In March, the Orange Empire Railway Museum hosted the 2015 Iron Horse Family Steampunk Carnivale. The event was held on March 21-22, and we stopped by for a visit on the 22nd. It was a good day as I got to see both trains and steampunk – both of which I love. I ended up […]

At the end of April 2014 we took a vacation to St. Louis and one of the days we stopped at the Museum of Transportation. I knew there was some train equipment at the museum, and one of those was the Union Pacific Big Boy 4006. Little did I know that there was so much […]

Usually when I hear a train passing by outside, it’s a train comprised of newer BNSF locomotives pulling double-stacked shipping containers. Usually at least once a day there will also be a train of tank cars. But occasionally I see something different that gets me excited and fumbling to take a picture. Last month this […]

Although the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 was on display at the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona for years and years, I never went to see it (I’ve never actually been to the museum yet – that’s a future outing!). But with all the press about the 4014 moving to Wyoming so that UP can […]

My wife found out about the Orange Empire Railway Museum so we decided to take Wesley there to see some trains. The first thing we did when we got there was ride in one of the passenger trains that was being pulled up and down a straight piece of track at the front of the […]

After setting up my train table and finalizing the track layout, my next step was to start adding buildings and structures. For a while I wished I went with N-scale since I could fit so much more on the 5’x8′ table that I built, but after building HO-scale structures, I am so glad I didn’t. […]

So one Friday as I’m working from home I happened to look out the window as a train went by. This isn’t that uncommon as I like to see what locomotives and rolling stock are going by and it’s pretty easy to hear when one is coming. When I looked up, I saw some tank […]

Apparently the city of Fullerton does the Fullerton Railroad Days most years, and I wanted to check it out (especially since it’s only a few miles away). There were several different layouts in different scales, but the one I liked the most was a modular HO layout as you first walk into the area which […]

I already knew I was going to have a mountain and a small town on my layout, and I wanted to have some of the track elevated so everything wasn’t just sitting on the same level ground. But I had to figure out what track would be elevated and how I would do it. The […]

As soon as the table was upright and in position, I immediately set up the track on it. It was just a simple loop that took up the whole table. I was content for a few days just running the train around, but I soon wanted more. So I sat down and used AnyRail to […]