Uncategorized
18 Jul 2026
I have been trackside for a lot of things over the years, but I have never seen anything quite like the last two months. Union Pacific “Big Boy” 4014 came east for the first time in the locomotive’s history, and everywhere it went, the crowds came. Not just railfan crowds, “everyone” crowds. Families staking out […]
J. Alex Lang
Railroads
29 May 2026
In the late spring of my sophomore year of high school, Peter McGilligan and I set out early one morning from his place in NJ to chase the recently-rerouted D&H manifest pair over the Buffalo and Sunbury lines. Follow along as we chased the 555 up to Taylor, and the 556 south to Bloomsburg. 555/556 […]
24 May 2026
I’ve been trying to get my slides onto a screen properly for nearly thirty years, and I’m only now getting close to satisfied. That’s not hyperbole. The effort started somewhere around 1997 or 1998, when Todd Clark over at Trainorders.com was doing some slide scanning as a service. I mailed him a batch of slides […]
Model Railroading
22 Jul 2025
We’ve lived in our house since 2012, and it didn’t take me long to set up a “temporary” layout using Kato Unitrak. This layout, called the “Aspinwall Belt” (since it’s in Aspinwall, and it went around in circles) served us well, and it was removed in 2017 to make way for basement remodeling. Construction of […]
14 Jan 2024
This past weekend (Jan 13, 2024) I gave a presentation about Conrail Train Symbols at the Conrail Historical Society‘s 1st Quarterly membership meeting, held at the Power Director’s Office in Harrisburg, PA, maintained by the Harrisburg Chapter, NRHS. The Harrisburg Chapter is a must-visit when in the area, as both the Harris Tower and the […]
11 Jan 2021
As I’m modeling Conrail in 1994, Bethlehem PA area, I have been accumulating Stewart and Bowser G39 ore hoppers for quite some time in order to feed the Bethlehem blast furnaces with iron ore for steelmaking purposes. By 1994, these aging cars were supplemented by occasional 70- and 100- coal hoppers as well, but – […]
