Railway Equipment Register

Since our family has decided to get back into N scale trains, we have been doing a lot of reading and poking around at all things trains. One thing I thought was intriguing from a historical perspective was reading some of the old Railway Equipment Registers.

Since I also like to take pictures and tinker with web sites, I decided to put together our own Railway Equipment Register which can be viewed here:

Frohne Family Railroad Co.

My hope is to keep it updated when we purchase any new train locomotives or cars.

Our next project for our railway is building a set of foam risers for our middle run. Yes. I could purchase pre-made risers from Woodland Scenics, but I am going to give some foam construction a try and see what happens. Either way, it will be messy fun!

Laying some Track

A pile of nails and a tack hammer got a workout this morning. We laid the flex track, code 80 on our single outside circle. It was fairly frustrating using the nails as I mangled a few of the plastic ties, had rail lines shift when hammering and generally a pain!

This photo captures my frustration with laying much of the track. I started out simply nailing the nails in part way and then went back with a nail set and drove them fully in. I had 2 areas where it was really difficult to join track. One in a corner where the rail joiners left a nice derail spot and the last piece of track ended up with a bunch of small bends that I will need to fix in the future, but for now, we have trains.

Dragging the derailed cars around the curve. I did manage to "fix" the bad spot by aligning the track a bit more. One section was more straight into a curve than it should have been, which derailed a few cars. Bend, nail, Dremel and it was better.

In the end, we all had some fun taking turns running the trains. Many of our locomotives that had sat for over 30 years didn't work, but we had 2 of 10 working. We also had 2 newer locomotives that severely under performed. I an not sure why, maybe the low profile wheels on code 80 track? Anyway, it was fun!

Classic Outside Oval

Tonight we laid out our lone outside circle. It will eventually include a turnout switch into the town. There will also be an inside bow tie loop that crisscrosses in an over under. The bow tie loop will also have turnouts that lead into the town.
We used Midwest #23019 cork roadbed. It installed very nice, though the installers left a few wiggly lines!

The perfect curve...

Mukwonago Wisconsin

These pictures were taken by my father at an unknown time, but it appears by the type of photo paper, 1940 to 1950's.

I found these when I was looking for our N scale trains. These pictures were well before my time, but it speaks a little to my father being drawn to trains and railroads.

I am presuming these were taken in Mukwonago, Wisconsin and any information would be apprecitated.

It Begins...

I have recently been bitten by the bug to setup an N scale model railroad. It is probably because my brother and I grew up with a very nice layout when we were younger. It was something we shared with our father and what little I recall, it was fun!

My children are just getting to the age where they would be interested in helping my wife and I build this and probably enjoy running the trains along the way.

So I dug out all of my brother and my trains, scrounged up some 4x8 plywood and will commence building this thing. The bench work is mostly done, but I am having some table warble issues. So I may have to solve that if it affects things very much.

I have decided to stick to DC and not jump into DCC at this time. So I ordered a new MRC Tech 4 model 200 to start out with. I am planning on a dual track layout, so hopefully this will be enough power.

Next up. Planning the perfect route, cork roadbed and locomotive TLC (they have been sitting for the better part of 30 years!)