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Sunny Saturday at Sonny’s
By Gary Woolard & Carla Brand Breitner Sept. 28, 2012
Sept. 15 was a day of record temperatures in Los Angeles, but that didn’t keep folks from showing up at Sonny Wizelman’s to run trains. Many did seem to gravitate toward the shady end of Sonny’s loop though.
‘Cricket’ redux
By Dave Cole Sept. 20, 2012
A year ago, all hope seemed to be lost: the “Cricket” locomotive — an 0-4-0, 1:20.3-scale engine with a single wobbler motor, a flywheel and a geared drive-train — had run through its second maker and the business had been put up for sale.
Shortly after I wrote about the demise of Maryland’s Westminster Locomotive Works (see SitG, No. 116, May/June 2011), I heard that Art Ruiz of Bellflower, Calif., had bought the rights to the “Cricket,” originally developed in 1994 by Michael O’Rourke, then of Berkeley, Calif.
Chuck and Terry at the HALS steamup
By Houston Area “G” Gauger Aug. 17, 2012
Both the Gauge One and ride-on scales saw a lot of action at the Houston Area Live Steamers layout at Zube Park in Hockley, Texas, over the Memorial Day weekend, May 24-28. Houston Area “G” Gaugers Chuck Blumentritt and Terry Dodson attended the event on Saturday, with Chuck there in the morning and Terry in the afternoon and evening.
Chuck said he’d planned to arrive on Friday, but his live-steam AristoCraft Mikado — which he hadn’t run in “a couple of years” and wanted to run it “in an environment where I would have plenty of support” — needed its batteries charged in order for the radio control to work and he didn’t determine this until Friday.
Typefaces and rivets
By Dave Cole July 20, 2012
When it comes to the question of prototype fidelity in our hobby, on the spectrum between whimsy and rivet-counting I fall squarely in the middle. I would never reject a model because its proportion is only slightly off and gladly mix 1:20.3-, 1:22- and 1:29 scales on my backyard railroad.
But get the typeface wrong when lettering a locomotive or a wayside building and I’d throw the object into the garbage can (well, probably not, but it would perturb me).
Live steamers at Maker Faire
By Rob Lenicheck July 13, 2012
As in 2010 and 2011, Northern California’s Bay Area Garden Railway Society’s Live Steam Group participated in the Maker Faire, held at the San Mateo Event Center, May 19-20. If you’ve never been to a Maker Faire, it’s hard to describe what you will see and experience there. Suffice to say, there are a lot of really creative people out there and since the Faire happens in only a few, select places in the entire world, this event is not to be missed.
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