Tag Archives: #Model railroad

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Reading Railroad Heritage Museum

Perhaps the greatest concentration Reading Company artifacts is at the Reading Railroad Heritage Museum in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.

Thanks to our friend Dan Cupper who arranged a special visit to this citadel of railroad preservation, Dan, Rich Roberts, Kris and I were treated to personal tour.

We were met by the museum’s Rich Brodecki and introduced to a variety of the museum’s volunteers, including archivist Richard Bates. We spent nearly two hours surrounded by vestiges of the late, great Reading.

Highlights of our tour included the museum’s model railroads, especially the HO-scale interpretation of the Reading, which reminded me of what I’d hoped my own Wee Reading Company could have become. This features a coal mine and several villages.

Outside, we viewed a variety of former Reading locomotives and cars. We were given a tour of Reading business car No. 15, which is a remarkable relic of the railroad’s past, and I had the opportunity to see the cabs of a Reading Alco C-630 and General Motors NW-2.

I made these photos using my Nikon Z-series mirrorless cameras. I’m looking forward to another visit in the future.

See: www.readingrailroad.org

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Farewell Wee Reading Co.

Over the next couple of months Kris and I will be moving.

Part of the challenge of this relocation exercise will be the disassembly of my scale interpretation of the Reading Company in Pennsylvania coal country.

I began this two and a half years ago and the railroad gradually expanded. While I’d begun to install scenery, only about half the railroad enjoyed scale realism. Once we had decided to move, I stopped adding scenery and instead focused on operating the railroad.

Soon I will begin boxing up the locomotives, rolling stock and buildings. I will lift the track for future use and salvage elements of the electrical system including hundreds of feet of wire, dozens of lights and LEDs, plus numerous toggle switches that I used to control train movements.

Unfortunately, when I began planning the railroad, I failed to anticipate the need to take it apart. So, structure of the railroad consisting of wooden benchwork, as well as the scenery cannot be easily recycled.

I made these photos last night using my Nikon Z7-II to help preserve how the railroad looks.

Someday, the Wee Reading Company will rise again and it will be better than ever!

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HO Camels in Coal Country

The wee Reading Company has had some new arrivals!

Thanks to my long-time friend and expert model railroader, Rich Reed, my model railroad now has a variety of new equipment.

Rich painted a Reading class I-8 2-8-0 camelback for me. This is an interim paint job while we search for the appropriate Reading Company decals. He also supplied as wedding gifts; a Reading I-10sa 2-8-0 (with conventional cab arrangement); a tiny Reading Company camelback 0-4-0 similar to the class A-4b No. 1187 that used to live at the Strasburg Rail Road, a selection of Reading Co. freight cars and some buildings and other small structures.

I made these photos the other night using my Lumix LX7 to feature some of the additions to my interpretation of coal country.

In the ‘real world,’ Penn Central and Reading Company camelback 2-8-0s missed each other by more than 20 years.
Look through the trees! That’s a camelback 0-4-0 coming down grade.
West Cressona Yard has a few new additions thanks to Rich Reed!
This Penn Central RS-3 and caboose was a gift to me from Ken Buck that predated my wee Reading Company by almost a decade. The models had been his father’s. Look above the caboose and you’ll see the sign that Rich made for me that advertised Bob Buck’s Tucker’s Hobbies of Warren, Massachusetts.

My RDCs now have a wee station to serve at Minersville.
Schuylkillhaven now has a movie theatre!

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Merry Christmas from Tracking the Light!

It’s been several months since I last featured photos showing the progress to the HO Scale Reading Company Kris and I have been building in her basement.

I’ve been working on scenery, using lots of plaster and foam board. To demonstrate my progress I made these views using my Lumix LX7.

I still have a lot of work to do on the scenery, and it is by no means complete, but it sure beats the open timber frame appearance that the model railway exhibited in my earlier photos.

Lumix LX7 photo.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Tracking the Light!

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Anthracite Country Construction in HO.

Working from period photos, including color slides that my father exposed in the 1950s-1960s, and my own images from recent years, I’ve planned an HO model railroad that is set in Pennsylvania’s anthracite country.

I’ve been scouring old topographical maps, perusing more old photos, reviewing books, and using Google Earth to adapt a prototype from the former Reading Company main line and Mine Hill Branches. I’m incorporating \elements of Pennsylvania Railroad’s Schuylkill Branch, the disused Schuylkill Canal, local highways and towns added in for color and historical context. I’m planning a coal mine (or two), a yard, engine house, and several bridges among other scale infrastructure, and if space and time permits maybe hints of the old Lehigh Valley and trolley lines that also once populated the area.

Barrys Gold Blend is fuel for my railroad building.
Using a level, ruler, square, clamps, wood, glue and screws, I’ve been shaping the foundations for a world yet unseen.

From these visions, my girlfriend Kris Sabbatino and I are building this model in her basement in New Hampshire. With a view to a four-dimensional model, I’m intent on a degree of realism and tuned to learn as much about the real railroad as I can in the process of modeling it. And yet, I am hoping the final execution will retain the mystique  that attracted us to this railroad in the first place. I’d like it to have a dream-like quality; real yet surreal, an alternate vision of yesteryear. After all the model is but a wee fantasy world.

I’m still erecting the bench-work that is the foundation for the railroad. It will be a while before I can lay track and wire it up, and then we can begin dressing the layout with scenery and tiny structures.

More to follow in the coming months, including more photos of the prototype!

Thanks to Kris who made some of the photos using her new FujiFilm XT4. Special thanks to Doug Scott who generously donated HO scale buildings and rolling stock that go the project rolling forward!

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Reading Company Retrospective

Recently, my girlfriend Kris Sabbatino and I decided to build a model railroad.

For a prototype we selected eastern Pennsylvania anthracite country.

I began scouring my archives looking for material.

Part of my inspiration for this model railroad began many years ago when I was looking through my father’s photographs of Reading Company’s Iron Horse Rambles that he exposed over a five-year period beginning in 1959. Many of these photos were made from the excursions or on chases through eastern Pennsylvania. Most were not captioned at the time of processing, which often makes location details elusive but also part of the dreamlike mystery of building the scale railroad.

Reading Iron Horse Ramble, exposed in May 1964 on Agfachrome using a Leica M. Location unrecorded.Photo by Richard Jay Solomon ©1964.

In 2007, I assembled a book titled the Railroads of Pennsylvania, and made a detailed study of the region.

In 2014 and 2015, I was researching on books on steam locomotives and made several trips with Pat Yough to photograph the Reading & Northern.

The model railroad will blend together all of this inspiration and much more.

As part of a new on-going feature on Tracking the Light, I’ll be reporting on progress with this model railroad and the source material from which we draw.

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