As I write this, John Sipple is in the hospital recovering from heart surgery. By the time you read this, we are all hoping he will be recuperating at home. If you’ve got a spare prayer, John could use it.
John’s surgery meant I had to pick up some of his duties for this issue. Fortunately, I have the benefit of being part of a great team. Mike Lindsay took time from his busy schedule as publisher to get me up to speed on the things John usually handles. Jennifer Lindsay kept material smoothly flowing both ways, proving once again just how irreplaceable she is. Associate Editor Phil Scandura has taken over answering the DCC letters without missing a beat. You’ll notice we don’t have a “Thinking of DCC” column this month, but it will be back in May. If John isn’t up to it, look for Phil to host the column until he returns.
I can’t forget Associate Editor Dave Otte, who worked overtime to send in extra material, or columnists Roy Hoffman and Steven Goehring, who sent their articles in ahead of schedule, giving me time to handle my additional duties. Special thanks go to our reviewers for keeping the hopper filled with great material.
Finally, thanks to John Sipple who has shared his visions, ideas, and literary standards with me since I joined Model Railroad News a few years ago. John is one of those rare people who love both trains and grammar, and he believes even semi-technical writing, such as what you’ll find here, needs to be done in a way that makes it easy to understand and enjoyable to read. John was an educator in his professional career and he has been a great teacher to me. I look forward to a resumption of classes in the near future.
You’ve gotten to know John over the years, but you probably know me best from my monthly “At the Grade Crossing” column which first appeared in January 2004 or the vehicle reviews that began appearing in June 2003. I’ve been part of the MRN team for going on four years, advancing from reviewer to Associate Editor, and then to Managing Editor last June.
As Managing Editor, I am the first stop for just about all the reviews and columns you read in MRN every month. I am the guy with the (virtual) blue pencil who proofs the text, converts the photos to the format we use, and checks the facts when required. Sometimes I send something back to the writer with a suggestion or request for a change.
Beyond that, I still write reviews and a monthly column, do photography, contact manufacturers, and answer mail. Before you ask, I don’t edit my own work; that task falls to John Sipple and Jennifer Lindsay, who fix my bloopers, ask for rewrites, etc., invariably making my work better than it was before.
I actually have two hobby interests: one is model railroading; the other is railroad scale vehicles. I’ve been an active model railroader since 1989, when my wife Marge got tired of watching me leaf through model railroad magazines or admiring layouts at mall shows. For Christmas that year, my present was a trip to the hobby shop where she bought me an Athearn Northern Pacific F7, some rolling stock, an Atlas Snap-Track starter set, and a small MRC power pack. We picked the NP F7 because we liked the shade of green. I later discovered the Athearn green wasn’t like any ever used by the railroad, but I still have the locomotive.
The train set led to a four-by-eight layout, complete with every newbie mistake. However, the trains ran fine and I had a lot of fun.
A few years later, I switched to N scale and got to know Master Model Railroader Loren Neufeld. My favorite aspect of model railroading is scenery. Loren is a master craftsman when it comes to almost anything to do with model railroading, but his scenery work is outstanding. A subject doesn’t even have to be real for Loren to make it realistic. His Con-Cor award-winning “Jurassic Park” N-Trak module brilliantly combines dinosaurs and trains in a scene that wows ‘em every time it’s displayed. He even scratch-built the visitor’s center from the film and there are figures representing the major players.
Working together, Loren and I built the Grimy Gulch N-Trak module that took the blue ribbon at the Lake Junction Convention in Madison. Over time, with the addition of Harry Daniel and Rich Businger to the team, Grimy Gulch grew to a freestanding, nine-module dog bone layout.
Building the Grimy Gulch was a wonderful experience; I learned a lot in short order, including the fact scratch-building is one of the most liberating things you can do. We needed an Old West town, but quickly discovered N scale was a bit light on appropriate kits. By the time I was through, I had built everything from a cliff dwelling to a blacksmith’s forge, complete with a flickering fire, to a jail with real stone walls.
More recently, I got my first taste of Z scale when I did the cover shot for our December issue. I was smitten with the tiny Märklin steam engines and the exquisite pieces from Micro-Trains, and am currently designing a small layout.
At the same time, I am a big fan of HO- and N-scale vehicles. I don’t know just how many I have, but it’s probably close to two thousand. I grew up in the automobile industry and have loved cars and trucks all my life. Ironically, it was model railroading that renewed my interest in scale vehicles. In the mid-1980s, a friend began building a model railroad layout in his garage. I began to help him in the evenings and on weekends. He had some vehicles on his layout and I told him they might look better with some paint and details. Before long, I was in charge of the motor pool, building and detailing cars and trucks.
In the years since then, I have become more and more involved with the 1/87-scale vehicle hobby and the scale model industry. It’s been rewarding to be a small part of the movement that has led to a veritable explosion of new American vehicle models in HO scale. By the end of 2007, there will have been more new car and truck models based on American prototypes delivered to hobby shops in one year than the total that existed when I started making those cars and trucks for my friend’s layout in the mid-1980s. Now it’s time for us to start doing the same thing for other scales.
I count myself as very lucky; not only do I have two hobbies that work together but, best of all, I get to be part of bringing the news of each to you every month.
— Bill Cawthon
John’s surgery meant I had to pick up some of his duties for this issue. Fortunately, I have the benefit of being part of a great team. Mike Lindsay took time from his busy schedule as publisher to get me up to speed on the things John usually handles. Jennifer Lindsay kept material smoothly flowing both ways, proving once again just how irreplaceable she is. Associate Editor Phil Scandura has taken over answering the DCC letters without missing a beat. You’ll notice we don’t have a “Thinking of DCC” column this month, but it will be back in May. If John isn’t up to it, look for Phil to host the column until he returns.
I can’t forget Associate Editor Dave Otte, who worked overtime to send in extra material, or columnists Roy Hoffman and Steven Goehring, who sent their articles in ahead of schedule, giving me time to handle my additional duties. Special thanks go to our reviewers for keeping the hopper filled with great material.
Finally, thanks to John Sipple who has shared his visions, ideas, and literary standards with me since I joined Model Railroad News a few years ago. John is one of those rare people who love both trains and grammar, and he believes even semi-technical writing, such as what you’ll find here, needs to be done in a way that makes it easy to understand and enjoyable to read. John was an educator in his professional career and he has been a great teacher to me. I look forward to a resumption of classes in the near future.
You’ve gotten to know John over the years, but you probably know me best from my monthly “At the Grade Crossing” column which first appeared in January 2004 or the vehicle reviews that began appearing in June 2003. I’ve been part of the MRN team for going on four years, advancing from reviewer to Associate Editor, and then to Managing Editor last June.
As Managing Editor, I am the first stop for just about all the reviews and columns you read in MRN every month. I am the guy with the (virtual) blue pencil who proofs the text, converts the photos to the format we use, and checks the facts when required. Sometimes I send something back to the writer with a suggestion or request for a change.
Beyond that, I still write reviews and a monthly column, do photography, contact manufacturers, and answer mail. Before you ask, I don’t edit my own work; that task falls to John Sipple and Jennifer Lindsay, who fix my bloopers, ask for rewrites, etc., invariably making my work better than it was before.
I actually have two hobby interests: one is model railroading; the other is railroad scale vehicles. I’ve been an active model railroader since 1989, when my wife Marge got tired of watching me leaf through model railroad magazines or admiring layouts at mall shows. For Christmas that year, my present was a trip to the hobby shop where she bought me an Athearn Northern Pacific F7, some rolling stock, an Atlas Snap-Track starter set, and a small MRC power pack. We picked the NP F7 because we liked the shade of green. I later discovered the Athearn green wasn’t like any ever used by the railroad, but I still have the locomotive.
The train set led to a four-by-eight layout, complete with every newbie mistake. However, the trains ran fine and I had a lot of fun.
A few years later, I switched to N scale and got to know Master Model Railroader Loren Neufeld. My favorite aspect of model railroading is scenery. Loren is a master craftsman when it comes to almost anything to do with model railroading, but his scenery work is outstanding. A subject doesn’t even have to be real for Loren to make it realistic. His Con-Cor award-winning “Jurassic Park” N-Trak module brilliantly combines dinosaurs and trains in a scene that wows ‘em every time it’s displayed. He even scratch-built the visitor’s center from the film and there are figures representing the major players.
Working together, Loren and I built the Grimy Gulch N-Trak module that took the blue ribbon at the Lake Junction Convention in Madison. Over time, with the addition of Harry Daniel and Rich Businger to the team, Grimy Gulch grew to a freestanding, nine-module dog bone layout.
Building the Grimy Gulch was a wonderful experience; I learned a lot in short order, including the fact scratch-building is one of the most liberating things you can do. We needed an Old West town, but quickly discovered N scale was a bit light on appropriate kits. By the time I was through, I had built everything from a cliff dwelling to a blacksmith’s forge, complete with a flickering fire, to a jail with real stone walls.
More recently, I got my first taste of Z scale when I did the cover shot for our December issue. I was smitten with the tiny Märklin steam engines and the exquisite pieces from Micro-Trains, and am currently designing a small layout.
At the same time, I am a big fan of HO- and N-scale vehicles. I don’t know just how many I have, but it’s probably close to two thousand. I grew up in the automobile industry and have loved cars and trucks all my life. Ironically, it was model railroading that renewed my interest in scale vehicles. In the mid-1980s, a friend began building a model railroad layout in his garage. I began to help him in the evenings and on weekends. He had some vehicles on his layout and I told him they might look better with some paint and details. Before long, I was in charge of the motor pool, building and detailing cars and trucks.
In the years since then, I have become more and more involved with the 1/87-scale vehicle hobby and the scale model industry. It’s been rewarding to be a small part of the movement that has led to a veritable explosion of new American vehicle models in HO scale. By the end of 2007, there will have been more new car and truck models based on American prototypes delivered to hobby shops in one year than the total that existed when I started making those cars and trucks for my friend’s layout in the mid-1980s. Now it’s time for us to start doing the same thing for other scales.
I count myself as very lucky; not only do I have two hobbies that work together but, best of all, I get to be part of bringing the news of each to you every month.
— Bill Cawthon