Childhood models: Model Railroader...

When tidying up the other day I came across my first issue of Model Railroader, the US model magazine published by Kalmbach. As a child my Dad often bought Continetal Modeller when it has US or even better Canadian content, but it wasn't until we visited Canada for a family holiday in 1989 that I first set eyes on this magazine...

This August 1989 issue is now 31 years old, and has survived remarkably considering how well thumbed it was over the years. The Cat Mountain and Santa Fe, a basement railroad was a revelation to me, and it's scope, a real railway operated by a group of friends, a scheme and concept that massively appealed to me - and something I've yearned for myself over the years.

The layout was expansive, and colourful, and unlike anything I'd ever seen modelled before...

The article was well illustrated with great graphics, something not often seen in UK press.

As well as layout features the thing that really stuck with me was the quality of the models shown, worked up from quite basic models. The SD40-2 were everywhere back in 1989, those and GP38s were pretty much all I remember seeing on Canadian Pacific and Canadian National - and so it's interesting to see the Rio Grande SD40-2T and Soo SD40s featured here - the modifications would inspire me to improve my own models in the following years.

These articles were well written with great detailed photos labelled with part numbers, something still not seen in the UK press, not at least regularly anyway.

The final memory was a 'Trackside Photo' of a pair of Canadian National switchers. That 1989 trip yielded me only a Canadian National livered Bachmann F7, my Dad got a SD40 and between us we got some grain cars and other vehicles... however on a later trip my Dad picked me up an Athearn SW1500 and some transfers to repaint it into Canadian Pacific. This was my first Atheran model and I fondly remember fitting the side handrails and painting it up - over the years it saw several goes through the paint shop before emerging in a faux short line livery (ONS&L - a nod to my Dad's fond memory of the QNS&L that he used to ride up in Labrador in his 20s). This was a bright green with a logo formed from Canadian National snow plough stripes (IIRC) and a yellow lines from a VIA coach transfer set. Anyhow, you can see that in the top photo.

Trackside Photos, these were always inspiring and a nice way to encourage readers to interact with the magazine in the days before websites and social media.

So a trip down memory lane really, however in the days since finding the magazine I've found myself on eBay looking up both HO and N models, watching videos of short lines on YouTube and buying Iain Rice's American book on layouts in small spaces... Uh oh, major diversion ahead! More soon...