French railway magazines

So I’ve recently been getting model railway magazines sent to me from France. It started a couple of months ago when by chance I accidentally set my eBay ‘item location’ settings to ‘worldwide’. Shortly after a lot of “Loco Review” – a French model railway magazine popped up, both cheap to buy and cheap to mail to California. I snapped up about 8 random back issues from years: 2002 and 2003 for around $20 in total – not bad considering just one copy can cost around $16 to mail to the USA under normal circumstances.

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Highgate Station

Back in the seventies I went to high school in a part of north London called Highgate. Highgate is a leafy suburb perched high up on a hill next to Hampstead Heath. Near the school, of particular interest to me, was this recently (for the seventies) abandoned station set between two tunnels opposite Highgate underground (tube) station. Continue reading “Highgate Station”

Finescale Track

I’ve just finished reading an old Iain Rice classic: Finescale Track in 4mm.

I read the book back in the nineties when it was first published and of course that means that the book is over twenty five years old. I was not yet a modeler but decided that when I started modeling I was going to ‘have a go’ at finescale track using the methods described. My plans got derailed by a move to the States and switch to USA modeling.

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The Modoc Line

A few years back my brother and I went on a cross-country trip through north-western Nevada exploring ghost towns. One of the towns we visited was a place called Wadsworth. Although not strictly a ghost town, Google maps showed that a railway line once went through it and just outside town the map showed the remains of a railroad bridge. We went down there, took photos of the bridge and went on our way. I never forgot that bridge and often wondered which railroad built it and what happened to the line.

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