Hello out there to all our readers. We wanted to take a little time to update you on a few things with the store side of BMR.

Northeastern Caboose Shipping

We had a very successful pre order for our North Eastern Caboose kit and we are great full to all of you who placed an order. We know many of you out there are waiting to hear when they will be shipping. Things are nearly inlace, we’re just waiting on instruction books, and lighting kits from our suppliers. Both of which should be here sometime next week. In the mean time we’ve been getting wheel sets, and kit boxes ready so that when everything comes in, we’ll be able to start shipping right away. Which if everything goes according to plan, should be next week. Thank you all for your patience on this.

And the next BMR Premium Instruction Kit will be?

While waiting on the final pieces for our caboose kits to come in, we’ve been working on our next kit.

The next BMR Premium Instruction kit will be the 52ft 6 in 70 Ton Drop End Gondola. this will be our first instruction kit to span multiple car makers. We will be including versions for the Bethlehem 70 Ton Gondola, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad G31 gondola, and the later G31 copies made by American Car and Foundry. Both cars had their roots in AAR standard recommended practice for a 70 ton gondola, so they share a lot of the same construction. It was only logical that we cover both of them. This will also give us a greater range of railroads to provide decals for.

Of course the Pennsylvania used their own G31 gondola, but  some of the railroads who owned the G31 copies from ACF include the  Wabash, Southern Pacific, Erie Lackawanna, Western Pacific, Sacramento Northern, Conrail, and Atlantic Coast Line. Bethlehem built cars for the Reading, Baltimore & Ohio, Western Maryland, Lehigh Valley, and Central Railroad of New Jersey.

We also plan to offer instructions for some typical loads gondolas of this type would carry. We’ll be releasing more info on this project later this month.

Brick Model Railroader T-Shirts

Want to show your support for Brick Model Railroader? We are very close to having our first BMR t-shirts available for sale. We’ve are working with a printer well known in the rail fan community, Mohawk Design. Mohawk is a family owned business from Lexington, North Carolina specializing in transportation and steel industry T-shirts. They are an awesome company with a great, quality product.

Our plan is to start simple with a shirt featuring our main logo, and secondary logo on a black or charcoal color shirt, and a dark blue color shirt. We may offer a third color if there is enough interest, so tell us what you might want. We also hope to offer more LEGO train themed shirts down the road.

We’ll hopefully have more details soon, but in the meantime, check out Mohawks website, you may just find a railroad themed shirt you can’t live with out.

Mohawk Design

Left Over Freight Car and Northeastern Caboose Kits

As mentioned previously, we have a few extra kits of our Pullman PS-1 Boxcar, USRA 55 Ton Hopper, ACF Type 27 Tank Car, and AAR 53ft Flat Car left over from the preorders earlier this year. We’ll also have a few more copies of the Northeastern caboose too. Once we get all our caboose preorders shipped out, we plan to release these extra kits for sale along side the new 70 Ton Gondola Premium Instruction kit. So if you missed out, there is still an opportunity coming to pick one of these kits up.

BMR Steam Locomotive Kit

So what happened to that project? Some of you may remember from  back in December and January, that we were teasing you with a steam locomotive kit we were working on. And then things went dark. Well the locomotive is still coming. We, Glenn Holland and myself who are working on the project, had a running prototype in January, and had done some successful testing with it. But as steam locomotives are notorious for doing, it threw some unexpected issues at us. These issues we’re nothing we didn’t feel confident we could fix, but it did cause us to step back for a moment and re-examine the project. We felt that in our rush to try and get the locomotive done, we compromised on some aspects that we we’re not comfortable with, at least not in a kit that we were going to put our name on and sell. It was a good prototype design with potential, but we felt that there were enough things we were not happy with, that we wanted to go back to the drawing board and do better. This is a very important project for the both. of us, and we want to make the best product we can. Of course just as we decided to regroup things got really busy for both me and Glenn. Glenn started a grueling second to last semester and college, and I was busy with train shows, BMR Instruction Kits, and other activities. So the locomotive had to be put on hold for a bit. But the good news for myself and Glenn is that our work loads are lightening up now, and we’ll be able to get back to the locomotive project. No time frame yet for release. As they say in the railroad preservation community about any locomotive project, “It will be done; when it’s done”. But we’ll keep you updated as things get closer.

So what have I been up too lately?

Well, including everything I already mentioned above, I participated with my club, PennLUG, at Philly Brick Fest. This is the largest train and city layout we do all year, so it kept me busy for a bit. I’ll have a “overdue” report coming this week.

Since coming back from PBF, I’ve decided it was time to get back to doing some building for my self. So I’ve started working on a completely new version of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad’s 2-8-0 Consolidation type steam locomotive, no.43. Some of you may have seen my previous build of this locomotive on the PennLUG layout, and in my Red Lion in the 1940’s project. This new build is completely new design from the ground up, with updated drivers, rods and valve gear, and drive train. Once I get closer to completion, I plan to have a series of articles detailing its construction, and the defenses,  improvements, and learned wisdom from the old, to the new.

And that Glenn guy, he used to be around here a lot more. What’s he up too?

Glenn and has been nearing the end of his college education, which has been keeping him extremely busy. In addition, he has been working  with a team of fellow students at York Collage on a Formula SAE Race Car Project. They are in Michigan this week for the finally of the project where they will be competing against other team with their car in several events.

Once Glenn get’s back from playing with race cars, you should see more of him around here again. I know he’s anxious to get back to working on LEGO trains and BMR.