RailRoadFan.com

I'm not much of a scenery guy so I was hoping for ideas, too. For a swamp on a previous layout I used a hole punch to make quarter-inch circles from green paper to represent lilypads. I also pulled bristles from a scrub-brush and "planted" them to represent cattails. I know others should have much b...

I recently had vinyl siding installed on my house and noticed that it has tiny "ripples" in it. It's not perfectly flat. I "rescued" a few pieces from the scrap barrel and thought it would make a good gravel road when cut to a desired width and painted brown.

A concrete coaling tower stands over the NS mainline in Augusta. Amtrak runs under it 8 times a day (4 east. 4 west) but NS hardly never. It's readily visible from M-96 heading east between Galesburg and Augusta.

The time change to Daylight time is this weekend (13th) so I want to verify that Napannee will still be the same time as Michigan. This show was a good one in both the years that I was able to attend and I am looking forward to it again. We usually park by the Napannee depot and watch the CSX mainli...

The arrangement of this show was much better than last year with lots more room to move around and see things. We started in the Conference Center where I found a couple of things. Then when we went to the restaurant building it was like finding another whole show. Great. And I found more things the...

My nephew and I are planning to be there (from Portage MI). Glad to hear of more room this year. Last year it was really crowded. Still, I made a couple of good purchases. This year I'll be looking for something to use for a highway bridge, among other things. Berkmeister, I met you at Nappanee last...

I've wondered, too, which way the train was heading. That would help us figure out if the cars were loaded or empty. And where are the engines? Returned to Kalamazoo with a partial train or trapped south of Three Rivers?

The 501 also switches the Farm Bureau Co-op in Schoolcraft with lots of tank cars in season unless it was mentioned and I missed it. I keep hoping they will bend a siding off in Schoolcraft to connect to the bulk cement place that CN used to serve. I think GDLK would give good service, which CN appa...

I heard about a fellow who traveled this route by train many years ago. He went on the BEER Marquette and returned on the Grand DRUNK.

Amazing. They stayed on the flimsy rails of the West Michigan RR and derailed on a class 1. How ironic.

Most of the refrigerators from Greenville were coming in 60 foot high-cube boxcars, mostly with MMRR reporting marks. They had been Chessie cars previously. Most of them were blue. On the NS they were routed Grand Rapids to Elkhart, then Elkhart to Kalamazooo because the southbound "granny" had nowh...

A few years back they used to have a caboose for the shove into town. I used to see it when they switched Arvan Papers. Is that a thing of the past now?

What I don't understand is why the CN comes into Kalamazoo at all anymore. I thought the lease on the line had expired. Does anyone know what new arrangements have been made?

Finally got four into the photo gallery under "GAP." They are from the U.P. in 1975:

C&NW in Iron Mountain
C&NW near Niagara
MILW in Iron Mountain
LS&I roundhouse in Marquette

OK, I give up. I'll be the next guy to ask how to post a picture. I found some from the U.P. dated 1975. They are now in "tif" format and I can't find any instructions. I'll need instructions that a 20th century dinosaur can follow.

If you go to Amtrak.com you can enter "Battle Creek" and see the train times there. Then you can figure the time pretty close thru Marshall. Yes, it will be 3 trains each way per day. Should be something like morning, early-afternoon and evening westbound. Noonish, late-afternoon and late-evening ea...

Thanks, Russell, for the words of experience.

I recently saw a Grand Elk train from Elkhart which included a string of 37 hoppers of stone. My question is would each of these cars have gone over the hump individually? Or would a string that size be handled as one long cut by a regular switch engine not over the hump?

A very interesting book about intermodal is called "Columbo Bay." It's about a ship (Columbo Bay), not trains, but it has a wealth of information about where shipments come from and where they eventually go. It helps explain why there are "bare bones" trains on the West Coast,etc. It's a "good read."

Planning to get to Elkhart by 8:00 a.m. in hopes of seeing the Grand Elk head up the Michigan Line, Then on to Nappanee for the show. I'll be looking for a bridge, but I won't know it exactly until I see it. I'm sure I'll come home with more than that, too.