I've been published in O Gauge Railroading magazine!

I love the D&H's blue hoppers used for glass service and have written about them a lot on this blog. 

When on a trip near Philadelphis a couple of years ago I purchased an O scale Atlas blue D&H hopper at a train store, and I knew I was going to make glass loads for it similar to my HO scale ones (here and here). Even as I was driving away from the store I started to write the article in my mind. I knew that if the cars looked good in HO scale, they would look even better in O scale. So, I got to work. 

I actually acquired three O scale cars (an Atlas 2-bay hopper car, a special TTOS Empire and Eastern Division 3-bay hopper club car; and an MTH 2-bay hopper). Unlike the HO scale cars, though, I needed a lot more glass beads. And, I decided to make the loads removable.

When I wrote the article my friend Don offered to let me photograph the cars on his layout, and in exchange I made six loads for him for his unit train. I made another one for my friend Frank in Buffalo too. Below shows my three cars.

The article described how to make the loads removable, which meant that the hopper cars could be used to carry other things too. Pictures on my blog certainly show the prototype cars used in MOW gravel service. I used real crushed coal in one, and real crushed stone in the other.

I submitted the article, and waited and waited. Such is how the publishing business goes. But this week the finished article arrived in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of O Gauge Railroading magazine. It looks great, and I am real happy how it turned out.

Working in O scale was a lot of fun, and readers of my blog know that I haven't done much on the HO layout recently. Much of that is because of a lack of time, and I hope to get to my layout again in the future. But for now, some side projects in the larger scale are a good way to work on new modeling skills.