Railroading

My father spent his entire adult life working for the Soo Line Railroad, now a part of the Canadian Pacific Railway. When I was young I was afraid of those huge, noisy steam engines that stopped at the depot in Chippewa Falls, WI. Dad's shop was near the depot. It was his base of operations for his job as a Signal Maintainer. As I got older I developed a fascination for trains which has persisted to this day. Model railroading has been filling many of my spare hours lately. I had an American Flyer (S scale) train as a child. When my boys were young we started into HO scale modeling. In the summer of 2005 I got hooked on garden railroading, and have built a garden railroad. The old HO layout is being rebuilt and has a long way to go before being operational.

A garden railroad

Train Shows

Why train shows? Cause their fun. Well model railroading is fun. Train shows provide an opportunity for train lovers of all ages to see model trains in actions and talk with the builders and operators of the layouts. There are normally vendors of model railroad supplies, books, videos, etc at shows so it can be a shopping experience too. I have attended a number of train shows over the years and starting in 2008 have been displaying a large scale, on-the-floor layout with my friend, Steve. Pictures of several of our layouts are here.

Tips, Links, and Miscellaneous Info

Chapel Car Grace

The Church on the move, physically and spiritually. In an effort to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the western part of the United States several rail cars were outfitted as mobile church buildings. These operated from 1890 to the 1940's. They were operated by various groups including the American Baptist Publication Society and the Catholic Church Extension Society. The web site Chapel Cars of America cites the existence of 13 of them. I had the opportunity to see one of them, named Grace, at the American Baptist Assembly's Green Lake Convention Center near the city of Green Lake, WI. This car is built similar to a heavy weight observation car with a vestibule on one end and a porch on the other. It includes living quarters for the chaplain consisting of a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom. The majority of the car is filled with oak pews for seating. It is still used for services on the Convention Center grounds.

3D Graphics and Railroading
Interested in 3D graphics? One 3D modeling program that is available as open source is POV Ray. Using this program and a picture of an 0-4-0 I produced the image above.

The CPR Holiday Train
The 2005 Canadian Pacific Railway Holiday Train stopped at Mauston, WI on 10 Dec 2005.