You’ve got to admire Union Pacific’s steam program. I’ve been reading about it my entire life. There’s the 844 (or as we once knew it, the 8444), the 3985, and then the 4014. Big mainline locomotives, each of them, operating for the very same railroad they were built for. What’s not to love? But Union Pacific, historically speaking, never came closer to me than Omaha (and later, Chicago). Those locomotives might as well be operating on a different planet.
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The National Model Railroading Association just did something I didn’t expect: it created a brand-new Achievement Program certificate for modular railroading. It’s a tacit admission, at the very least, that modular isn’t just the ugly stepchild of more serious hobby activities, but a legitimate expression unto itself.
It feels like somebody in NMRA leadership has been reading my blog posts a little too carefully. I’m not sure how to feel about that.
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Ahh, know-it-alls! A typical model railroad club contains a variety of personality types, and there’s always a know-it-all or two in the mix. You know the type: the guy with all the answers that you never asked for. The guy who relishes calling you out for some perceived shortcoming in your hobby activities. If you’ve ever wondered why “Rule #1: It’s My Railroad” has become such a popular refrain within the hobby, it’s because of this guy. So what if some hoppers in my 1949-era coal train have the Pennsy “shadow keystone” logo from 1954? So what if my Lackawanna Trainmasters are equipped with Mars lights? So what if my North Coast Limited is pulled by Alco PAs, instead of F-units? Maybe I don’t know it’s wrong, but even if I do, I don’t care. It’s model trains. I like what I like. Lives do not hang in the balance.
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I was at the Port Byron rest stop on the Thruway, en route to the Syracuse show, getting coffee on Saturday morning when I noticed that the rebrand had gone live. NMRA leadership has been teasing it for weeks, without showing anything. The train show kept me busy all day, of course, but when I got to the hotel that night, I dug in for a closer look.
Ugh.
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When the superintendent of my NMRA division suggested, at a gathering a few years ago, that I work to earn a Master Model Railroader (MMR) certificate, I recognized the gleam in his eye. Decades earlier, my scoutmaster had the same gleam when suggesting I go for the Eagle badge. It awakened some surprisingly complex feelings from deep inside myself.
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As is often the case with mysteries, I stumbled into this one quite by accident. A few years ago, Sam needed to thin out his rolling stock, and he sold me a pair of undecorated Atlas Trainmasters, and the decoders to go into them, at a very good price. I stuck them in a shoebox, unsure of what to do with them. They’re the Phase 1A variation with the big Mars light in the short hood, which doesn’t match the Trainmasters owned by the Lackawanna or the Pennsy. They are correct for the Wabash (outside my geographic territory), the Southern Pacific (even farther) or Fairbanks-Morse demonstrators (outside my era, even if decals were available, which they aren’t.) I finally pulled them out a few weeks ago, got the decoders in, and ran them for an hour at a library show. Nice engines.
By every measure, they’d be a good addition to my show roster, but they’re going to need paint first. So what to paint them? A freelance scheme of some kind, perhaps? How about a riff on the so-called “McGinnis” paint schemes of the New Haven and the Boston and Maine? That’d be cool.
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“Would you like to go to Chicago with me?” asked Peter one day in early April. The newly-merged CPKC had just announced their Final Spike steam tour, and Franklin Park, Illinois was the stop closest to us. My first impulse was to politely decline—I’d just taken several days off work to spend time with my son during the Total Eclipse, and a twelve-hour drive each way to and from Chicagoland didn’t sound particularly fun, steam or no. On further consideration, though, I changed my mind. Peter’s a transplanted Aussie, retired, and a big New York Central fan. The Final Spike Tour’s headliner, restored Canadian Pacific 2816, was the closest he was ever going to get in this day and age to his beloved NYC J3a. I suggested Amtrak instead of I-90 to him, and he immediately booked us seats on the Lake Shore Limited.
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It began, as most trips down YouTube rabbit holes do, with a tantalizing thumbnail in my feed. Some of my non-train-related leisure time these days is spent watching anime with my neighbor Steve, so a video with both a train and a blue-haired anime girl was all the clickbait I needed. YouTube knows what I like. I clicked through, and was treated to an engaging low-poly 3D animation of electrified helper-grade operation through Japan’s Usui Pass. This was unlike any Japanese railroading I had ever heard of. When I hear “Japan,” “mountains,” and “trains,” I think of Mount Fuji as a distant backdrop to a speeding Shinkansen, and…well, that’s about it. But a 6.67% grade? That can’t be right, can it?
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Furniture Railroads 