The Old K-Line Website Lives...

When Lionel bought K-Line I never understood why they didn't resurrect the old K-Line site that was chock full of product information.  Well, starting today the product information found on the old K-Line site will  be available at www.legacykline.com.  All the product information from the old K-Line site just before the company went under has been transformed into a neatly organized, easy to navigate website.  The site was created by On The Mark Technologies, a side business of Mark Johnson, a.k.a. MojoMark to those that frequent the O Gauge Railroading and Model Train Journal forums.  Mark did a fine job parsing and presenting the information from the old site.  Check out the new site here. 

One Huge Layout!

Over on the Model Train Journal, highrailjon posted a link to a YouTube video you'll want to check out.  The video captures the construction progress of a huge 2300 sq. foot layout.  The owner built a large "train house" as the train room.  View the video below and check out the owner's web site here.

When Layouts Attack!

Dateline Washington State.  An unsuspecting modeler made the mistake of inviting a N Scale layout into his apartment back around the year 2000.  Years later the layout is now attacking his entire living space, taking up every nook and cranny along every wall of the 19.5' x 35' apartment.  It all started as an innocent, small platform layout in the corner of the kitchen.  The layout then expanded into a shelf layout running around the walls of the living room/kitchenette.  The monstosity later spread into the adjacent bedroom (the remainder of the apartment).  The layout has upper and lower "bedroom yards", a "washer/dryer S curve", a "wedding cake spiral" made out of layers of cardboard, a "bathroom drawbridge" and "under cabinet yards".  The owner is very distressed obsessed with the situation.  You can view the creature here  ( note that you have to scroll down the page  to find the photo links)

This apartment devouring terror exemplifies how a grown man can be overcome by the beast known as the model railroad layout.  Don't let this happen to you O Gauge modelers!  Well, you could let it happen but you would have to be very very single and borderline crazy. :)

New K-Line by Lionel Website

I'm not sure when this happened but Lionel launched a new website dedicated to their K-Line by Lionel product line.  The site probably launched in conjunction with the inaugural K-Line by Lionel 2007 Volume 1 catalog but I missed it.   Check out the site here.  Hey Lionel, you may want to redirect traffic heading for www.k-linetrains.com to the new site.

Cool Site: www.toytrainsontracks.com

I was catching up on my forum reading when I came across a post on the Classic Toy Trains forum containing a link to the Toy Trains On Tracks website.  The site is devoted to a layout called the Black Diamond Railway and has lots of links to fantastic photos and video clips of O Gauge in action on the beautiful Hi-Rail layout.  Be sure to check it out.  Also, the Black Diamond layout will be featured as the cover story in the upcoming October/November issue (Run 217) of O Gauge Railroading magazine.

 

Related Posts
Model Train Websites

Trains.com Web Site Upgraded

On July 12, 2006, Kalmbach Publishing released a new version of www.trains.com.  Trains.com is the web portal for the collection of real and model train related magazines Kalmbach publishes including Classic Toy Trains, their magazine dedicated to O Gauge trains. Besides a major upgrade to the look and feel of the site, which looks magnificent, there is new magazine subscriber only content.  Fans of the Trains magazine news wire who are not Trains magazine subscribers will be disappointed to learn that the news wire is now only available to subscribers.  Visit Trains.com's subscriber benefits page to learn more about the magazine subscriber only benefits.  There are also some other notable changes.   Click on the link below to read the rest of this post.

Incredible Scratch Built Structures

It's the first Friday of summer, things are slow in the office and your looking for a good model train web site to sink your teeth into.  Well, Frank53 of Model Train Journal posted a link to The Terrapin Narrow Gauge Society web site that will do the trick, but be prepared to be amazed.  This site is full of beautiful pictures of scratch built structures.  The buildings themselves are incredible but the interior details are even more unbelievable.  Have a look by starting here.  Enjoy and Happy Friday!

Related Posts
Norm Charbonneau is Blogging (if you haven't seen Norm's incredible work, you need to check out the links in this post)

Find A Train Shop

It's summer which means it's vacation time.  You're getting ready to travel and are curious if there are any hobby shops in the area you're vacationing just in case you need to do something on a rainy day.  Well, back in February I posted about a website that is an excellent resource for locating train shops in a particular region or city.  The site, built and maintained by a company called MapMuse, plots the locations of train shops as points on a map of the US.  Hovering over a point on the map will give you the name, address, phone # of the train shop and if you click on the point it gives you more info about the shop, a link to directions and even the weather forecast for the shop's location.  It's very easy to use and a very cool site.  You can view a sample map showing train shops in the Philadelphia metropolitan area here.   

 

Related Posts
Train Shops In The Southern NJ Area

The Railway Channel

A new web site called The Railway Channel has launched in the UK.  The site categorizes itself as an online TV magazine.  It looks like a nice idea but you have to pay to view the shows.  If you supply your name and email address you can view a free trailer of the first issue.

 

Related Posts
"The Train Show" No Longer Airing On RFD TV
Workin' On The Railroad
"Tracks Ahead" Back For 6th Season