During my visit to my club last weekend, I took a little time to look over the club's vast library of model railroad magazines. Our club is over 30 years old, and the club's library boasts nearly every model railroad magazine published in that time. Although today's model trains are far superior to those of only a few years ago, it still can be very rewarding to browse through these old magazines.

And here's a thought for long-time modelers who may have built up a sizable library of their own and now wish to reclaim the space in their home. Why not find a club that hasn't been around very long and donate your old magazines.

A consist, in the context I'm using the word today, is a set of locomotives put together to pull a long train. With DCC there is more than one way to put together a consist. The complex technical way is to give each locomotive its own address, and then create a consist address and assign the individual locomotive addresses to this consist address. The consist information is stored in your DCC command unit.

The easy way to create a DCC consist is to simply give all the locomotives in the consist the same address. This also makes things much easier if you're taking your consist to run on your club's layout; you won't have to program a consist into the club's command unit. The trade-off is, if and when you separate the locomotives to run them individually they will all respond to the same control signals if they're placed on your layout at the same time. In that case you'll need to give each of them their own individual addresses.

This past Saturday I finally got my Kato Broadway Limited set onto my club's layout. I used one of Kato's new PRR E7s to pull the consist. On the layout's other loop I put up my Kato Morning Daylight train pulled by one of the new Kato ALCO PAs. Both of these trains ran for over three hours without any derailments. This layout is about 30 years old, and has grades over four percent. I have to say that I'm really convinced these recent Kato releases represent a new state of the art in N scale model railroading.

I was looking at the back of the recent Walthers' Catalog. The featured product was the HO scale Fairbanks Morse H10-44 yard switcher. With only the one long hood, and a cab that seems to disappear if you look at it directly from the side, the H10-44 has always reminded me of a refrigerator laying on its side on wheels. But seeing it in Wabash black gave me quite another impression. This time I saw it as the monolith in 2001 a Space Odessy. Suddenly I visualized the black H10-44 rolling slowly through the yard, building trains to the strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Now that's an impressive diesel!

Sorry friends, I've been a little under the weather the past week. I looked up today and noticed it was almost Valentine's Day. Now I'm not looking for sympathy when I say that there's no special someone in my life anymore, but if there was I'd certainly be looking around for a Valentine's Day dinner train. Check out our list of excursion railroads. Maybe you can find one near you. And all the best to you and your special someone this Saturday.

Photo by modeler Jim O'Connell.
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A new model train auction website has come to my attention recently. At this point is has very few listings, but for those of you who are seeking an alternative to eBay this may be of interest. The website is hotoz.net (HO to Z dot net) and it is operated by GATCO. In order to get the enterprise off the ground they are offering no listing fees through March 16th.

I've gone on record in my writings for parents that I believe children of five may be ready to be given electric trains; that is to say motorized trains powered by electrical power delivered through the tracks via a powerpack or transformer, as distinct from battery powered trains. I say may be ready because I believe it is up to the parents to determine the child's aptitude for mechanical things and hand-eye coordination.

But this past holiday season I've heard of no less than four parents giving electric train sets to children of four. Are children really developing that fast today? Or are more parents (particularly fathers) using their child to fulfill their own desires for toys? What do you think? Your comments are welcome.

An online vendor, known for making commemorative HO scale trains is offering a Braack Obama commemorative. As with this vendors other offerings the train is sold by subscription in "issues". Each issue costs $69.95, or can be purchased in three installments of $23.32 each.

While the diesel locomotive might be worth that price, subsequent unpowered cars seem rather pricey at $70 each, no matter how ornately they're silk-screened or pad-printed. I'm not recommending this as a bargain for model train enthusiasts. But if you're really into Barack Obama collectibles then you'll want to visit the Collectibles Today page about this train for more details and ordering information.

From time to time I've seen discussions on various boards about how the only time a modeler's layout won't work is when people come to see it. Recently I heard this anecdote about how one modeler's layout wouldn't work when a motion picture company came to photograph it.

I'm a fan of many kinds of music; folk music happens to be one of them. Recently I was viewing the folk music "mockumentary" film A Mighty Wind, and listening to the comments of writer/director Christopher Guest (of This is Spinal Tap fame) and his co-writer Eugene Levy. In the scene where one character is showing off his model train layout they comment on how they went to a private home with a huge model train layout in the basement to shoot this scene... and none of the trains worked. As experienced modelers will know, when none of the trains work the problem is more likely the layout wiring. What did they do? In order to get one shot of a train running (actually a lone steam switching locomotive) they pulled it along the tracks with dental floss. Oh, well... the structures and amusement park animations were really nice.