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I bought my first Broadway Limited locomotive in 1989 from a guy at the York train meet who assured me it was "like new." It wasn't. The gears were cracked, the tender had been repainted with something that looked like house paint, and the original box had clearly been through a flood. That $200 les …

I've attended more estate sales than I can count since retiring from the construction business. Most of them blur together: dusty furniture, questionable artwork, and boxes of stuff nobody really wants. But every once in a while, you walk into a basement or a spare bedroom and find yourself staring …

When my husband passed in 2008, I inherited a half-finished HO layout, three boxes of locomotives I couldn't identify, and absolutely no idea what any of it was worth. Sixteen years later, I've become the person friends call when they need to track down an out-of-production New England depot kit or …

When my husband passed in 2008 and I inherited his half-finished S scale layout, I had no idea what I was getting into. Sixteen years later, I'm still here, still building, and still convinced that S scale at 1:64 hits a sweet spot between the cramped details of HO and the space demands of O gauge. …

After building houses for four decades, I learned that foundations matter. A crooked foundation means a crooked house, no matter how fancy the trim work. The same principle applies to model railroading, and in N scale, your couplers are the foundation of every operation you'll ever run. I've conver …

After spending 40 years building houses, I've developed a pretty simple philosophy: buy quality tools from companies that stand behind their work, or you'll waste more time fixing problems than actually getting things done. That same logic applies to N scale model railroading. I've been running tra …