Railpax Magazine is a great site for you all to catch up on the latest passenger railroading news. They cover Amtrak, Commuter, Service alerts and fare specials from all over the US. After all, when you add it all up, rail travel makes a lot of sense!

Billboards and advertisements stagically placed around your model railroads gives your layout a lot of realism. This trainweb site has a huge collections of signs. Most are public domain that you could print out. Please dont use a lot of signs as they will distract the viewer. A few well placed ads will bring your modeling era to life.

Tank cars must be relieved of all interior pressure by cooling the tank with water or by venting the tank by raising the safety valve or opening the dome vent at short intervals otherwise....

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Trainz team created a very detailed and authentic route from Sukna to Darjeeling. All the buildings, foliage and objects were modelled after the prototypes. The route is DEM-based and can be downloaded for free from DarjeelingTrainz.

Here, we catch a charter train as she struggles her way from Kurseong towards Darjeeling.

Microsoft has released new BNSF and Norfolk Southern renders from their upcoming Train Simulator 2. These screens look great but i have to note that any rendered screen will always look better than the in-game screenshots.

Every rail fan want to get up close and take that perfect shot . But there have been cases of harassment by authorities. This is not only happening in the US but elsewhere too.

Amtrak does allow photography from public spaces. They are even having a contest. MBTA has changed their policy wherein authority can ask for your ID. [PDF Link]

Print and keep your rights in your camera case. Also, if confronted, be polite and comply. Being brown, i have decided not to go out finding the perfect spot. I plan to stick to tourist rails and railroad stations. While taking the only clip at Mansfield station, i did notice some glances but i might be over-reacting. Maybe going in a group and wearing T-shirts screaming RAILFAN in bold letters would help.

Anyway, NYCSubway has a good list of the various transit policy here in the US and the London underground. Some policies might have been updated so please email them or ask around in any railroad forums. For those outside the US, check their respective railway website. Network Rail (UK),Connex and CityTrain (Australia)

Most cab-view videos on YouTube are amateurish but this one about the TGV Atlantique, is the best cab view that i have seen so far. The clip is professionally done with tons of cabviews with some passing and overhead shots.

It follows the TGV engineer, steping into the cab, driving it from Bordeaux to Paris. It is in 6 parts, the clip below is to part 1. Narration is in French so could not understand what was being explained.

I find a lot of railway cab rides or model railways on YouTube and used to bookmark them in order to come back to it later. There were ways of downloading the videos in FLV format but now there is another eaiser way to download it in a High-Quality MP4 format.
Go ahead fill up your hard drive!

[via Lifehacker]

Test your knowledge with some trivia questions on trains. Topics vary from Steam, Electric locos to railways from around the world.

I scored a miserable 5/10 on the Amtrak quiz. Hope you do better! Have fun!

NMRA Hub Division is having a Spring Training Event this Saturday April 12, 2008 - 10am to 4pm at the Sheraton Milford Hotel, 11 Beaver Street, Milford Massachusetts. [Map]

Some interesting classes will be:

• Weathering Freight Cars by Scott Mason
• Digital Photography by Michael Tylick
  
• Kitbashing – the art of creative destruction by Dick Johannes
  
• Making Trees by Gerald Abegg
  

Check out the full schedule of the various classes on their site.

Retired New York Subway cars are being dumped in the sea to create an artificial reef for the fishes. Or, as Jeff Tinsman puts it "luxury condominiums for fish”. (Video/Animation )
[via kdawson in Slashdot]

Thanks to codrivermike for his post on UK Train Sim about changing the Field Of View (FOV) setting in Rail Simulator. Unlike Trainz, this one value affects both the World and the Cab view.

Located in your Rail Simulator installation directory, namely at C:\Program Files\Rail Simulator\Dev\scripts is a script file called engineScript.lua

Mine looks like:

fogParams ( true, 200, 1500, 200, 200, 200 )
setFov(65)
end

The default value for setFov is 65. I changed it to 45, 80 and 90 and have taken screenshots to show you the difference.
Click on the thumbnails to get a bigger image.

Cabin Views:
   
   
Note: I prefer the fov=80. This lets me view the tracks ahead along with the controls so i can use it without shifting the view.

World Views:
   
   
Note: Fov=90 seems skewed and may impact performace if you do not have a lot of memory.

That did not take long... Found a post in the Train-Sim that explains with pictures how to set your switches in the yard. Also, if you prefer, this you-tube clip gives a hands on approach. Will try it out tonight.

I found the US version of Rail Simulator, on sale for $19.99 at the local Gamestop store. I had played the UK version demo and had liked the graphics and the sounds. There are many reviews already available of the Rail Simulator so i wont delve on them here.

The only difference between the UK and US version is that instead of the York to Newcastle route, the US version has the Cajon Pass between San Bernardino and Barstow. It also comes with the GE ES44AC and EMD SD40-2 locomotives.

I did noticed a few minor issues. The cab view is very restricted, ie. angle of view. I wish we could change it like we do it in trainz. The "G" key on the keyboard changes the switch ahead, but i do not see a visual indication. I spent only a couple of hours on it so might have missed something. Will post if i find something. Anyway, i did love the sounds of the diesels and the overall graphics. That said, I am not yet giving up on Trainz. The more train simulators out there, the happier i feel.

Click on the thumbs below for some screens. Will post a video sometime soon.
  

  

ModelRailCast is the podcast hosted by Ryan Andersen that i had talked about. I had missed the last few updates but when i checked it out yesterday, i was pleasently surprised. He has brought in Will Ayerst as a co-host. They have a brand new show format and update the site with the links that they mention on the show. They are currently talking about operating sessions. Do give them a listen on iTunes.

Ryan has put up a lot of pictures of his friends HO layout and he also has made available a lot of signs for use in our structures.

Model Builder by Evan Design has released their latest update (version 1.5.4) This fixes the memory issues which you had when viewing projects at 50% zoom or while refreshing the screens. I did find the new update to work much better now.