A quite impressive train scene from the movie Wanted.

Extreme Trains is a new History Channel show beginning November 11th, 2008. The series is hosted by real-life train conductor Matt Bown, reveals the incredible inner workings and past lives of the amazing locomotives.

In the premiere episode, Matt joins a coal train hauling a cargo of coal through Pennsylvania from mine to power plant. The show premieres Tuesday, November 11 at 10pm ET/9C

The London Underground 'Roundel' celebrated it's centenary early this month. The familiar red and blue roundel was designed simply to make station names more visible, but over time it has become a distinctive icon of the city. Follow the changes made to the logo over the decades.

In honor of the occasion the Transport for London has commissioned 100 artists to produce 100 "brand new works of art that are inspired by the Roundel as a contemporary symbol for a world class transport system.". These are available on ebay for bidding. Bid closes October 29th.

Clever Models is releasing 3 DVD's of their entire texture collection, card stock model kits soon. These will be great resources for scratch builders who use cardstock. Thom of Clever Models says that these are high resolution images hence the need for DVD's.

The 3 disks are Textures, Industrial building kits and Classics kits. The textures disk will have all of the textures in all scales plus lots of extras like individual shingle strips and tons of windows and doors. The Industrial disk will feature all of their steel sided buildings including several steel mill related structures plus all kinds of ducts, vents and sheet metal textures. The classics disk will have the mercantile plus other buildings. Their initial disks will be in HO scale only. Prices are not available at this time. Their website shows these various models.

I have tried their mercantile building that i loved because of the high resolution textures. That kind of resolution now will depend on your home printer but with the DVD's in hand you can go to a photo center or office copy centers like Kinko's and get better results.

These DVD's should be out in a couple of weeks.

Subway Shuffle is the first sort-of-train related game for the iPhone/iTouch. It's more of a puzzle than a train game but involves moving subway cars along their respective lines. If you like puzzles or what we railroaders like to call "shunting", you can give the lite-free version a try. The full game is available for $2.99

I have tried a few games in iPhone and as a gaming platform, it seriously begs for someone to bring BVE simulator to it. Flight simmers have their version. A BVE for iPhone would be perfect for railsimmers. Please someone port it?

[via Touch Arcade]

Alex Pasternack took the highest railway in the world. He reports on railroading the roof of the world, from Beijing to Lhasa,Tibet

"... Still, while everyone had warned us about the nasty effects of a sudden rise in altitude -- and a handful of people curled up in the cheap hard seat section looked like they were feeling it -- I barely felt any effects. Perhaps I was distracted by the stunning view...."

A lot of pictures of trains from Russia and nearest ex-Soviet states. Wished they were bigger. Some of the night shots would make great desktop backgrounds! Two thumbs up for this molten iron "special".

Warning: Link contains lots of mid-sized photos. Please wait for all the pictures to download.

I tried to weather a box car for the first time this weekend. I am not very impressed with the results but it does look dirty. I followed the steps in Dave Fray's Easy Weathering Techniques DVD.

I first dabbed alcohol wash (icopropyl alcohol and india ink) on the model. The black wash gets in all the nooks and crannies to bring out the detail. I was not happy with the black stain on the white Green Giant sign.

I then dry brushed, Antique White acrylic color over the rivets, handrails to simulate color fading.

Before: Move your mouse over the image for the before image.

Before: Move your mouse over the image for the before image.

Before: Move your mouse over the image for the before image.

There is another weathering technique that involves brushing chalk powder. I did not do this at this time. Since this was my first attempt, i wanted to see how the wash and dry brushing came out.

I am no expert on weathering but the best way to learn is just do it. Pick your "not-favourite" model and try the various techniques on it. There is no right way to simulate rust and dirt. Do what's comfortable. However, the important tip is that always use up-down brush strokes to simulate gravity working on rust and dirt.

For more tips and inspiration, head over to the weather's forum. There are tons on info in it.

I love movies but movies with trains are a special treat. Here is a list of my favourite train movies, in no particular order. All movies are available at Netflix, some at Hulu.

The Train
During World War II, the French Resistance tries to stop a Berlin-bound train filled with art treasures.

Von Ryan's Express
Prisoners-of-war seize a Nazi train that is transporting them from Italy to Austria and make a run for Switzerland.

Full movie available for free at Hulu.

The First Great Train Robbery
In Victorian England, a master criminal makes elaborate plans to steal a shipment of gold from a moving train.

Full movie available for free at Hulu.

Emperor of the North Pole
Hobos want to ride the train for free. A sadistical railway conductor swears that they will not ride his train for free.

El Ultimo Tren
Three old man, a little boy steal a steam locomotive, with help along the way, in order to prevent it from being shipped(sold) to the US.

--Could not find any trailer--

La Bataille du Rail
Black and white movie about French railroad workers who were part of organized resistance during the German WW2 occupation.


--Could not find any trailer--

The Titfield Thunderbolt
Railfans take over their village's passenger train service to try to compete with the bus service.

The Taking of Pelham One Two ThreeIn New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers.


Full movie available for free at Hulu.

Runaway Train
Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker are trapped on a train with no brakes.

World without thieves

Theives try to con a simpleton of his money on a train in China

The Great St. Trinian's Train RobberyTrain robbers try to recover two and a half million pounds hidden in St. Trinian's school.

View a clip from the movie.

Tickets
A train travels across Italy toward Rome, interacting with the lives of a professor, Albanian refugees, three Scottish soccer fans and a complaining widow.

Silver Streak
A man finds danger and romance on a long-distance train.

Narrow Margin
Cop escorts a murder witness on a train with hit men aboard.

The clip contains both the Silver Streak and Narrow Margin movies

At 1:450, the T gauge is the smallest model railroad you can get. Eishindo of Japan introduced the T Gauge in 2007. The track is 3mm. As a comparison, the popular HO is 16.5mm and N is 9mm. These are powered with 4.5V DC.

Modellers have started to blog about their experience with this gauge. Tracks and accessories are being added slowly.

This could be good scale to see the trains going around like on your office desk, but seriously, modeling structures or operations would give me a headache.

Photos and some videos have been posted. This particular clip highlights the smallness-factor when the giant hand comes to rescue the DMU at around the :29 mark.

This garage structure was simple, as it was only 4 walls and a tiny window, but the roof was new to me and had to use a little geometry to figure out the angles.

As always, used Modelbuilder to draw up the plans. (If you are interested, i printed the plans onto a PDF that you can download, print and try for yourself. Note: Its in HO scale)

I had some wood strips remaining from my last Bar Mills project. I decided to use that as corners joints for the walls. I had to also brace it with another wood strip for strength. I liked this method. As you will see in later photos, the structure looks detailed with this method.

Closeup of wall joint

The roof structure was complicated but not that bad. The base length was 18' so half of it is 9' The roof height was 5' so the apex to the base came out to be 10.3' ( SQRT[9*2 + 5*2] ) I used scotch tape to hold the pieces together. This way the shape of the roof holds well.

Roof assembly

I cut strips of the roof tiles and glued them, started from the bottom up, slightly overlapping them as i moved up. The excess were cut off after it was dry.

Roof tiles being applied

Drybrushed some brown chalk powder on the roof to dirty it, painted the roof ridge tiles a darker color to finish off.

Finished Garage

I liked the look of the corner wood braces. Will incorporate this method in future scratchbuilds.

Another view

Railway World is up to its third episode and each show is getting better.

In this episode Mark Found tours the Severn Valley Railroad, the Paddock miniature railway and takes care of my request for continental railways. Enjoyed the clips from the German Ediger Eller layout. Thanks Mark :)



The production is slick and as i had said before, Mark's style is entertaining. I love the old black and white ads that he puts in. I recommend you download the show so that you can watch it full screen on your PC. Bookmark-worthy!

Model Railroad Hobbyist is bringing out a free PDF interactive magazine starting January 2009. This is the latest project by Joe Fugate, of the Siskiyou Line. Check out the 10 page demo of this magazine or view Joe's demo of this magazine that he gave at the NMRA convention this year.




Subscriber's get the magazine two weeks before its available to everyone else, so do sign up if you liked the demo.

Joe's got excellent videos on design and scenery. I have purchased some of his videos and judging by the wealth of his tips, i am looking forward to this magazine.

Kuju's Rail Simulator had a screenshot competition. The winners and their entries have been posted. Since their theme for the contest was seasonal, most of the winners show scenery and less of the trains. My vote would have been for Glen Tarrant's entry.

US Senate has approved $13 Billion funding for Amtrak. (Who all voted?) Some of this will cover operating and capital expenses, including equipment purchases and railroad repairs. The rest will be towards new safety measures, including a new technology known as positive train control, or PTC, on passenger trains and certain hazmat rail main lines by 2015. This would have prevented the Metrolink crash that happened last month.

Video Report: Wall Street Journal reports on the Amtrak's Undeveloped Corridors

This clip covers the journey from Brighton (Sussex UK) to Hove and return.

Telegraph.co.uk used software to redraw the countries, not by their physical size, but by their demographic importance on a range of subjects.

For us, the rail travel atlas is fascinating, with India accounting for more than a fifth of the total distance covered by trains.

Picture courtesy: kedziers
Wind Turbines being transported. Click on the above picture for kedziers's slideshow.