Working rail roads and their tracks.

BackRoad · 2025-08-11T22:06:46-0400

Wife and I went to Intercourse, PA on our annual anniversary get-away. Near there is the large full-sized Pennsylvania train museum, plus several other train related attractions.

One of the attractions, The Choo-Choo Barn was a huge miniature train layout...years in the making...size of maybe 1/2 of a basketball court.

Initially all the trains running about catch your focus, then it magically shifts to picking out all the miniatures and the multiple stories developed throughout the layout. Great, great fun, and well done! It was every 8 year old's dream.

Pictures show the day and night scene with the lights dimmed which happened automatically about every 10 minutes for a brief period...

ArlyA · 2025-08-12T06:36:38-0400

BackRoad said:
Wife and I went to Intercourse, PA on our annual anniversary get-away. Near there is the large full-sized Pennsylvania train museum, plus several other train related attractions.

One of the attractions, The Choo-Choo Barn was a huge miniature train layout...years in the making...size of maybe 1/2 of a basketball court.

Initially all the trains running about catch your focus, then it magically shifts to picking out all the miniatures and the multiple stories developed throughout the layout. Great, great fun, and well done! It was every 8 year old's dream.

Pictures show the day and night scene with the lights dimmed which happened automatically about every 10 minutes for a brief period...View attachment 3888126 View attachment 3888127

Lets keep toys to another thread.

BackRoad · 2025-08-12T08:55:21-0400

Hmmmm...

To some it may be toys - to the men who invested 1000's of hours of their lives to create it, it's a passion, no different than someone collecting and posting old photos of trains or trestles.

Toy trains are what started many into being train aware, and the creator's objectives are to make moving replicas of the real world.

The post is totally aligned with this thread "...anything associated with RRs..."

ArlyA · 2025-08-12T09:12:50-0400

Here is a good pic of a uni body gonadola coal cars I worked on in 1980's. There was several trains own by Detroit Edison at that time marked DEEX which hauled powder basin coal from Wyoming to Superior WI. Ironically these cars were never in MI. We worked on them because they had gained structural cracks and were only a few years old at that time. These have no center sills for a frame but utilized there sizes for strength hence there name..

MossRoad · 2025-08-12T10:25:28-0400

When I'm waiting for a train to pass, I like to read the weight numbers on the side. Then you think about it, and if there's 100+ cars, the weights that one or two engines can pull become pretty impressive. I know it's rolling weight, but still, yikes! that's a lot of weight.

When I worked for the intermodal company driving army and postal vehicles out of AM general to rail sidings around the area, one of my jobs was to set the plates between the cars to drive over. After the railroad would deliver the cars, we had to lock the brakes on the end one, then use a car mover bar to set the spacing on the next one, set the brakes, and so on down the line. It was fairly easy for a couple guys to move multiple cars at a time. Then I had to lift 4' long x 2' wide 1/2" steel plates up between the cars and they pinned with rebar on one end and floated on the other. Setting the cars and plating took the better part of the day for the 6 of us. (that was back when I was young and strong. today, i have to be careful how I reach for a gallon of milk!

)