I’ve enjoyed watching the buildings arrive, Langley figures and animals arrive, even the frustrating or exciting wait for motive or rolling stock in Australia (NSW) to arrive from the UK.
Over the last few years Kev has shown a wide range of modelling and collecting hobby interests on his blog https://dwarfenrealm.blogspot.com from Doctor Who, Star Trek and a man after my own heart, even Gordon Murray’s Chigley, Trumpton and Camberwick Green.
An enjoyable project to watch and follow.
I wonder if Tilberry will ever need a defence force from the lovely Langley catalogue.
I have enjoyed watching Bob Cordery Of Wargaming Miscellany blog constructing his first model railway layout, the Mucking Flats & Fobbing Marsh Light Railway, linked to future gaming use with his Portable War Games rules.
There is even a useful visual resource / summary of the layout on a short Youtube video in Bob’s Youtube site with plans for a new wargames related Youtube channel.
Sadly at the moment I have been unable to leave a comment on Bob’s well known blog, but it’s a series of railway posts well worth reading. Thanks Bob, it’s been fun to watch this develop.
I hope he has a troop of Boy Scouts somewhere to guard the coastline as coastwatchers …
Beebe and Clegg – A lifelong partnership and passion for Railroads and preserving traces of the American past … “pioneers of railroad photography”
As well as Mixed Train Daily, they also wrote Narrow Gauge in the Rockies, illustrated with their own and others photography as well as some paintings and sketches.
It is easy reading their words and the superb black and white photos (some of them then and now ones) to get lost in time. The overall tone is one of melancholy sadness mourning long vanished trains and lines that came and went with the fortunes of various mines.
You can read this for free if you log in at Archive.org
I enjoyed the Railroad sketches by Muriel S. Wolle. You can discover her books of sketches of the fast vanishing mining settlements in Colorado on Archive.org here:
In Beebe and Cleggs’s book, there are also interesting photos of minor stations such as the oddly named Crested Butte, photographed here with husband and wife station agent, family and staff in 1888.
One of the larger than life characters featured in this Rockies book is Otto Mears, Railroad pioneer and “Pathfinder of the San Juans” through the Rockies (1840-1931).
He emigrated / arrived in America during the 1859 California Gold Rush and in time to serve in the American Civil War from 1861-64.
Wikipedia source : “Mears then served in the1st California Infantry Regimentduring the American Civil War, fighting a Navajo uprising under the leadership of Kit Carson. After mustering out in August 1864 in theMesilla Valleyin New Mexico, Mears moved to Santa Fe …”
Mears started by building toll roads between mining and mountain settlements, some of which were conveniently later converted to narrow-gauge railways.
The book is full of heroic stories of railroads builders battling against the elements in the Wild West era.
You get a snapshot from these passages of the mournful side of the book as railroad activities in many distant mining settlement areas wound down to near oblivion.
I thought this description of skis as “Norwegian Shoes” was interesting, footwear for the dog sled mailmen in the snow.
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And finally …
Shhhh! A curious link with Hiroshima and the atom bomb project – ‘yellow cake’
Like Mixed Train Daily, this is a well written and illustrated book, one well worth losing yourself in for several hours at a time.
Amazing scenes of garden railways in the snow based in New Jersey America – superb photographs and layout by Shawn Viggiano and his Kittatinny Mountain RailRoad in snow
Interesting article showing a gap in the game board or baseboard, which could be canyons, pop holes for heads – all the same problems wargamers have as Railway modellers.
But then this would be fixed territory to fight over?
Mixed Train Daily by Beebe and Clegg mentioned is one of my favourite relaxing railway books “A classic of American literature.”
“Adlestrop”is apoem by the talented nature writer and poet Edward Thomas. It is based on a railway journey Thomas took on 24 June 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the now closed station (Beeching Cuts 1960s?) in the Gloucestershire village
An article well worth reading on how theatre techniques of set design are now routinely or unknowingly applied to model railway layouts, big and small.
“Stage tricks for small layouts” as Frank Ellison, American model railroader, called them.
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Brian Cameron, wargamer, railway modeller and reader of this Sidetracked blog, reminded me of the small challenges of micro layouts and the Inglenook Shunting Problem, solved by the late Allan Wright in 1979:
There, some more ideas put away for reference when I again don’t get around to building a model railway for gaming purposes (larger or more permanent than my instant battery trains in a tin – below).
Railways and their bridges and shirt mixed trains are often useful focal points in my occasional games:
Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Man Of TIN Blog Two post: 
Sidetracked 
