Every year late in January or early in February, the Amherst Railway Society holds its Railroad Hobby Show at the Eastern States Exposition Fairgrounds (The home of The Big E) in West Springfield Massachusetts. More than 22,500 railfans and public attended the Show each of the past five years.
PennLUG, and Brick Model Railroader visited the World’s Greatest Hobby on Tour’s first stop of 2018 this past weekend in Monroeville, just outside of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Both myself and Glenn Holland were filling dual roles supporting our club, PennLUG’s, LEGO® train layout, and representing BMR at it’s first show in 2018.
Ma&Pa no.43 waits in Red Lion for a passenger train to clear the line.
The Wrecker, or railroad wreck crane/derrick was once a common part of a railroad’s Maintenance of Way fleet in North America. They we’re kept at the ready in railroad yards in a wreck train waiting for the call to service any time the railroad had a derailment or wreck needing cleaned up. Today most railroads subcontract wreck cleanup to outside companies, but a few railroads still hang on to a wrecker or two for emergencies, and many vintage wreckers can be found in railroad museums today. The wrecker is a fascinating machine to model, even sitting idle in a yard it can provide much interest to any one’s model railroad.
Today we’re taking a look at an awesome build of the Bangor and Aroostook’s X127 Wrecker from William Dumond.
We’ve lost our bearings. Unfortunately, this is no laughing matter.
Hello to our Brick Model Railroader fans. We want to update you on shipping delays we are currently experiencing with our Premium Instruction products. Specifically, we are experiencing a temporary shortage in the bearings we use to make our custom wheel sets included in each kit. On November 1st, we ordered bearings from our normal supplier for our upcoming release of the AAR 53ft 70 Ton Flat Car, as well as our restocks of the USRA Hopper and ACF Type 27 Tank Car. At the time, we thought our order would arrive in it’s entirety well before our release date, as they have in the past. This unfortunately was not the case. We are not sure what went wrong, but our supplier shipped us less than half of our order.
We contacted our supplier several times to resolve the issue, and we were assured that the rest of the order would be coming in time. So far, we have not received these bearings and have no idea if they are even coming. We have been shipping kits with the bearings our supplier did send, but we have now exhausted that supply and can wait no longer. Earlier this week, we began ordering the bearings we need from a new supplier, so that we can finish our remaining stock of Premium Instruction kits and provide an adequate stock of Assembled Wheel Sets for our store, to fill orders in the immediate future. We hope to have this new order of bearings sometime next week.
We are very sorry for this delay in shipping BMR Premium Instructions and Wheel Sets to those who have ordered. We have been let down by our previous supplier, but even worse is the delay in filling orders from you, our loyal supporters. We find this totally unacceptable and will be working to ensure a problem such as this does not happen again.
On the bright side, we have been able to ship a majority of the orders we’ve received since the release of the of the AAR Flat Car. The few remaining orders we have yet to ship will go out as soon as humanly possible once our new order of bearings come in next week. We have contacted the customers who are affected, so If you have an order with us and have not received an email, you can rest assured your order is on it’s way to you. For the affected customers, we can’t guarantee delivery by Christmas but will do our best. If you are giving one of our kits as a gift, please contact us and we will try to work something out.
Again, we apologize for this delay. We will be doing our best to correct this issue and make sure it does not happen in the future.
If you you’ve been following the LEGO Train Fan Club Facebook group recently you probably have seen the ongoing discussion on Mike Moon’s 3D printed car bodies for LEGO trains. If you haven’t, take a read through here.
Mike’s original post presented his 3D printed trolley car body designed to fit on a LEGO brick built train base. It has since ignited a discussion about what is and is not a LEGO train, and what techniques are acceptable to the community and what ones are a step too far.
Brick Model Railroader’s own ball bearing equipped wheel sets, are certainly not pure LEGO. But are they acceptable in the LEGO train hobby?
My first encounter with the Blue Comet was at the National Toy Train Museum in Strasburg Pennsylvania. It was an O scale model of the train made by MTH, sitting on a display shelf in the main display room. I fell in love with the train almost immediately. It was a very striking train, with the locomotive painted in an eye catching blue with gold pin striping, and nickel plated accents. The passenger cars also blue, with an attractive band of white running down the windows. It was beautiful train from a different time, a time when rail travel was king, and a journey on a train was something special. The Blue Comet had caught my imagination like so many before. I knew that I was going to be the one to bring this train to life again in LEGO.
My LEGO model of the Blue Comet train set.Advertisement for the Blue Comet from the period.
First off, if you didn’t get our American Car & Foundry Tank Car Premium Instructions today, don’t panic. You didn’t miss out, but you will have to wait a little longer. We do we have some USRA 55-Ton Hoppers, and Pullman PS-1 Boxcars left in case you missed them the first time.
Our fastest selling kit yet!
Today was crazy! The first run of BMR Tank Car premium instructions sold out in just over 9 hours. I can not believe what just happened. 50 kits gone in less than 1/2 a day. That blows my mind. It outsold our previous USRA hopper car by 24 hours. You, our fans, are amazing. We’ll be playing some serious catch up for the next two weeks.
Getting ready to ship out some tank cars. And a little peak at our upcoming flat car.
I have to give it to our own Glenn Holland, he designed a great model. I’m sure if we could have stocked more, we could have sold a hundred. And don’t worry, we will be stocking more. But first we have to ship out the first run of 50 tank car orders.
For those who missed out on this first run, fear not. You will be able to order, you’l just have wait a little longer. More ACF Tank Cars are will be available in November along with our next kit, the AAR 53ft Flat Car with yet to be revealed load. And we’re working on ways to increase our production runs so can stock more kits from the start. The BMR model team is just two guys working out of my house. We’re still learning, but we’re doing our best to get better. We thank you for your patience.
We still have some USRA 55-Ton Hoppers, and Pullman PS-1 Boxcars from our restock available, as well as decals and wheel sets. So if you didn’t get those, take the plunge. They’re great models you’ll have fun with until we can release more tank cars.
The Type 27 tank car was built by the American Car & Foundry Co. from 1927 into the late 1940’s. The Type 27 was available in capacities from 4,000 gallons up to 12,000 gallons, and could be ordered with multiple compartments (each with its own dome) for hauling separate liquids in the same car. Model designed by Glenn Holland, our instructions can model 6 different versions. The two most popular tank sizes, 8,000 gallon and 10,000 gallon, each with one, two, or three domes.
As with all premium instructions, we will include the custom elements needed to build the model. All you need to do is gather the standard Lego parts from your own collection and you’ll be on your way to a great tank car model.
You can build the car in the color of your choice, or you can purchase decals to build the car in one of the following authentic railroad paint schemes bellow.
1940’s style OCTAN decals for the 10,000 gallon triple dome model.
In addition to releasing the tank cars, we will also have more of our original premium instruction kits, the Pullman PS-1 40′ boxcar and USRA 55-TON Hopper Car. We still have decals available for these cars too.
And, of course, we will have extra wheel sets available for purchase for those wanting to build more than one car. All of the products mentioned above; the hopper and boxcar premium instructions, decals, and wheel sets will be available in our online store.
This past weekend was crazy for myself and Glenn here at Brick Model Railroader. In short, we sold out of our first run of hopper instructions way faster than anticipated, visited a cathedral of steam, took a ride with one of the most impressive machines on rails, and got some work done on two of our future Premium Instructions. It was a crazy weekend.
Nickel Plate 765
Our first run of USRA Hopper Premium Instructions has sold out!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
You must be logged in to post a comment.