. To see the current announcement, you can visit: http://bayldops.com/ .

This meeting began, all those years ago, with 8 or so people meeting in a living room, and had grown past 100 attendees before the pandemic. We had about 80 this last weekend (a mix of in-person and virtual attendees). It encompasses both layout design and operation through the respective NMRA Special Interest Groups or SIGs, the Layout Design SIG and the Operations SIG. In recent years, the site has been rotated among the South Bay, East Bay, and North Bay in the immediate Bay Area, and Sacramento.

This is something that could be done almost anywhere, as a means of getting people together with common interests (such as, but not limited to, the two SIGs mentioned above). I can recommend discussions of layout design issues, and even a “design challenge” — ours was to design a small layout to model the Northwestern Pacific terminal and ferry dock at Tiburon — something the Bay Area meeting has long included. This is invariably an intriguing component of the day, as various respondents show their layout ideas, and I’d recommend it. 

Anyone planning such a meeting might also consider including discussions of operation procedures, whether in the form of talks, panel discussions, or audience participation. Also, attendees always enjoy evening or next-day layout open houses and open operating sessions. We have long had these, and they seem like obvious possibilities for other meets.

This year, our meeting schedule began with Friday layout open houses and a dinner, then quite a nice Saturday meeting of our usual kind, a bunch of talks (I gave one of them), the Tiburon design challenge, which brought forth some quite interesting responses, and a switching puzzle. 

We also had our usual “layout design consulting,” where experienced layout designers privately evaluate your layout ideas or design, one on one, and give feedback. This was followed on Sunday by operating sessions for the Saturday attendees.

I was at Paul Weiss’s outstanding Central Vermont layout on Sunday, to act as yardmaster at the principal yard, East New London. It was a really rainy day, somewhat unevenly with heavy showers alternating with light ones, but still a very gray and wet day. Here’s a view from the layout door with rain pelting down (and yes, that’s a crossing gate in the distance: the former NWP line, now SMART commute trains):

But inside, of course, we were dry and happy (doubtless aided by the availability of copious coffee and donuts). My crew at East New London was Jim Radkey and David Gibbons, both experienced people who got all the yard switching done in a quite timely manner. Adjoining our yard was one of the windows to an operator’s desk at the lower level, sometimes resulting in amusing scenes like this: Robert Bowdidge, conductor on the Montville job, kneeling down to communicate with the operator; at left is Phil Edholm, Superintendent of our local NMRA division, and behind him, Jim Radkey.

The layout is being built and developed by an impressive and talented crew. I always enjoy each visit because progress is always evident. The crown jewel of the new work is the superb model, built by Doug Nelson, of the Union Station at Palmer, Massachusetts (the prototype still stands), an H.H. Richardson stone structure. In the view below, the double track in front of the depot is the Boston & Albany main line, with the CV crossing at right.

Another very impressive new structure on the layout is the Yantic Grain & Produce mill and elevator, shown below. This faithfully reproduces the remarkably complex prototype structure’s roofline, and the addition at left, with a quite good representation of New England’s ubiquitous “insulbrick” sheathing, the work of Jim Providenza. A great model, and now an interesting industry to switch!

It was, as always, a fun weekend, with lots of friends and acquaintances to meet and reconnect with, nice information in the Saturday session, and (for me anyway) a terrific operating session on Sunday; I’m sure others enjoyed their Sunday layout sessions too. 

But as I stated at the outset of this post, my point in describing all this is that I think this kind of get-together could be reproduced in many places, and local modelers would have the chance to enjoy them as much as I do ours. If you see an announcement for such a meeting in your area, I’d recommend you give it a try. And if there is no such meeting locally, why not organize one? I always enjoy them, and I’ll bet you would too.

Tony Thompson

Bill Neale: an appreciation

Just last December 28, one of the model railroaders I have admired most passed away. It was Bill Neale, of Farmington, Michigan (in the Detroit area), aged just 74. I know Bill grew up in Indiana, and over his career worked for GM, HP and EDS. He was active in the NMRA and in the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society. For a fuller biography, you can visit this site: https://www.heeney-sundquist.com/obituary/william-neale-ii . I enjoyed chatting with him every time we had the chance. Here’s a good photo from that obituary. 

I first knew Bill’s name because of his article in Model Railroader (“Plastic pocket car cards,” February 2009, pages 62–65), with his idea to use clear sleeves, intended for baseball-card collectors, to hold what are usually called car cards. Bill very appropriately called them waybills.

These waybills were simply inserted into the clear sleeves, which bore labels for individual cars. This meant that the waybills would be about the size of baseball cards, 2.5 x 3.5 inches, plenty of space for generous information (something I like) but small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and easy to handle. I thought Bill’s waybills were a little primitive, but the card sleeve idea really caught my imagination.

Since then, I’ve published several articles about my own waybill design, along with numerous posts to this blog on the topic (easily found by using “waybills”as the search term in the search box at upper right) and often mention that the entire idea and inspiration came from Bill. And as it happened, Bill later revised his own waybills to reflect some of my ideas! Inspiration flowing in both directions.

One of the great pleasures for me whenever there was an operating weekend in the Detroit area was another visit to Bill’s superb PRR layout, modeling the Panhandle Division west of Pittsburgh (I described it extensively in a post about ProRail in 2021, at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/11/attending-prorail-2021.html ). Of course part of the pleasure was to see Bill himself again.

I had earlier shown a few scenes from the layout taken at the GLG (Great Lakes Getaway) in 2017 (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/12/layouts-at-great-lakes-getaway-part-2.html ). Luckily, I attended another GLG just this fall, and saw the layout one more time, along with a bunch of others (see descriptions at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-2023-great-lakes-getaway.html ).

This was really one of my favorite layouts, among those I like best in the whole country. His depiction of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1939, in the tri-state area of western Pennsylvania, the West Virginia panhandle at Weirton, and into Ohio at Steubenville and Mingo Junction was beautifully done. Though it’s not a large basement, Bill masterfully designed the layout to include a significant amount of mainline running and some excellent switching areas. 

A centerpiece of the layout was his (necessarily considerably compressed) model of the Penny’s Panhandle Bridge across the Ohio River, connecting Weirton, West Virginia with Steubenville, Ohio. The state line is even marked on the fascia.

The principal yard on the layout was at Weirton, and I have operated there several times, both as assistant yardmaster and (last fall) as yardmaster. Really a nice, spacious yard to work in, and busy enough with substantial train lengths to service. In the foreground, you see a few of his impressive and thoroughly-weathered fleet of gondolas.

These gondolas were mostly well-rusted and dirty inside and nearly every one contained rubble from previous loads. As I know from watching passing trains from overhead, this is quite prototypical, and I think Bill modeled it as well as anyone. Here’s an interior view.

The other extensive switching area was at Steubenville, and on one visit, I drew the Steubenville switch job. This really was challenging and fun, with lots of planning needed for many of the moves. The power was a PRR 0-6-0, seen here passing the depot.

Before closing, I want to add one more comment. When I first met Bill in person, we really hit it off and had a great conversation. Since then, I have chatted with Bill at many meets and have operated on his layout five times, every one a delight. So it was with considerable sadness I heard about his passing. A great guy with a great layout, a mentor and a friend. I’ll miss you, Bill.

Tony Thompson

Cocoa Beach 2024

Yes, it’s that time of the year again, early January, and one of my favorite events, the  Prototype Rails meet, was held once again at the Hilton in Cocoa Beach, Florida. This was the 23rd renewal of this event, and I have attended all but one. The late Mike Brock ran this event for nearly all those years. Now his one-time deputy Marty Magregian has taken over, and it ran as smoothly as it did under Mike.

Once again, it was a delightful meeting, primarily a gathering of the freight car community, and I know many of the modelers who attend. This year there were 210 attendees, along with 25 last-minute cancellations due to illness, an unusual proportion.

As is true for me at most meets like this, the clinic program is my core priority. I did give a talk myself, but will have to say that the program this year, assembled as always by Jeff Aley, was really outstanding, with many excellent talks. There were a few late scratches, but most of the program went off as advertised. One person we were all delighted to see giving a talk was Tony Koester, giving an update on his layout. Here he is with his opening slide.

A close second in my regard is the huge model display. As always, there were really a lot of terrific models exhibited. One of the ones I really liked (and was impressed with what it took) was Fenton Wells’ Birmingham Southern box car. This was a 1937 AAR box car body, 10 feet inside height, but with a PRR-style flat roof and flat plate ends. Fenton built it from an IMWX box car kit, with a Red Caboose X29 roof, and an end made by filing the kit end flat and adding Archer rivets. Decals are K4.

Another model I liked was one of Bill Cialini’s modern cars with well-executed weathering and graffiti. This covered hopper, well paint-patched from a previous owner, is a good example.

As is true every year, most of the ballroom is filled with vendor tables. This is a wonderful chance to see new products or smaller vendors who you might otherwise not know about. And between all clinic sessions, a good crowd was taking advantage of the opportunity.

One striking vendor display was by 3D Central Trains, showing a huge range of 3D-printed parts, as you can see below (for more on what they do and what you can buy, go to: https://3dcentraltrains.com/ ).

For just a single example, below is the underbody for a 60-foot woodchip car, showing the way that underbody brake parts can be printed in one piece. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

Their representative did say that they prefer not to print grab irons and ladders, as they are difficult to make scale size and even if achieved, would be quite brittle. But everything else looks great. And as I’ve been saying for some time (see for example this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/more-amazing-3-d-printing.html ), I believe this is just the thin end of the wedge in the future of our hobby.

A great meet, one I always look forward to, and always enjoy. If you, dear reader, have never been to Cocoa Beach for this meeting, I strongly suggest you consider it next January.

Tony Thompson