There is a great N scale layout by Dan Lewis on his Milwaukee Road/North Montana line. The original layout had been a shelf layout. Dan was able to increase the size of the layout into a much bigger room (18' x 24') - about the size of a double garage in Australia. The article gave me cause to reflect that building a layout can start small before taking opportunities later on to expand the size of the model railroad territory. It's not bad advice as I scribble away with track plans for a master layout that hasn't actually progressed very far!
However, there were a couple of surprises.
The first was that executive editor of Model Railroader, Andy Sperandeo, was retiring after a career with Kalmbach Publishing spanning 32 years. Fortunately, Andy will still be writing the monthly "The Operators" column where he discusses prototype railway operation.
The second surprise was a short article from Pelle Soeborg from Denmark who has cut up his superb Daneville and Donner River HO scale layout. The layout was featured in a Kalmbach book, Mountain to desert: building the HO scale Daneville & Donner River, published in 2006. Pelle has been a regular contributor to Model Railroader over recent years and will be writing in the future about his new layout. I look forward to that. The short article in this latest issue of Model Railroader gives several tips on how to cut away and keep structures from a layout that is being dismantled. The article is supported by an interview with Pelle and some photos of his new layout on the registered users section of the Model Railroader website.
Lastly, while not a surprise since the news had been announced a couple of months ago, Model Railroader is releasing a DVD set of the first 75 years of Model Railroader magazine (1934-79). Whilst I do prefer reading the printed copy, my bookshelves are overflowing with Model Railroader magazines back to 1993 and they are simply taking up too much room!
I too found the article on the demolition of a layout interesting, as this concentrated on removal of the structures, rather than simply putting in the saw.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to note the significant reduction in prices of old magazines (specifically AMRM), once the issues become available on DVD?
What do we do with the old issues, once we have the copy on DVD? Old issues could always be left in doctor's surgery, Red cross blood transfusion services, chinese resturants, when waiting for take away - anywhere where people are waiting, and otherwise presented with women's variety magazines. Please don't simply consign them to paper recycling.
Whilst I agree with Brad on liking a hard back copy, it seems that many are comfortable with back issues of their favourite magazine being electronic. With a lot of indexes also being electronic, with the proliferation, and low cost of netbooks etc, they could be an essential modelling tool, with the collective knowledge of 1000s of modellers available with a few keystrokes on a dedicated netbook.