We have a very special announcement for you today. BMR, in partnership with Brickforge, has been working on a replacement for the old LEGO 9v era magnetic train couplers. Today we are ready to officially reveal this project that we hope to have available for sale late this summer. We’ve put together a video to introduce you to these new couplers.
Now let us take a look at these couplers in greater detail.
If you’ve got some free time this Saturday, June 27, then there are some cool LEGO® train activities happening online for you to enjoy.
Continue reading Virtual LEGO Train Saturday
Today is the big day. Brick Model Railroader is launching our new and improved online store. And we have three band new Premium Instructions for sale along with an array of new decals for each.
Our old store served us well, but we we starting to out grow it. As we added new products, it was increasingly hard to navigate and find what you were looking for. Also the look was growing stale, and our products were not being show off to their fullest potential. So one the last few weeks we’ve been moving our store over to a new platform, one full of shiny new widgets, and hopefully a much better buying experience for you.
Click Here to Check Out the New BMR Online Store
The Brick Train Awards are a community-led event for the LEGO train fan community, by the LEGO train community. The awards were created by LNUR, a LEGO train club in the UK, and Brick Model Railroader based in the USA.
This week at Brick Model Railroader we are taking a pause from our usual LEGO train blog. BMR endeavors to cover LEGO trains from around the world, but as many of you know, most of us who contribute are from the United States. And well, the US has been going through a lot this past week. In the midst of this health pandemic that the whole world is dealing with, our nation has seen long buried issues of racism brought to light once more. Our country is divided, and it’s led to unrest, protests, and riots.
This is just a simple blog about LEGO trains. We’re not here to advance a political agenda. Our purpose is to promote the LEGO train hobby. However, this week, we didn’t feel it was right to just carry on as usual. Ignoring the elephant in the room is what got us here, and it’s something we as a society cannot do any longer. I don’t have any easy answers to our problems, no one does. But I know we need to talk about what’s going on. And we need to keep talking about it. Talk will hopefully lead to understanding, and understanding will lead to change.
I’m writing today to tell you a story. A story which I hope will be a positive tale, and hope will help us understand that if we just stop and listen, we may find we have more in common than we know.
It was May of 2015, and I was traveling to BrickMagic, a LEGO fan convention held that year in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was driving down to the event and had decided to make a detour during my trip. I wanted to stop and see the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke, Virginia. I have never been to this museum, but it was high on my list of places to visit. Housed in an old freight depot, VMT sits in the heart of Norfolk & Western Railroad, now Norfolk Southern, territory. VMT is home to legendary locomotives such as the “Spirit of Roanoke” N&W 611, the “Mercedes of Steam” N&W 1218, and many other awesome pieces of railroad rolling stock. The museum also has a nice car collection on display, and even some aeronautical and space artifacts tucked away inside. For me, this place was golden.
I timed my drive so that I got there not long after the museum opened. I spent most of the day walking around by myself, just taking in all the exhibits and shooting as many photos with my camera as I could. Got to document those future modeling projects you know. As I was nearing the end of my tour through the museum, I stopped to rest for a minute on one of the park benches in the museum’s outdoor display yard. The museum sits right on the Norfolk Southern’s very busy mainline through Roanoke, and the outdoor display yard is perfect spot to watch trains roll by.
While sitting on that park bench, one of the museum volunteers came out from inside the museum and spotted me. He was a black gentleman, probably in his late 60’s or early 70’s. He was about my stature, so not especially tall, with short curly gray hair poking out from under his Norfolk Southern Retiree hat. I really didn’t think anything of him until he came over and sat down beside me on the bench, and then it was mostly just my fear of being socially awkward. I’m very uncomfortable with small talk, and with meeting new people. He said hello, and I replied hello in return. I made mention of how nice the day was, and he asked me how I was enjoying the museum. I said I loved it of course, and he asked me where I was from. I said I was from Pennsylvania, and he then asked what brought me down here to Roanoke. I told him I was on a trip to a LEGO fan convention, and that I was a big train fan and model railroader and wanted to see the museum on my trip. He was immediately fascinated by my LEGO train hobby and began asking more questions about what I build, how I make my models, where I display my creations and such. I answered, and even took out my phone to bring up my Flickr gallery and show him some photos of my models. He had never seen LEGO train models before and thought they were pretty neat.
As we talked more, our conversation turned to his railroading career. He was a retired railroad employee, and had spent his entire working life involved with the railroad working multiple jobs for the Norfolk & Western, and later Norfolk Southern. He worked as a trainman, conductor, engineer, and several other positions over the years. He had some great stories to tell about working on the railroad, and I sat there intently listening to each one. His knowledge of the railroad ran deep, and as trains passed by he would identify each one. He knew what it was hauling, where it came from and where it was going. He even called out one intermodal train passing by saying “now in about a minute you’ll see him start slowing down, they’ll be stopping up ahead to make a crew change.” And like clockwork, a few moments later we heard the brakes being applied and the train started slowing before passing out of sight. It was clear to me that trains were his love, and a hugge part of who he was.
The two of us must have spent a half hour on that bench just talking about trains. We were from very different walks of life. Me, an awkward white guy from rural Pennsylvania in his late 30’s and obsessed with a children’s toy, and him, a retired black railroad worker from Virginia spending his days volunteering at a museum. But we connected over a love of trains. In that moment, race, age, and where we were from didn’t matter. We found we had a common interest, and all the superficial differences between us faded away.
I wish I could have spent more time talking to this gentleman. It was the highlight of my visit to the museum. I would love to return for another visit and would like to think we could meet again and talk more about trains. But if nothing else, that day stays with me. I love trains and have had some awesome experiences with them over the years. I often find though, the most memorable train experiences are not with the machines, but with the people who share that love of trains. In those moments, we all share a connection, and we’re all one.
I don’t pretend to be a perfect human being. I know I have flaws, I know I can make unfair judgments of people, and I know I can be better. I recognize that I have work to do to be better. Every day I need to strive to be a kinder, more understanding, and more tolerant human. I need to look past skin color, ethnicity, culture, gender and other differences in people because when I do, I may find someone I have more in common with than not. Maybe that’s where solving our problems should start, with each one of us working to be better each and every day. We need to lead by example because just saying something is not the same as doing something. When we all work to make ourselves better, the good will propagate.
I love this hobby most for the people I’ve met, and the friends I’ve made. I have friends now from all over the world, from different backgrounds, different cultures and languages and lifestyles. But for all the differences we may have, we all share a love of LEGO, a love of trains, and a love for each other. We are one family here. I hope that someday we can learn to treat everyone the same.
If you’ve read through this, thank you. I hope it’s brought some positive light to a troubling time in our history. I hope you too will work to be a better person. This hobby, and this world, becomes a brighter place when we welcome all.
Thank you.
Cale Leiphart
BMR
Hello again, LEGO train fans and Brick Model Railroader supporters! We’ve got some great new articles in the works for you, but today we wanted to update you on a few things going on here at Brick Model Railroader. Let’s dive in.
There will be a Train Community Roundtable for the Brickworld Virtual Event coming up this Saturday, May 16th. Brickworld Virtual features LEGO artists, engineers, and vendors showing their creations via Zoom meeting rooms. A new twist to the Brickworld public shows will be a presentation room where you can learn from the experts. General details about the Brickworld Virtual Convention can be found on the Brickworld website below.
Brickworld Virtual May 16 Web Page
BMR has been invited to participate along with several other LEGO train community members. The Train Community Roundtable is scheduled for 1:00pm – 2:50pm Central Time. The tentative topic list is as follows.
1. Introduction – LEGO Train Roundtable.
2. LEGO New Developments
Come join us for two hours of talking trains.
We recently posted an article announcing the Brick Model Railroader podcast, a short live-streamed discussion on various Lego and train topics. Our Pilot was hosted by Enrico, and all regular episodes will be hosted live on the Brick Model Railroader Youtube channel. Podcast episode announcements will be posted through our social media outlets a few days in advance.
While primarily hosted on Youtube so we can answer questions from viewers, our podcast episodes will also be shared to and available on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcast (pending approval) and iTunes. Just type “Brick Model Railroader” in any of those apps and you should be fine!
The BMR model team has been hard at work designing new Premium Instruction Models. Three of which we will be releasing very soon.
The Gunderson 60′ High Cube Plate F Boxcar is our first BMR model designed by Aaron Burnett and is our most modern freight car to date.
The modern 100 ton, high-cube, 60’ boxcar has become ubiquitous in the modern rail scene. These cars are designed to carry a myriad of loads, from auto parts to forest products and are a fixture to any modern freight train.
The American Car & Foundry 70-Ton 1958 Cu. Ft. Covered Hopper is our first BMR model designed by Matt Csenge.
American Car & Foundry recognized the need for a mass-produced covered hopper car to transport goods and bulk flowable commodities that needed protection from the weather. In 1936 ACF began building this 70-Ton 1958 cu. ft. capacity covered hopper for task. The cars quickly gained wide-spread appeal, with 59 railroads and 16 private and leasing companies purchasing them throughout their lifetime. Many of these car lasted well into the 1970’s, some even into the 1980’s in revenue service. Some of these cars are even still used today in maintenance-of-way service.
Designed by Cale Leiphart, The Pacific Fruit Express R-30-9 and R-40-9 Reefer is a classic wood reefer from the golden age of ice cooled railroad refrigerator cars.
In 1936, Pacific Fruit Express began a program to recondition a large part of its aging wood refrigerator car fleet. These cars had their entire wood superstructure rebuilt above the frame sill, giving them another 10 to 15 years of service life. These cars became the R-30-9 and R-40-9 class cars on the PFE. Around 7,000 cars would go through this reconditioning program and many lasted into the 1950’s with the last being retired in 1966.
As usual, we have a wide range of decal sets lined up for our new models. Final release date for these cars is still pending. We are currently waiting for the new train wheels from Bricktracks before setting the release date.
The three cars talked about above are not all we’ve been working on. Here is a sneak peak at two more models coming later this year.
Speaking of things on the Brick Model Railroader storefront, we will be debuting a new online store for Brick Model Railroader soon. While it’s served us well, we’ve outgrown the old store design. The new store will be much nicer to look at and easier to navigate. We’re still putting the finishing touches on things, but we plan to have the new store ready to go by the time the new Premium Instructions are released. In the meantime the current store is still up and running with all our current products.
Lastly, we have two brief updates from our friends at BrickTracks, everyone’s favorite injection-molded track supplier.
The final mold for the R104 turnouts is in the process of being made. The last details have been tuned and we are closer than ever to having these turnouts on our layouts.
The second update regards the new replacement wheels for bearing wheel sets. The first batch of wheels has been produced and is en route to BrickTracks’ home base. However, the shipment is on the proverbial (or perhaps literal) “slow boat from China”, to quote BrickTracks.
There is certainly plenty to look forward to for fans of LEGO trains.
Thank you for reading.
For March of 2020, LEGO® has released gift with purchase set, the 40370 Steam Engine. The set is available until the end of the month at LEGO.com and through LEGO brand retail stores for via qualifying purchase. The set is a replica of 7810 a push-along steam locomotive that was released in 1980, and commemorates the 40th anniversary of the 12v train line being launched worldwide.
I recently picked up a copy through an order to LEGO.com. Let’s take a look at this set now.
Recently I had the pleasure of participating in LEGO train displays at two train shows here in the Northeast United States. The first was the annual Amherst Railway Society’s Railroad Hobby Show with the New England LEGO User Group. The second was the Great Scale Model Train Show with the second ever L-Gauge Modular Standard display. These were both great shows, and were a lot of fun. Here is a report on both these events.
Continue reading 2020 Winter Train Show Report
In the LegoWorld 2018 Report Raised promised that somewhere in March 2020 the 2019 article would be published. Since Enrico considered that to be a bit late, he volunteered to write the 2019 article, but in 2019. However, since Raised was supposed to edit, it only goes online now. So you guys know who to blame now!
The Event
LegoWorld is an 8-day event (9 if you include the pre-show set-up day) and is held annually during the Dutch autumn break. The event is the biggest Lego event here in The Netherlands and attracts around 100.000 visitors every year. The event is held in Utrecht and is thereby located in the center of the Netherlands.
Those 8 days ask a lot of our trains, and since the layout is a rather big one and the trains run for multiple hours straight, it asks a lot of our models. They tend to break down every now and then, but also batteries need to be charged. Due to the huge amount of young visitors, we want to have at least 2 trains running at any point, so this event not only ask a lot our trains but also a lot of us.
The Team and the Layout they built
The team this year was made up by 6 people: Raised, UrbanErwin, Tijn, Gijs, Esran and Enrico. We each contributed a different part of the layout.
Unfortunately, we don’t have our own tables (yet), so we are always depending on the tables provided by the venue. Most of the time these aren’t properly aligned at all, but luckily we got more than enough beer coasters to get this fixed. Hooray for beer coasters!
The plan for the layout was different compared to last year, as we decided to not re-use the diorama style. Instead, we went for the oldschool circle layout, just like most other LTC’s do. This solved two problems: Less track necessary for the staging yard, and all track would be on MILS level instead of having to build a ramp to go down to table level. That system didn’t work out properly last year, because even the smallest incline meant a lot of stalling of our engines, partly due to the way they are build, partly due to flawed powertrains *cough Raised cough* . We christened this our “Christmas tree set up” from a joke Tijn made when we came up with the layout design, because it looks an awefull lot like something that runs around a Christmas tree. Or, in our case, a concrete pillar…
Let’s divide the layout for this article into 4 sections: North, East, South and West.
North
The North section was a typical Dutch piece of landscape, flat, green and some cows, a typical Dutch Polder in fact. This piece was mostly built by Raised, who built a beautiful curve into the track, so it gave a smooth and “prototypical” presentation of our landscape. The last piece of the North side, all the way into the North West part was built by Gijs and the r104 curves in the North East side were built by Enrico, with Tijn providing the small siding with the baseplates surrounding that. The North West side had a small factory with a siding, which led into the Shadow Station, from where we could easy do the many repairs that were necessary for this event.
East
The East section was Bahnbetriebswerk Neukirche by Enrico, which turned out a bit bigger than expected: 1/3rd bigger than it was, in fact. The Bahnbetriebswerk was connected in the North east by a triple switch made by TrixBrix and the amazing R104 curves by Brick Tracks. The mainline continued on the back side of the Bahnbetriebswerk to the South East part of the layout. In the middle was a turntable with engine shed and a couple of platforms where “passengers” could get on and off. The Bhw had everything to keep a steam engine running, except for batteries… Continuing into the South East part the Bahnbetriebswerk transformed into a museum line which split up into 2 parts.
Both going into a forest bit where one stopped, the other going into the Esran’s amazing Steam Pump and small Railway station.
South:
Esran’s Steam Pump connected into Tijn his beautiful city and Railway Station in French Style, all in beautiful MDF masonry bricks. His city starts at the old Railway station Esran made in the South East part. From there some amazing winding streets and old buildings went down onto the main street where his station is located. Due to the difference in height between his city and the rest of the layout it has got a cool and realistic feel to it.
Passing the station is the grand warehouse where the parking is located for the station. Because the parking and a road disappear into the background it looked like the layout had a lot of dept to it. From there the mainlined continued pass the last couple of buildings onto the bridge made by UrbanErwin. The bridge might be simple in its design but it’s 100% made from Lego and didn’t break down for the entire week!
West
The West part of the layout is where our Shunting Yard was located. Here visitors could see most of our rolling stock which wasn’t running (or which fell apart) and children where able to ask: “why isn’t that train running?”. Almost all of the switches were motorized in this part. Your were able to control the switches by using an IR remote (only bad thing was that some off our trains where set to the same IR channel). Next year we are just going to use Polarity Switches instead, but it did give a cool vibe to it, and felt very realistic. The South West side had some big trees which created a great photo location. The North West side had a small harbor scene made by Gijs and my ICM “koploper” was set there with the scaled drawings in front, showing the public that our trains are built in scale.
Special Guest:
This year we invited a special guest, BigDaedy and his MOC’s. He joined us from Friday afternoon onto the end of the Sunday. It was great having him around and comparing his MOC’s with ours. He also had some great advice for Enrico’s Bahnbetriebswerk, apparently all of the signals weren’t placed correctly. That can happen to everyone, right?
Here is small piece about LegoWorld from his point of view:
Greetings fellow train heads and readers of BMR. My name is Raimund, but I’m usually known as “BigDaedy” on the internet. Thanks to a special invitation by the Dutch Lego train community I was able to participate at this year’s LegoWorld in Utrecht. They asked me to write a brief summary of my experiences during my trip or let’s just say about my adventure going to Utrecht.
Now what was so special about LegoWorld Utrecht 2019 for me?
First, this would be the first time for me to meet the masters of Dutch train building and their mocs in real life. Then it would’ve been the second time ever for me to be part of an event like this, the first time being at an event in a different country (since it’s still within the EU it’s not really a big deal) and the very first time to actually see how my MOCs would perform on a larger scale layout, other than a circle of R120 lying on my bedroom floor. So, there is room for lots of things to go wrong, but fortunately in the end everything turned out perfectly. As a matter of fact, this weekend has been one of my most pleasant experiences so far in my life. I’m still baffled and overwhelmed by all the hospitality, generosity and overall cheerfulness I’ve received by all the people and amazing builders I’ve met during my stay. Please let me take this opportunity to express my deepest thanks to the whole Dutch community – You guys rock and make this such a wonderful hobby!
That being said, let’s get back on the road again. LegoWorld in Utrecht is actually really easy to reach. You stumble out of the central station and all you’ve got to do is to literally walk across the street and you’re already inside. Raised picked me up at the entrance of the show and guided me directly towards the layout, giving me lots of info and advice on what to expect during the next 48 hours. I guess it’s safe to say, that I must’ve experienced some sort of sensory overload during my first few minutes at LegoWorld. Strolling through countless amazing builds felt like walking in a wonderland and left me stunned. I think that’s what an unsupervised child must feel like in an “all you can eat” candy store. Anyhow the rest of the herd gave me a wonderful welcome and showed me around the layout, pointing out all the little details scattered around. Now it was time for me to unwrap all of the nice things I’ve brought with me. Luckily my rolling stock didn’t take any major damage, so I was quickly set up and ready to go. The first trial run of my consist was indeed very successful. As a matter of fact, my Traxx was so reliable and fast that it blew over some of the foam boards at the side of the track due to its airstream. Partly cause of this incident a speed limit was imposed for it, as the other guys were quite “scared” of the speed of my train and worried that it might derail in the curves. Luckily for me, my design proved to be quite sturdy, I’ve lost less than ten parts during the two days and my trains seemed to handle the inevitable accidents quite well. Most derailments actually happened cause someone’s *cough Raised cough* mocs lost vital parts during their laps on the layout. I really enjoyed discussing all the different designs and techniques used on both the rolling stock and the layout, so I’ve spent most of the time taking mental notes on what designs to steal and incorporate in possible future builds or collabs.
At the end of the day there was an official part by TLC. Two Lego Star Wars designers, Jan Neergaard Olesen & Kurt Kristiansen, held a presentation about the creative process and how a set is designed what changes it has to go through in order to be released to the public. Very interesting behind the scenes information and we’ve even got a sneak peek on what’s coming up next. Once the presentation was over, the attention shifted to the more community related part of the evening. There were speed building challenges and of course every participant received a large Lego gift. Sadly, I didn’t get one, as I was only a guest, but this will surely change next year!
I was also able to get an autograph of the two Lego designers on my engine. How awesome is that? Looks a little bit like graffiti but a lot cooler!
Saturday turned out even better than the day before. A seemingly never-ending crowd of people, especially children gathered around the layout fascinated by the moving trains, the huge engine shed, Tijns city, Esrans factory and all the tasty little details on the countryside. Since I don’t speak any Dutch, it was kind of difficult to answer the questions of the visitors, but there was always one of the guys around who patiently translated everything into English for me. Being a little know-it-all, I also used the chance to point out a few mistakes on Enrico’s Bahnbetriebswerk, mostly regarding the signaling. Sorry mate couldn’t help myself!
The overall performance of the rolling stock was quite good. Only a few crashes happened and none of them were really disastrous (for me). We also had lots of room for trying different compositions of the trains and comparing the individual performances of the locos. Of course, this led to debates on what traction system is superior, like geared L-motors or ordinary train motors and the consent that ball bearings should become mandatory. UrbanErwins automated train operation was also very fascinating for me. Looks like there is indeed some potential within the new PU system.
Once the show was over for the day Tijn invited us over to his place, where he and his wife cooked us a delicious dinner (compliments to the cooks once again!). More stories were told, we drank some apple cider, which I’ve brought from home, together and we laughed and laughed and laughed. A perfect ending to an awesome day, if I might say so.
As the sun rose on this beautiful Sunday morning, I was hesitant to wake up. Being in Utrecht amongst all these wonderful people was so enjoyable that I’ve really wanted to stay until the end of the show. Sadly, I had to be back at work on Monday, so I spent the morning filling up with my mind with more pleasurable memories, until I had to catch my train back home on the afternoon.
And that’s how my adventure at Utrecht went by. Thanks for sticking through until the end and I wish happy building to everyone out there.
Cheers,
Raimund
Line-up’s:
On Saturday night we decided to stay a bit longer and before we noticed, we started from lining-up all the TRAXX locomotives at the show, into sorting all of our trains by their colors. This resulted up to 2 line-ups: the red and the yellow one.
The Red-Line-Up
On the inside corner there was from front to back: A Snngs made by Urban Erwin, 2 double-decker coaches made by BigDaedy, a Eanos made by Raised and the red 1600 made by Raised.
On the outside corner there was a 0-6-0 Tank Engine made by Esran, a Vectron and TRAXX in 6 wide made by Gerard Salden, BigDaedy his 2 TRAXX locomotives and as last again Raised his “FYRA” TRAXX.
On the Siding going into the Shadow Station were Raised’s NS 6400 and Enrico’s V100.
The Yellow Line Up
Lets start at the front and work our way into the back. On the front siding: Enrico’s ICM “koploper” (because it needed a lot of repairs, he wasn’t confident enough to place the entire train at this line-up).
On the second siding: Tijn his Sik, Raised his yellow 1600 and a ICR coach in 6 wide made by Gerard Salden.
On the Third siding: The IC Direct TRAXX made by Gerard Salden, the NS 1100 provided by a member of our crew from the layout last year (Christiaan), the NS 1200 by UrbanErwin, and the Plan W coach by Christiaan again.
On the Forth siding: Mat 64 (“Apenkop”) by UrbanErwin.
On the outer corner: Enrico’s NS 2454 locomotive and Raised his ICR 8 wide coaches.
Traxx line up
The third of the special line-ups held at the event was the Traxx line up. 2 from BigDaedy and 1 from Raised.
The Backdrop:
Last year we learned a very important lesson. To get the best view of the layout itself, it a good thing to not be able to see the chaos behind the layout, aka the repairing of broken trains and us eating lunch. Last year we fixed this problem by using a blue linen backdrop with wooden rods to keep it all as straight as possible. It looked fine, but just didn’t work as planned: It was too instable due to its own weight, not so easy to set up, and mostly a bit too high. So, if you were standing in the front of the layout you couldn’t see what happened at the back of the layout, which isn’t that handy if you know 50% of our track was behind the layout last year…
Luckily, we fixed that problem this year by using foam plates as a backdrop. These were held together by using Lego pieces on the top and the bottom. The provided a great backdrop so that visitors were able to see the train running on the layout but not our lunch. However the organization managed to placed us in a way that we had 2 concrete polls right in the middle of our layout, obstructing our view, so trains were still able to stop running for 5 minutes before we found them.
Impression of the layout.
Here are some more pictures/videos of the layout for you to enjoy!
Our Legoworld 2019 Photo Pool at Flickr
Happy New Year to our followers and supporters. The Brick Model Railroader team hopes you had a wonderful holiday season.
Today we celebrate our third birthday. 2019 was filled with many new experiences, some old ones, new challenges, and new opportunities. We’d like to reflect on some of that today.
We start with some statistics. Below are current statistics for our website and social media outlets:
We averaged almost one article a week, which is hitting our goal compared to last year. We’ve also added a new writer to our staff, Enrico Lussi. We’re happy to have Enrico with us and glad to be growing.
We were able to make it to several shows and conventions this year, some were planned trips, and others less so.
At Brickworld this years, trains were also some of the hot items donated to the Charity Auction. Together, trains brought in more than $4000 for the The Esther Walner Memorial Charity Fundraiser, with Tony Sava’s Warbonnet F7 locomotives bringing in $2700 alone. Cale is looking forward to donating more trains to the 2020 auction in hopes to raise more money than Tony in a friendly challenge. Cale says he’s “GOING FOR THE RECORD!”
In 2019, Brick Model Railroader assisted with publishing the new standard for modular LEGO train layouts, the L-Gauge Modular Standard. So far we have had a successful first layout at Brickworld Chicago 2019, but another LGMS layout is planned for the Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium, Maryland this coming February. Cale will be attending the show and contributing to the layout, and we are looking forward to seeing LGMS grow. Cale and Glenn are both members of the standards committee and work to refine and improve the standard.
This year also saw the continuation of our original Premium Instructions products by adding five models to our regular lineup and one exclusive model.
Thrall 61′-1″ Bulkhead Flatcar
Pacific Car & Foundry 50′ Insulated Boxcar
B-50-25 “Challenger” Express Boxcar (Brickworld 2019 Exclusive)
International Car Company Extended Vision Caboose
Reading Arch Roof Coach
Reading Arch Roof Combine
We’re pleased with our models this year and look forward to adding more this coming year. We have some already in progress, and we hope to also have our first Premium Instructions locomotive available this year as well.
Speaking of locomotives, this has been the primary focus of our work this year. Putting together a plan of action for a big kit, then following through and producing it, has proven to be a huge task with a lot of challenges we planned for and some we could not think of. Regardless, we’re happy to be in the phase of putting kits together to deliver. Our 3D printer has been printing parts as fast as we can use it while getting quality parts in the end, and part sorting has begun though there’s still plenty to do. We look forward to wrapping up the T-1 project in 2020 so we can continue on with other projects.
We’re all looking forward to our fourth year, and we’re excited to see where we go. Thanks to everyone for their support.
Happy new year, and play well.
Brick Model Railroader
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