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Written by Paul D. Race for Big Indoor Trains^TM and Big Christmas Trains^TM

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Trains-N-Towns^TM, the Official Newsletter of BIGIndoorTrains.com and BIGChristmasTrains.com

This newsletter is for people who like O scale, O gauge, S scale, and Christmas trains, including people who combine On30 or O gauge trains with collectible villages. It is produced in conjunction with the Big Indoor Trains^TM and Big Christmas Trains web sites.

If you did not get this Trains-N-Towns^TM newsletter through your own e-mail, and you would like to get the newsletters in the future, please join our Trains-N-Towns^TM Mailing List
On the other hand, if you don't want to receive our e-mail updates, please e-mail me with a "Please Unsubscribe" message (worded any way you wish), and we will graciously remove you from our list.
Also, if you would like to subscribe to our free newsletter for garden railroaders (people running big trains outside), please join the Family Garden Trains Mailing List. By the way, you can subscribe to either, both, or neither, and we will just be glad to be of service, no matter what you decide.

In this Issue

Thanks to all the friends who wonder, when I miss a newsletter issue, if something has happened to me. In this case, it's something good, and a little scary. As you may know, my employer of 18 years just moved out of town, throwing me back into another job search. After not finding anything like a good permanent job, I did what I did when the same company laid me off in 1995 - started consulting. Further down, there's a link to a blog-like article about that. But due to an unscheduled overlap of contracts, I've been snowed under with work. So, this issue is almost late enough to be the July-August-September issue. But we do have a brand new, totally unique putz house project, as well as a new article about prototype trains, for those of you into more "serious" railroading.

Please accept our warm wishes for a great autumn (or spring, for those of you who live "Down Under"). And please especially enjoy any time you can spend with your family in the coming days.

Topics discussed in this update include:

New Article: Building a Vintage-Style Cardboard Log House
New Family Garden Trains Article: Articulated Locomotives of the USA
Halloween Train Alert!
New Blog-Like Article: Back in "The Life," or "Self-Unemployed"
New Blog-Like Article: Should I Get Hit By a Truck . . . Orphan Web Pages
Big Indoor Trains Resource Spotting - Tracking our building graphics and projects literally around the world.

New Article: Building a Vintage-Style Cardboard Log House

Project designer Howard Lamey is well-known for building replicas of the little glittered pasteboard "putz" houses that were popular between world wars. This project is a tribute to a variety that came along just a bit later and found its way to many indoor railroads before and just after WWII. A "loggie" is made from corrugated cardboard with the "sheath" missing on one side. Build this one for your indoor railroad or Christmas display.

Please click the following link for more information.

http://bigindoortrains.com/primer/buildings/loggies/loggie.htm

New Family Garden Trains Article: Articulated Locomotives of the USA

Back in June, we ran an article about Mallets, a kind of articulated locomotive. This month we have a related article from Pete Eggink, longtime member and contributor of the South East Pennsylvania Garden Railway Society.

If you've wondered about adding any of these steamboat-sized centipedes to your railroad, click the following link for more information.

http://familygardentrains.com/primer/prototype/articulateds/articulateds.htm

Halloween Train Alert!

If you're thinking about setting up an indoor Halloween railroad this year, you might like to know that

our sister site Big Indoor Trains has a growing number of inexpensive, but charming Halloween-themed structure and accessory projects for indoor railroads, and several more planned for 2009. All "Spook Hill" projects are designed by "glitterhouse" desiger Howard Lamey to be family-friendly, unique, and potentially heirloom quality. This is a reminder to check out our free, downloadable plans and instructions, and get an early start on eerie fun for this fall.
Many charming On30 Halloween-themed trains are available, to delight railfans and Halloween lovers alike. On30 trains are in about the same scale as Lionel trains, but they run on HO track, and they look great with holiday villages. The Hawthorne Village On30 collectible Halloween trains feature characters from all your favorite Halloween movies, as well as a 1-year satisfaction warranty and a lifetime mechanical warranty.

Why think about this in July? Two reasons: 1: It's not too early to start your fall projects - once you build a couple, you'll wish you had more time. And 2: The On30 Halloween trains are subscription trains - you get one piece about every four weeks, starting with the locomotive. If you start your subscription now, you should have enough of the train to run by Halloween. Plan ahead now for a frighteningly good time this October.

Click on the following link to learn more about On30 Halloween Trains.

http://halloweentrains.com

Click on the following link to learn more about BigIndoorTrains.com's Spook Hill collection of Halloween-themed structure and accessory projects.

http://bigindoortrains.com/primer/spook_hill/welcome_to_spook_hill.htm

Blog-Like Article: Back in "The Life," or "Self-Unemployed"

Folks who've followed my very strange technical writing career know that companies have a history of disappearing out from underneath me. This spring, a century-old regional corporation moved its offices to Georgia. When I tell folks that my job "went south," I'm not kidding. It's also the fourth, and almost certainly final time this company has laid me off. After looking for a "real" job, I'm finally signing up to start "contracting" as a technical writing consultant - something I did from 1995-2002. It's a crazy ride that I may be too old for this time, but here I go. The "Back in 'The Life'" blog-like article describes my responses to getting back onto this particular roller-coaster after an eight-year absence.

http://familygardentrains.com/blog_like_content/10_06_blogs/10_06_29_blog.htm

Blog-Like Article: Should I Get Hit By a Truck . . . Orphan Web Pages

This year, I've become aware of how much worthwhile information on internet hobby site is at risk to disappear - abruptly and forever - if the site owner becomes incapacitated or even just loses interest. This year, I've been able to save one important resource (for a non-railroading hobby, I'm afraid), at the same time that three worthwhile model railroading resouces that I linked to disappeared without a warning or a trace. This is my plea to hobby site owners to take your own research and how-to information seriously enough to make provision for its survival in the case that you're suddenly unavailable to keep it going.

http://btcomm.com/trains/blog_like_content/10_07_blogs/10_07_26_blog.htm

If you want to check out Old ChristmasTreeLights.com the site I recovered for my Christmas collector friends this spring, click on the link below.

http://oldchristmastreelights.com

Big Indoor Trains Resource Spotting

Every few weeks, we stumble across a new railroad that is making use of resources from our building front resource and tinplate project pages.

Simon Sharp, of Aukland, New Zealand is using several of our photo-based buildings to provide a background for his portable Double Circle Railway. This is a Large Scale railroad using LGB and Bachmann Big Hauler equipment. So Simon has used the Large Scale version of the graphics.

To see a "blow up" of the corner of Simon's Double Circle Railway that uses our building graphics, click the following link:

http://familygardentrains.com/resource/buildings/gallery/double_circle_railway.jpg

Ed "Ice" Berg has incorporated many of our photo-based and tinplate-style building fronts into the backgrounds of his Marxville & Plateau railroad, as posted on the MarxTrain Yahoo Group page. Ed uses his color printer liberally, printing off trees, rocks, figures and other items that he can use for the background of his extensive Marx Trains and Plasticville building collection. If you like toy trains, it's worth registering for the Yahoo Marx Trains group just to see Ed's pages (not to mention the work of several other talented contributors). In his Marxville & Plateau pages, he describes how he builds up backgrounds that are a perfect complement to the toylike trains and accessories in the foreground.

To go to the MarxTrain Yahoo Group page, click the following link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarxTrain/

To jump to photos of Ed "Ice" Berg's Marxville & Plateau railroad, click the following link (You'll have to be a registered member of the group to see it).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarxTrain/photos/album/416112448/pic/list

To jump to our Building Front resource page, click the following link:

http://bigindoortrains.com/indoor_resources/0_s_scale_building_fronts/0_s_scale_building_fronts.htm

To jump to our Tinplate-style building project pages, click the following link:

http://bigindoortrains.com/primer/buildings/lackie/tinplate.htm

Keep in Touch

Each month, we get more interest in this newsletter, in the site, and in the trains and towns we discuss. We welcome your questions as indicators of what we should be working on next (also, we always try to answer reader questions quickly). In addition, if you have any photos, tips, or articles you'd like to share with your fellow hobbyists, please let us know. The hobby grows best when we all learn together.

In the meantime, please accept our very best wishes for a great season!

Paul Race

BigIndoorTrains.com
BigChristmasTrains.com
FamilyGardenTrains.com

To view the Trains-N-Towns^TM newsletter for June, 2010, click on the following link:

http://bigindoortrains.com/trains_n_towns/10_06_newsletter_indoor.htm

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Note: Big Indoor Trains^TM, Trains-N-Towns^TM, Big Train Store^TM Family Garden Trains^TM, Big Christmas Trains^TM, Garden Train Store^TM, and Tribute to Tinplate^TM are trademarks of Breakthrough Communications^TM (www.btcomm.com). All information, data, text, and illustrations on this web site are Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 by Paul D. Race. Reuse or republication without prior written permission is specifically forbidden.
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Trains-N-TownsTM, the Official Newsletter of BIGIndoorTrains.com and BIGChristmasTrains.com