Blowing off steam
On Jim Coplan’s Ardmore Division of the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad in Pennsylvania, two passing trains blow off excess steam at the same time. On the left is Eric Schade’s mainly scratch-built Forney (with Roundhouse cylinders and valve gear). On the right is Jim’s Roundhouse Engineering No. 24. The covered bridge is Jim’s scratch-built replica of one of the railroad bridges on the now-abandoned Boston & Maine’s Concord & Claremont line. Photo by Jim Coplan.
Michigan’s steamin’ August
By Bob Winkel Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013
Last August was exciting for the Michigan Small Scale Live Steamers club, with an exhibition at the Huckleberry Railroad’s Railfans weekend at the beginning of the month and then running trains in member Will Lindley’s backyard toward the end of the month.
The group was at the Huckleberry in Flint, Mich., Aug. 4-5, with a good turnout and it saw lots of steam railroading, both small scale and full size. Saturday’s action was pretty steamy, just from the temperature alone.
16mm group grows
Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013
England’s Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers said that 2012 was its best growth year ever and that membership is now in excess of 4120. The group added 385 new members in 2012, it said, which was one more than in 2009, its previous best-growth year.
“Interest in large-scale garden railways continues to grow – and the 16mm scale has never been better supplied with off-the-shelf live-steam locos,” said Nigel Town, the group’s chairman.
Accucraft to build its biggest
Friday, Feb. 15, 2013
On the heels of the major announcements of a live-steam model of Union Pacific’s 4-8-8-4 “Big Boy,” its first 7/8ths-scale locomotive and a new entry-level live steamer, Accucraft Co. said recently it was developing a 1:20.3-scale live-steam model of the Denver & Rio Grande Western K-37 2-8-2, in what will be “the largest locomotive” that can be built in the scale.
The Union City, Calif.-based maker of electric and live-steam brass models also said it was creating a new live-steam Shay locomotive, that it was developing a model of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and British Railways “Black Five” for its United Kingdom distributor and was re-running the Saxonian 1K, No. 54, for its European distributor.
New Regner U.S. distributor
Friday, Jan. 18, 2013
The Train Department, a small-scale live steam supplier that represents Germany’s Regner Steam & Railway Engineering in the United States, has changed hands, the principals said in October.
Jason Kovac, a salesman with the Hazlet, N.J.-based Accucraft dealership The Car Works, has taken over The Train Department from David Orwig, a Virginia Beach, Va. hobbyist who had run the business for 19 months. No terms for the deal were revealed.
“Between new roles and responsibilities at work, plus two teenage boys and a hobby-tolerant wife who needs a little attention now and then, I had to let something go,” said Orwig in an email.
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