Model Showcase

Ted DiMone

Division : Little Rhody

Scale : O

All is quiet at Midnight in Ponderville on the The Ponderville & Atlantic Railroad. The following scenes show the Holleywood Beach Car being coupled up fore the midnight run to the North East Coastal vacation lands. Last stop...Thunder Bay!

Passengers await the late evening departures to vacation spots along the East Atlantic Seaboard.

Crews work to remedy motive power issues while passengers wait on the Holleywood Beach Car.

Steve McQueen tries out a new Indian at Majestic Motorcycles!

Jeff Murphree

Division : Sunrise Trail

Scale : O

Jeff builds O-scale 2-rail trains. He scratch builds all of his buildings. Jeff laminates photographs of real buildings and structures, then uses a photo software program to edit them. He then adheres the photo onto a plastic shell. Jeff learned this technique from Lance Mindheim who he considers to be a master modeler. Jeff publicly displayed his models for the first time ever at the Cocoa Beach RPM. Lance posted a picture of them on his Facebook page! He wrote an article about how he builds them for Railroad Model Craftsman magazine and it will be published shortly. It is not a quick and easy way to build models, but yields some highly realistic results.

Here is an example of Jeff's work. He took the original photograph in the Southern Pacific rail yard in 1993 and had the image scanned then edited it into O-scale (1/4" = 1 ft). Once the image was edited, Jeff glued it onto a plastic shell using the exact building dimensions.

Shawn Karney

Division : Lakeshores

Scale : HO

Model: New York Central Station Modeler: Shawn Karney, Elmira Heights, NY, Lakeshores Division Layout: The NYC Fallbrook in HO scale Description: This is a long out of stock Branchline Trains “Laser Art “ kit of the New York Central station at Woodard, NY. Shawn adapted this structure to serve as a stand-in model for Wellsboro, PA on his NYC Fallbrook layout.

Picture 1 shows the model under construction.

Picture 2 shows the shingle work

And the 3rd photo shows the finished model on the layout.

Ed O'Rourke, MMR

Division : Central New York

Scale : HO

You may recall Ed won the raffle for a gift certificate from Inter-Action Hobbies at last year’s NERX. He bought the Schaake Machine Works kiting spent several weeks building it. It was a very well made kit and the instructions were quite helpful. It includes a set of stencils for the painted sign on the front of the building. He used white Pan Pastels for the lettering, which gave it a nice painted on look. Ed added some interior details and lighting, but everything else came with the kit, including some tanks and small details not shown. His next step is to “plant” it in Cheshire, CT. on his Canal Line Branch of the New Haven.

There was a footbridge across the mainline tracks just west of Union Station in New Haven to facilitate people crossing from the station and Motor Storage area to the other side of the yard without crossing the busy main tracks. It’s not quite in the correct location, but here serves to camouflage the end of the overhead wire on the West end of the layout before staging. It is mostly scratch built using Central Valley girders and fencing and some Tichy steps and railings. It was often used as a vantage point for photos of the station area and Motor Storage. The wood deck and fencing are to protect from the 11,000 volt AC overhead wire. The catenary poles and wire are from Model Memories, the photo backdrops are by LARC Products. The S-1’s are Atlas models and the PA’s are Proto 2000.

Ed needed a structure to fill a space on the East End of the layout before staging. He decided a Connecticut Company Carbon would just fit the space and give him a place to display some trolleys. It is built from DPM wall sections, various plastic girders and support beams. The floor is luan plywood. Ed used a router to carve in the track channels. The cars are painted for the Connecticut Company, and are static models he received many years ago from an unknown, or anyway unremembered source. (each one had a San Francisco cable car paired with it.) The photo backdrop is from LARC products, the truss bridge is a Central Valley kit converted to a road bridge, and the concrete pagoda-roof tower is a resin kit, Ed thinks is from Railway Design Associates.

Paul Stamp

Division : Lakeshores

Scale : HO

Kitbashed, Custom painted, super detailed Phase III Low Short Hood EMD GP9 painted for Finger Lakes Railway #1703

John Becker

Division : Lakeshores

Scale : N

Pictured are two (2) N-Scale dioramas that were conceived and constructed for future placement on TTRAK modules. The structures were made from both styrene and laser cut kits The vehicles and accessories were added to enhance appearance. Both the trees and shrubs were made from various colors of Woodland Scenic clump foliage. The Builder / creator is John Becker, member of the Northeast Region, Lakeshore Division.

Kyle LeBlanc

Scale : HO

This winters project has been the Amorello quarry. Kyle is very happy with the way it is turning out. He still needs to do ground cover, plus paint and ballest the track. The project started with Walthers Glacier gravel and added conveyor belt kits. The second building is made by Tully models. Kyle was fortunate enough to win it from Around the layout podcast last December. The rock work is just carved insulation board. Painted with acrylic craft paint.

Tim Sweeney

Division : Nutmeg

Scale : N

Tim models the B&M in N scale. He has been an N scale modeler all of his adult life. These photos were taken on Tim's 14' x 20' home layout. Tim has been working on this layout for 26 years. It's finally looking and running great.

Attached are photos of Tim's N scale layout called The Berkshire Division.

• The Berkshire Division is a fictional branch of the Boston and Maine railroad.
• The photos show a mixed freight train preparing to leave the yard on the Eastbound main track.
• The first unit is a GP40-2 the second and third units are GP38s all are Atlas products.

Dennis Colucci

Division : Hudson Valley

Scale : N

This scratch built n scale model represents the Hopewell Depot in Hopewell Junction, New York on the New Haven’s Maybrook Line in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Dennis went to the still existing building and took measurements to make a sketch of the dimensions. Combining that with prototype photos, he made a pretty convincing model of the structure, with board and batten siding from Northeastern Scale Lumber and window dividers and shingles from Rail Scale Models being the only commercial products used. Dennis built the doors out of styrene, and 3D modeled the brackets, with Rick Rubino being kind enough to 3D print them for him. Dennis then added the chimney and stacks (which he needed to replace after they broke off), all made from styrene. Finally, the figure and soda machine are part of the scene the depot was built to be a part of - a set of T-trak modules representing the town of Hopewell Junction, with representations of his Dad and friends biking through town stopped at the depot for a break, a scene that repeated itself many times when he was growing up in Hopewell.

Superdetailed freelance N scale Kato SD40-2.

This model, Balfour and Colucci Creek Southern SD40-2 #1700 is Dennis’ first time super detailing a model. Starting with a stock SD40-2 from Kato, he stripped the existing paint to have a clean base to work with. He added many details, such as a functioning rotary beacon on the roof of the cab, scratchbuilt sun shades and etched metal wind deflectors on either side of the cab, a CNW style gong bell on the nose, coupler cut levers, MU cables, and windshield wipers. He also removed the existing molded on grab irons and fans, and replaced them with metal equivalents. He custom painted the model for his freelance railroad, and added custom designed decals printed by Fusion Scale Graphics. The locomotive also has a Digitrax sound decoder installed, and Micro Trains couplers replacing the Kato ones.

Freelance Diabetes Awareness 40’ Boxcar

Dennis, a Type One Diabetic for nearly 9 years now, painted this Atlas PS-1 40’ boxcar in a version of the Balfour and Colucci Creek Southern boxcar scheme with blue sides rather than the typical maroon. He added custom decals he designed and had printed by Fusion Scale Graphics to promote Diabetes Awareness, and the boxcar will find its home on Heath Hurwitz’s Riverside Transfer layout in New York City. The work he did will be paid for in a donation to the Type One Diabetes research foundation, Breakthrough T1D.