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All about the community of model railroading and rail enthusiasm

COWCATCHER MAGAZINE

2010 Round Up

All Issues Priced at $2.95 unless otherwise noted

2010 is the last year of publication of the Cowcatcher Round Up before we became Cowcatcher Magazine.

OPEN HOUSE – January/February 2010: Gil Freitag’s iconic Stony Creek & Western is a popular stop in Houston. PLUS, a welder’s spark may have started a blaze that gutted the interior of a former Missouri Pacific cupola caboose at the Texas Transportation Museum; Cowcatcher readers pick the best of rail in the region, and the Oklahoma City Train Show takes home top honors; manufacturers are upbeat and ready to move in 2010; and Warren Buffet makes a bet on BNSF.




DEEP RIVER III  – March/April 2010: From the West Coast to Oklahoma, the N-scale Deep River III is right at home. PLUS, the Museum of the American Railroad and the City of Dallas are embroiled in a legal fight; membership and attendance spikes for regional NMRA and Train Collectors Association groups; former Cotton Belt locomotive No. 819, the “Grand Old Lady”, needs funding to get back on the rails; and we have a retrospective on the Santa Fe and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe rail motor cars.




ALL ABOARD!  – May/June 2010: Austin’s Capital MetroRail has a smooth start to its light-rail debut in Texas’ capitol city. PLUS, the N Scale Collector Convention is growing along with an intense collector market; Amtrak plans to phase out “obsolete” fleet equipment; InterMountain Railway Co. announces a second run of AC-12 cabs; and the Stillwater Central reaches an operating agreement with the Hollis & Eastern Railroad.




July/August 2010: A big wheat harvest and few places to put it offers a challenge for Oklahoma Class III Farmrail. PLUS, battery power offers a solution to end-of-train applications in smaller scales; get a look inside at Micro-Trains with our interview with President and CEO Eric Smith; a Union Pacific freight train derails near a historic East Texas Texas & Pacific station; and Kato releases a N-scale model of “George Bush No. 41”.





<PEAK OF CRAFTSMANSHIP  – September/October 2010: The  HO- and HOn3-scale McKinney, TX, Rocky Mountian Central & the Colorado Pacific ascends with scratch-built flare. PLUS, the Galveston Railroad Museum receives a grant to match FEMA money that will enable a complete rebuild of the museum battered by Hurricane Ike; the Texas Electric Railway was a giant in its day; and we take a look at an ATSF D918 caboose is scratch-built in HO.





HEREFORD SUB FIRST HAND – November/December 2010: Trackside research refines operations for an HO-scale rendition of a Santa Fe subdivision. PLUS, vendors and exhibitors give the first Big Texas Train Show in Houston high marks; construction and weather contribute to the collapse of a corner of a historic M-K-T office building in Denison, TX; George Hollwedel’s Prototype N Scale Models fills a void with N-scale freight cars; and New Orleans eyes federal money to expand its nostalgic street car line.





 

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Katy Flavor

Growing up in Central Texas in the 1980s, David Heyde loved big machinery. Only natural for a boy surrounded by a mighty river complemented by steamboats, an active Army airfield and regional airport, and equipment that tended row upon row of corn, soybeans and other grains. What loomed largest, though, was the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Heyde’s MKT Central Texas Subdivision, a compact but bold HO-scale layout, captures on two levels around the walls the zest of the iconic railroad that ran from Kansas City and St. Louis to Galveston, TX, and the Gulf of Mexico. All while maximizing space in what once was a one-car garage.

Holding Steady

This year’s National Narrow Gauge Convention is coming home, where it all began 45 years ago. The Mudhens will once again have a large presence at the convention Sept. 3-6 in St. Louis. Over the last four decades, their rise has been rather circuitous. While developing national appeal in narrow-gauge circles, these dedicated modelers from St. Louis to Arizona to Texas have persevered.

Personal Switcher

The Kansas City West Bottoms Railroad (KCRR) debuted in early March, with no small impact on a parcel of track along the former Missouri Pacific Railroad near the Kansas-Missouri line. What’s turning heads, says KCRR president Rich Duncan, is that the tiny Class III short line is rewriting the railroad marketing narrative on first-mile, last-mile service with a new level of dedicated switching so its three customers can better connect to the Union Pacific.

Plus

Columnist Michelle Kempema writes that model railroaders and railfans can preserve their legacy for a good cause, railroads once ran special trains in enormous size and variety and autonomous battery-electric rail cars are being piloted on two Georgia short line railroads. Also, one modeler looking for something unique for his layout found just the thing in an old model railroad magazine - plans to scratch build a rock bunker. And more!

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