Trains, Model RR, Hobbies

I like trains, trolleys, and model railroads. There, I said it. And I am proud of it. Some of the information here may also be on my Charleston Rail website, but most of this is more person.

Bluetooth Model Train Control

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OK train people, I haven’t written much about model trains recently, but this Kickstarter project is very interesting. Basically, this small board which would be added into the model locomotive would enable you to control your trains via a Bluetooth device such as an Apple or Android phone.

BlueTooth Control

As much as other hobbies have advanced over the years, model trains have gotten a bit stuck. Or maybe we should say “derailed”? Anyway, the trains are still, for the most part, controlled via power and signals over the track. This is often called driving the track instead of driving the train. While DCC helps with that, it still relies on the track for the power and the computer signal to reach the train. The goal everyone would like to get to would be for the track to be support only, as they are in real life, with power and controls coming from the locomotive itself.

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Pictures of Charleston Rail

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a book about railroads in Charleston with lots of great photographs would be priceless, right? Well with a little help from the folks here in town, and maybe a few spread further away, that is what I am hoping for. I am working with Arcadia Publishing, coincidentally located … Read more

The West Model Train Collection

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Yesterday I spent a good part of the day hanging out with what one person described as my “tribe”.  The tribe being that group of people who is interested in some of the same things I am. In this case it might have been a fairly eclectic tribe; those folks who are both in to British cars and trains. You see, yesterday members of The British Car Club of Charleston visited the home of member and model train collector Mike West.

Model Train Collection

Now I have known Mike for about thirty years, but it wasn’t until relatively recently that I discovered that he, like me, has a things for trains. He started on this hobby when he was just a kid back in the forties and still has some of his original model trains from back then.

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Train Town Toy & Hobby

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I am very happy to say that a model train store has finally opened in the Charleston area. While we have had a couple of chain craft and hobby stores available, they do not have staff who are really tuned in to the model railroader and neither do they seem very interested in developing the market. So this has been a veritable desert for model railroaders for about the last 8 to 10 years. But now that has changed. Train Town Toy & Hobby - Summerville, SC Train Town Toy & Hobby, the shop of Jim and Nancy Donlon, has moved to downtown Summerville. They used to be located in the Richmond, Virginia area, but thankfully for us they moved south about a month ago. David Geddings, my friend and co-worker, and I visited the store for the first time today, and we found it friendly and welcoming.

I talked for a short while with Jim Donlon, and he said one of the things he was surprised about when he moved here is that most folks seem to be into HO and N scale. It seems that he said in Richmond most of the folks he knew were into O. This is quite evidenced by the fact that the store is stocked primarily with Lionel. There are sections of HO, N, and G, but most of the space is dedicated to O. And I will tell you, he has some great items.

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