Great Canadian Photo Site: Your Railway Pictures

There are a lot of great websites out there that have great photos of Canadian trains. But one I really like is Yourrailwaypictures.com

The site, which has been created by John MacDonald, is old school. But that's no big deal; the photos are superb. 

On the site, John notes that "like most Canadians over 50, I have a fascination with railways and steam locomotives in particular."

He's turned that fascination into quite a collection of photos of older and newer trains, with a number of historical shots from across Canada.

There are sections about CNR and CPR steam, Canadian railway artifacts, RDCs, old Canadian rolling stock (freight and passenger), Canadian train stations, cabooses, Canadian streetcars and grain elevators.

There are also pages about bridges, trestles and tunnels (with a detailed look at the CPR Spiral Tunnels), old Canadian logging equipment, CP Rail robot cars, more CN, CPR and VIA locomotives, the Newfoundland Railway, Canadian rail yards and more.

I've never seen a photo of CNR steam at
Churchill, Manitoba before.

The photos are mostly submitted and all are captioned; John intersperses comments about the photos, providing information about time and place.

Be warned that the pages are very large; you have to scroll a long way to get to the bottom of most pages. But that just makes it more enjoyable--sort of like a treasure hunt. (What will I find next?) 

Also be warned that John has brief train sounds embedded on the home page and other pages, in case you open it up at work. (Turn the sound off!)

If you have the time, or even if you don't, Yourrailwaypictures.com is well worth a visit.

Dome Car Index

One of my jobs as Associate Editor of Canadian Railway Modeller is writing Web Reviews, a short column about websites of interest to model railroaders. Below find a website profiled in a previous column.

Dome Car Index


When the dome car above showed up in Winnipeg’s BNSF Manitoba yard a few years ago, local railfans wanted to know where it had come from, and where it was going. All that information was available on the Dome Car Index on WebLurkersDOMEmain, a website dedicated to dome cars on North American railways.

On the site you can find information about the 237 original dome cars built in North America, broken out by full and short domes, secondary ownership, charters, dinner trains and tourist trains.

Click here to visit the site.

Blogs I follow: Confessions of a Train Geek and Trackside Treasure

A couple of Canadian blogs I like to follow are Confessions of a Train Geek and Trackside Treasure.

Confessions of a Train Geek, by Steve Boyko, contains photos and posts about railways and railfanning in Canada (and, occasionally, in the U.S.) He also has pages about BNSF in Manitoba, the Central Manitoba Railway, CN in New Brunswick, Industrial Railways, the New Brunswick Southern Railway, the New Brunswick East Coast Railway, the Prairie Dog Central and VIA Rail.

You can find it at http://blog.traingeek.ca/

Another one is Trackside Treasure, by Eric. "Trips, trains and thirty years trackside with Canada's railways," he says at the top of the page. "100% Canadian Prototype Railroading. If you're looking for variety in Canadian freight and passenger railroading, with a retrospective flavour, you won't be disappointed."

You can find it at http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com/

Model Railroad Tip: Which Glue To Use?

One thing every model railroader has to use at some point is glue. And sometimes you have to glue different things together.

For example, what's the best glue to use you want to attach plastic to styrofoam? (Lepages Epoxy). How about metal to plastic? (LePage's Metal Epoxy or J-B Weld; clamping can make the difference between success and failure.) What about plastic to wood? (Goop.)

All this information, and much more, can be found at http://www.thistothat.com/ (Motto: "Because people have a need to glue things to other things.") At the This to That website you can find out what glues to use for various materials. The site also provides helpful hints (e.g. it's a good idea to clean metal with steel wool or sandpaper before gluing, because rust never sleeps). It also provides non-toxic alternatives whenever a toxic glue is suggested as being best. The materials covered include wood, plastic, styrofoam, glass, ceramics and others.