Cumbres and Toltec engine house panorama

We used to shoot a lot of pictures with a Kodak panorama camera. Basically, you loaded it with 35mm film and each picture was double the width of a normal shot. It wasn't a very sophisticated camera - it was basically just a point-and-shoot - but when the lighting conditions were right, it could take a good picture. Not so much with these two, but further rummaging turned them up, and they give a bit of an idea of what sort of rolling stock was around the engine house.

Some Cumbres and Toltec lineside structures

I also took photos of a few structures along the Cumbres and Toltec line. Like the train photos, I don't have any information other than I shot them in September 1996.

[6 Jan '19 update: I found a photo of what looks a like a brick engine house loose in the bottom of a box of photos so I added it to the collection.]

Cumbres and Toltec highway crossing

I was rummaging through some boxes and discovered a set of photos I shot back in September 1996 in Colorado (maybe it was New Mexico?) of a meet-up with a Cumbres and Toltec train. Believe it or not it was completely by coincidence.

Back then my train interests were quite dormant and I was generally blase about trains and such things, but I guess you can take the boy outta the trains, but you can't take the trains outta the man, so I grabbed my old SLR when we were lucky enough to get stopped by this thing.

I see some photos of buildings in the envelope with these ones. I'll scan those next. Stay tuned!

[6 Jan '19 update: I found 2 more photos of passenger cars crossing the highway loose in the bottom of a box so I added them to the sequence.]

From the Time Machine's Glovebox: Post #2

With this year being 30 Squares’ 10^th anniversary, I thought that once each week throughout 2019 I’d try posting something from the previous decade.

The second post here at 30 Squares – from 17 March 2009 - sort of set the direction for everything to come: How I built E.L. Moore's "Bunn's Feed & Seed Plant". It turned out that E. L. Moore’s original model of Bunn’s Feed & Seed still existed. I got to see it in September 2015, and I posted some photos of it the same month. Earlier, in March 2015, the original manuscript and cover letter that Mr. Moore used to sell the article to Model Railroader was found. I learned that the article contained a classic E. L. Moore background story that was cut from the published version.

The R-100 airship in N scale?

We also paid a visit over the holidays to the Aviation and Space Museum out in the east end. I'm not going to give a trip report on all the interesting airplanes you'll see out there, but I will mention one particular curiosity: their model of the R-100 airship that flew to Canada from England and back again in 1930. In HO scale, the model would measure a whooping 8.3' - a little longer than the entire Alta Vista TC layout! - and in N-scale a more manageable 4.5'. The model seems closer to 4.5' than 8.3', so I'm putting my money on its scale being closer to N than HO. When we got home I hunted around for Nevil Shute's old autobiography called Slide Rule. The book has a few fascinating chapters about his time as chief 'calculator' on the R-100's construction team, and some insight into the disastrous crash of the R-100's sister ship, the R-101, where 48 of the 54 people onboard were killed.