Mixed Freight
Well-Known Member
Hello Folks,
As a teenager back in the 70's, I bought a book at a hobby shop entitled "Easy-to-Build Model Railroad Structures". The first printing of the booklet is listed as 1958, while the one I purchased had advanced thru the years as the 6th printing in 1973. I'm pretty sure I would have bought this back in the mid-to-late 70's at the listed cover price of a whopping $2 !!!
Back in the 1950's, a LOT more scratch-building was required to get a variety of structures that one may need on their layout as compared to say, twenty years later and afterwards. The plans are a compilation of structure articles previously printed in Model Railroader articles amongst others. Most, if not all, were originally built in HO scale, but plans and dimensions generally are shown in scale feet to make building in other scales fairly easy.
Has anyone ever tried building any of the structures in this book? There are a bunch of interesting structures in the book, especially for anyone interested in the steam and early diesel-era. I seem to remember attempting to build the 2-stall engine house shown in the book, and as seen on the very lower left hand corner of the cover. Well, at least maybe partially building it. It seems like I got enough of it built to where it could stand on its own, but I don't think I ever really finished it. I don't think I ever used it on any layout, and it probably eventually was accidentally damaged and then finally discarded in the trash, if memory serves. But that's been a long time ago.
As a teenager back in the 70's, I bought a book at a hobby shop entitled "Easy-to-Build Model Railroad Structures". The first printing of the booklet is listed as 1958, while the one I purchased had advanced thru the years as the 6th printing in 1973. I'm pretty sure I would have bought this back in the mid-to-late 70's at the listed cover price of a whopping $2 !!!
Back in the 1950's, a LOT more scratch-building was required to get a variety of structures that one may need on their layout as compared to say, twenty years later and afterwards. The plans are a compilation of structure articles previously printed in Model Railroader articles amongst others. Most, if not all, were originally built in HO scale, but plans and dimensions generally are shown in scale feet to make building in other scales fairly easy.
Has anyone ever tried building any of the structures in this book? There are a bunch of interesting structures in the book, especially for anyone interested in the steam and early diesel-era. I seem to remember attempting to build the 2-stall engine house shown in the book, and as seen on the very lower left hand corner of the cover. Well, at least maybe partially building it. It seems like I got enough of it built to where it could stand on its own, but I don't think I ever really finished it. I don't think I ever used it on any layout, and it probably eventually was accidentally damaged and then finally discarded in the trash, if memory serves. But that's been a long time ago.