Lionel & American Flyer Classic Resources DVD

Your old and new trains are in good hands. Right here, you can get the original instructions to bring your trains to life!

Here it is:

The best set of resources for old style model railroading ever! Prepared by experts and standing the test of time and technology. Even in this digital age, the basics have not changed.  This DVD puts them all at your fingertips.
    You get the best of classic O and O27 Gauge, S Gauge and HO scale information. These resources cover everything you need to get started and build your own model railroad empire.  Here is a partial list of what is on board.

How to choose a track layout that is best for you.
How to assemble track
Wiring your layout, from simple power to automated train operations.
How to set up and run your trains
The way to set up and use the most common accessories
Cars that do something: Automated cars and how they work.
How to repair your trains and accessories
Games you can play on your railway
Tips on better scenery for your railroad
Courses that teach you about real railroading
All about O, O27, Super O, S and HO track
Genuine resources from real classic railroads.

Get started today!  See that old train set come roaring to life. You can do it with the original instructions written specifically for those trains in the attic.

Here is what is on board:

Original O and O27 manuals by Lionel covering from 1945 through the 1980s
Original S Gauge manuals from American Flyer
Original sets of instructions for HO from Lionel, American Flyer and Tyco
Lionel and American Flyer manuals on track plans and layout building
 Instructions for K-Line O and O27 trains
Tips on everything from trackwork to scenery to wiring your layout
Extra instruction sheets for operating Lionel accessories
Track plans from Lionel catalogs for O, O27, Super O and HO
Track plans for HO and American Flyer S gauge
A book on making common repairs to electric trains

The Lionel and American Flyer manuals themselves are massive resources that give specific instruction of using track, wiring, setting up accessories, maintaining and running trains, troubleshooting, track plans and layout building. These aren't the little, cheaply-printed booklets packed in to modern train sets. These are crammed with up to 64 pages of good, reliable information on all aspects of model railroading.

And we have added to this DVD.  Here is a list of the classic hard-to-find Lionel booklets you also get:

Train Layout Planning Book for Pop
Romance of Model Railroading with Lionel Trains
Scenic Effects for Model Railroads: Lionel Trains
Official Book of Model Railroading by Lionel
Fun with Lionel Model Railroading
Lionel Track Layouts

And there is more: For those who want to know more about real railroading, we located a set of Army School of Transportation correspondence courses on railroading that covers everything from planning operations to loading cars. We also found resources from classic railroads, including blueprints of classic locomotives and photographs of cars and motive power.

Many of the manuals and instruction books are considered "collectible" and bring high prices. If you bought these manuals individually, you could spend several hundred dollars easily. On our DVD, you get them all for a low price of $9.99 (Plus $2.00 postage and handling). For a total of $11.99, you get all of this in one convenient place. Order now and start building your railroad empire.

Click here to get your DVD now: http://thortrains.net/ads-sales/index.html

Review: Pullman-Standard Color Guide to Freight Equipment

Pullman-Standard Color Guide to Freight Equipment

The Decades of Color 1960-1970

James Kinkaid. 1995

Morning Sun books

Back in the old days, most freight cars were limited to a pretty bland set of colors. Boxcar red, boxcar brown, flat black and dull gray with white or black lettering were the norm. Colorful cars were few and far between. Those few inspired the more popular models of freight rolling stock.

Insofar as model trains in the old day, someone figured out that it was actually women who bought most of the toys. They made the purchases for their sons. To that end, train sets included colorful cars so as to appeal to moms.

On the real railroads, colorful cars were a small minority of rolling stock well into the 1950s. Then came the era of color full cars. Many railroads and others who owned rolling stock started dressing some of their cars in brighter livery. Pullman Standard proved cars that were factory-painted in the customers’ preferred colors.

Pullman-Standard Color Guide to Freight Equipment The Decades of Color 1960-1970 is a collection of Pullman photography of many of the cars it build and painted in striking, colorful schemes. Listed by railroad in alphabetical order are a host of boxcars, stock cars, hi-cubes, hoppers and others in colors that would make any O-Gauger smile. There are even some limited and one-of-a-kind cars included.

This is a ready reference of striking rolling stock. For those who want to paint their own, the crisp photography will be a useful guide.  


http://morningsunbooks.com/

Railroad book review: Conrail Guide to Freight Equipment Volume I: 1976 - 1987 by Larry De Young

Back in the 1970s, the major Northeastern railroads were facing a dire future. Penn Central was falling apart after the merger that created it. The Erie-Lackawanna was overburdened and poorly maintained. The Jersey Central was barely holding on. Enter the USRA and the result was Conrail, a government sponsored merger of the Penn Central, Erie-Lackawanna, Reading, Lehigh Valley, Jersey Central and Lehigh & Hudson River. The Conrail Merger created a super-power railroad.

 

 

Granted, Conrail was not as colorful as its predecessors. The Conrail colors were blue with white lettering and a curious white logo that looked like an old fashioned opener. Actually, it was supposed to represent wheels on rails.

 

 

Conrail painted its locomotives and cabooses the same blue with white lettering. Most freight cars were in conventional colors such has boxcar red. That is, the cars that were repainted. Many cars from roads that Conrail absorbed had their logos and names painted over, and then a white CR added.
 

The Morning Sun Conrail Guide to Freight Equipment Volume I: 1976 - 1987 by Larry De Young did quite an extensive look at Conrail equipment. And though some may complain that there was a lack of revenue-earning passenger equipment - Conrail handled the old commuter lines until NJ Transit and Metro North took over - that would have been redundant. None of the passenger service cars had been repainted by Conrail. They carried the liveries of their respective former roads. The book focuses on Conrail-painted equipment and spares us the rest. Also absent were cars whose original logos and names were painted over with a blue patch with white CR letters. This book is strictly Conrail paint.

 

The one thing that amazed me was the number of cabooses that were illustrated. These had been repainted Conrail Blue and have a variety of origins. After all, Conrail had inherited the fleets of six roads. The rail historian and model railroader is treated to a great assortment backed with good information on the origins and other particulars of the various cabooses. There is also plenty on boxcars, insulated boxcars, hoppers, covered hoppers, flats and more. Also included are non-revenue equipment, cranes and business cars.
 

In all, The Morning Sun Conrail Guide to Freight Equipment Volume I is a useful reference with great photography. Good editorial decisions have kept the focus on Conrail and spared the reader any redundant materials. This is all original Conrail paint. And it is mostly from the early years when Conrail was establishing its identity. Railroad modelers and railroad historians interested in Conrail and Northeastern railroads will find this a great reference.
 

****

I like the Morning Sun Color Guides and have the ones for EL, DL&W / Erie, CNJ / LV, NYC, NH and Conrail. The color photography is superb and they are a great reference. Though I am not the rivet-counting collector, I enjoy seeing the various car types and such. Then again, I am the same way about armored vehicles and have several references books to them. Whether it’s an Erie-Lackawanna 40' boxcar or an M3 Medium "Lee" tank, I enjoy those details.

 

 

http://morningsunbooks.com/

Review: Morning Sun Books: NH Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment

Morning Sun Books: NH Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment

by David R. Sweetland, Stephen Horsely

 

The New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad connected New York City with Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Commonly known the New Haven, it was the largest and most powerful of the New England railroads. I first learned of the New Haven through Lionel Trains when I was a child. The black boxcar with NH in block letters was very appealing. Over 55 years later, it still looks fine.

 

The New Haven was a very attractive railroad. Its original color was green with yellow trim. Its logo at that time was New York, New Haven and Hartford in cursive script. The color scheme changed under a company president named McGinnis. Though a failure as president, he introduced the bright color scheme of black, white and orange with block letters. Known as the "McGinnis Scheme", it made the New Haven the most colorful Northeastern railroad.

 

I have no personal connection with the New Haven, except for having ridden Amtrak from New York to Boston’s Back bay station a couple of times in the 80s. Amtrak followed the old New Haven route. My interest was due to the attractive boxcars, locomotives and passenger cars. It was a big part of Northeastern railroading for many years, until it was absorbed into the Penn Central merger.

 

This week, I received the New Haven Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Morning Sun Books. It covers the era of color photographs: 1940 to 1967. Most of the photos were taken between 1955 and 1967. Some show older equipment that was still on the line. Most photos are of equipment that was current at the time.

 

The quality of the photos is excellent. This has been a constant through all of the Color Guides I have seen: the Erie-Lackawanna, CNJ & LV, Erie & DL&W, New York Central and the New Haven. This volume covers boxcars, flat cars, hoppers, gondolas, MoW, cranes, cabooses, cars converted to head-end or MoW, and passenger cars. Because of the interest of the authors and the involvement of the New Haven Historical and Technical Association, there is information of rebuilt wood boxcars and captions with specific details of most cars.

 

Other companies have published photo galleries showing New Haven rolling stock, but they are not in color. This color guide is in crisp, sharp color. The photos are excellent and they give you a much better feel for the equipment. Good photography is a standard in Morning Sun Books. I have ten of their books and the color images in each are superb.

 

I recommend NH Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment to fans of the New Haven Railroad.

http://morningsunbooks.com/

 

***

I am primarily an operator of O and O27 trains. I have a few railroads that I especially like. One thing I enjoy is running models of trains in the livery of those railroads. I like having good references to the motive power and rolling stock of those roads. The Morning Sun books have been useful to me. They average about 130 pages and are chock full of excellent photographs.

Review: Color Guides to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Morning Sun Books

Morning Sun is a publisher of high-quality, color railroad photography books. I first came across them when I got back into the O gauge hobby in the mid-1990s. They were pricey even then. I bought one on the Lackawanna railroad and a couple for the Erie Lackawanna. The quality of materials and photography and printing were first-rate.

Back in the 1990s, there were not many railroad pictorial resources on the Internet. Pictures from the Net opened at excruciating slow speeds. For the railroad fan, books were the way to go. Several publishers served the hobby. Railroad Avenue Enterprises produced mainly black-and-white photo books of Northeastern railroads. Carsten’s and Quadrant offered both black-and-white and color books. Morning Sun published hardcover books with excellent color photography. Other publishers added to the field.

 One series of Morning Sun books is its Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. Each guide is devoted to a specific railroad or railroads. Each has color photographs of passenger cars, freight rolling stock, cabooses, non-revenue and maintenance-of-way cars. The color pictures cover cars in use in the 20th century. Some of the cars still running in the 1960s and 1970s had been built decades earlier. (The books I have cover railroads which were absorbed into Conrail in 1976, hence no 21st Century rolling stock.)

The Color Guides I have cover the Erie-Lackawanna (1960 - 1976), New York Central (up to 1968), Lackawanna and Erie (up to 1960), and Jersey Central and Lehigh Valley (up to 1976). The pictures are clear and crisp. They cover most, if not all, types of rolling stock and the various paint schemes used when these cars were photographed. They are a handy reference for the railfan and model railroader. I am impressed how the publisher tried to get as many variations of paint schemes and rolling stock as possible. Considering that the books were published years after the actual railroads disappeared, it is a noteworthy achievement.

The New York Central Color Guide is my most recent acquisition. It was published in 1994. The book covers the common variety of New York Central rolling stock prior to the Penn Central Merger. Most of it is post-1940. Some of the cabooses that were still in use were built in the late 1800s. They are included. This is a good, basic book of the Central’s rolling stock. I understand that other volumes had been added. (For my purposes, this one is enough.)

I have been told that some of the Color Guides may be missing a few elements, such as the steel-sided Reading streamliner cars. Be that as it may, the Color Guides are still an excellent resource. Be aware that like all of Morning Sun’s books, they are expensive. Current book prices for all of Morning Sun’s inventory ranges from $44 to $59. They average about 100 to 135 pages

*********

For my kind of railroad interests, the color guides of my favorite roads are a useful asset.  They contain enough information and imagery to satisfy my interests. Scale modelers might use them to supplement the more detailed car books with blueprints. O / O27 operators like myself will find the color guides more than adequate, at least for those who are interested in the prototypes as well as the models.

******

Morning Sun aims mainly at the aficionado of railroad photography. Its books each contain hundreds of color images, each devoted to a specific railroad or theme. They average about 128 - 130 pages. Of course, these books cover railroads in operation since color photography was available. A railfan interested in roads from the 1940s to the present can usually find his favorites. Some roads get more coverage than others. For instance, there is a LOT of material on the Erie-Lackawanna. One series on that railroad is up to at least Volume 9. Books like these are for the serious rail photography buff.

Here is a link to Morning Sun

http://morningsunbooks.com/