Blog

I spent three evenings last month watching a fellow modeler on our club's forum slowly realize his layout design exceeded AnyRail's 50-piece demo limit. He'd invested hours perfecting his PRR branch line plan, only to discover he couldn't save it. That frustration prompted me to write what I wish so …

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 been modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad since 1989, which means I've watched locomotive prices climb from "reasonable" to "are you serious?" over three decades. Working at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, I have access to prototype documentation that would make any researcher jealous, but a …

I bought my first Broadway Limited locomotive in 1989, set it on a borrowed loop of track, and immediately realized I had no idea what I was doing. The locomotive ran beautifully. The track? A disaster of wobbly joints and dead spots. Thirty-five years later, I've learned a few things about what sep …

Five years ago, when Mike Wolf announced he was retiring and closing MTH Electric Trains, I genuinely thought the O gauge world was about to lose one of its most innovative players. I remember sitting in my office at the Railroad Museum, staring at my shelf of MTH Premier PRR locomotives, wondering …

I've been modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad since 1989, and every December I watch the same scene unfold: someone buys an O-gauge train set, tears open the box on Christmas morning, and then realizes the oval won't fit between the tree stand and the couch. The magic dissolves into frustration, and …