The Great Train Show is a 16-part podcast series hosted by Tim Fischer. He started the series last Saturday and is an hour long.

The first episode was good and even though it is based in Australia, he had reports from Kenya and India. People called in to the show and shared their childhood railway experiences. From Kenya, the report was about the Lunatic Line. I had not known about this line and the name given was puzzling until i read the background.

In the next series he will be playing an audio recording of a steam loco climbing a grade and slipping.

Its nice to come across fellow bloggers who share the same passion for all things railways. Scratchbuilders Guild is one of them and has been tracking model and prototypical railway news items for quite some time. I particular like his scenery section where he gives detailed steps with pictures on creating model trees using telephone wires.

The Ahmerst Railway Society's annual Train Show was held on January 26-27th in Springfield,MA. This show was huge. There were 4 buildings full of layouts and vendors. My feet hurt by the end of it, from walking all around.

Vendors
There were the usual model suppliers and vendors but a few new ones caught my attention. Billboards and animated signs from Miller Engineering would be a great addition to any layout. These were very thin and run on 4.5V. You could put it on top of or against your structures.

LARC Railroad Graphics were selling backdrop photos on a CD. You just print it out and glue it. I liked this method given my lack of painting skills.

Layouts
There were many layouts. If there was a prize, i would give it to the HO layout from Central New York Modellers. Most of the pictures in the gallery and the video clip are theirs. The foliage was plentiful. The structures were highly detailed and some even had interiors. They had the most DPI ie, details-per-sq. inch. You could see the hard work and time they must have devoted to their layout. I also noticed that they used a lot of tricks to create perspective. Cutouts of small structures were place strategically on distant hills for depth.

From Connecticut, Mohegan Pequot Model Railroad Club HO layout was also detailed and had clever use of foliage and clumps of grass/bushes. Their site has an instructive How TO sections that has a number of great articles.

The layout by the Pepperell Model Club was also good.

Here is a clip from the show. I used my digital camera's movie mode. I should have used a higher resolution. Oh! well.


Click on the picture for the still gallery:

The Amherst Train show is this weekend at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield. The list of exhibitors is huge and i wonder if i will be able to see it all. The show clincs seem to be worth attending. They open the ticket counter an hour early, ie 8 am, which means i will have to leave real early. Lookout for pictures from the show in a later post.

A real-time status of the Swiss trains continuously updated on the map. This is being developed and they plan to add more features but to a railway-fan, its quite mesmerizing.

Ian Britton, who is a principal photographer for FreeFoto.com has recorded great HD footage of railways. His videos (low resolution) are avaiable on You Tube but to enjoy the full HD effect you will have to get the larger torrent files. Note: There are some non-railway movies on that link.

I particularly like the diesels. A teaser...