ED HOUK'S HO SCALE DEADCAT & WESTERN MODELS
Photos By Ed Houk.

B&O KB1a rolls by the Holly Tree eastbound on the B&O just north of Aberdeen, MD. Well, not exactly. This is a Sunset model and I took the background shot just for this purpose. I didn't have much to do on a hot, humid Summer's day so I got creative. Little Russian number 56 moves slowly by the track gang trying to get some rail down in the Deadcat & Western Railroad yard. The model is by United. Paint and weathering by E. Houk. Number 56 is trailed by Little Russian number 51. The engineer gives a short whistle to the shop foreman who is checking the train out as it rolls past the round house. Shay #4 has just finished taking on coal and water. Now it's time to get busy moving some cars around the yard and making up trains. I like logging power so I am using it to switch my yards. Climax #3 is puttin' on the brakes as heisler #5 begins to loaf. The work involved coming down the mountain with a load is braking. The heisler will be cut off and the logs moved to the log pond in the background. The climax smoke is from a Jonathan Landon Cass photo. Check out his page under links. This Climax and crew head home with a load of logs. This early snow fall really surprised everyone, but they kept working. The model is by United. Paint and weathering by E. Houk. Heisler This is also a PFM model. I set this up using a narrow piece of plywood for the track. I 'plowed' the snow with the plywood then pushed the wood down into the 'cut'. I placed flex track down just to line things up. I used a digital camera on apeture mode to get more depth of field. Shay This is an MDC model. It looks pretty good but it doesn't run anymore. It never was much of a runner and I got tired of messin' with it. It finally quit moving altogether. Nice static piece. Shay2 Believe it or not, I sorta have a railroad. Most of the track is down but no scenery. The last time I worked on it was about 1995. Probably won't do anymore because we plan to move. What little modeling I do is loco detailing or stuff for my friends, both of them.