There's A Jade Fog Rolling In From The East...

Today I'd like to introduce my readers (all 5 of them) to a gentleman whose work I hope to feature often in the future.  As well as being a swell guy and a fellow bass player, he's one of my favorite hobbyists.  He combines extreme bargain hunting and a knowledge of old HO trains with excellent repainting skills.  His kitbashing and repair work sometimes also takes some notable detours into the enjoyably ridiculous.

So without further ado here's an introduction to the Jade Fog from the man himself.

Hello all,

I first showed up in this blog as "The Jade Fog", a moniker given to me for my affinity to the jade that Penn Central used on their freight cars and a little collection of custom cars that I painted in response to that that moniker.

I was asked if I would share a little bit of my interest and participation in the hobby of model railroading.  My Dad grew up on a small farm in Lancaster County, PA not far from a small branch line of the Reading Railroad. As a kid of the 40s and 50s he heard the lonesome whistle and the roar of steam locomotives passing by. So naturally, a Lionel set was a Christmas gift in his younger years. That train set still exists.

His first and only job was with an agricultural equipment manufacturer that shipped their final machinery out on flat cars pulled by the Pennsylvania Railroad up until the late 60s. He switched to HO scale when the kids came along, so the basement always had a mix of static Lionel trains and smaller HO equipment. 

We also lived not far from Strasburg, PA the home of the PA Railroad Museum and the Strasburg Railroad tourist shortline, so as young kid I was able to see steam-fired locomotive operation and feel the trains shake the earth under my feet. 

Nickel Plate Berkshire formerly at the museum.

PRR M-1 Mountain and GG-1 "Old Rivets" still reside outside of the Museum.

It seems that all kids like dinosaurs and railroads, at least for a little bit. And I've distilled it down to the fact that both those things are pretty close to the biggest and most frightening thing a kid can imagine. They're both bigger than Mom or Dad and there is an attraction and a simultaneous fear associated with both of them.

So anyway, I was young when I was bitten by the train bug. First by the HO layout and the annual Lionel loop under the Christmas tree. The interest was cemented at about age 4 or 5. My extended family would rent rustic cabins in northern PA every year by the Pine Creek. It's now a rail trail but in the early 70s the Penn Central ran trains from Harrisburg to Corning, NY over those rails. Being in a river valley, the train horns from miles away would sound their clarion call to bring all of us kids to the rails to see these diesel monsters rumble through the valley.

The author is second from the left holding his ears from the loud horns. Later in life those horns would become like a symphony.

In 2nd grade with the Bicentennial looming, AHM, a model train company and Kellogg's partnered in a train set featuring a Bicentennial red white and blue loco and caboose and a Frosted Flakes boxcar among other pieces. I asked for that set, promptly forgot about it and was shocked out of my mind to receive it on Christmas morning.

The Bicentennial Alco C-424 that caught my attention as a young kid.

In former days rolling stock often was painted in bright and bold colors and the Penn Central painted their rolling stock in a jade paint- a similar color borrowed from its one half parent -the New York Central. As a kid I loved that color and started collecting cars in that road name.

And when I needed to make my own car, paint and decals were available to learn the art of custom painting.

So that's a little history about a hobby that caught my attention as a little kid and still allows hours of relaxation as a pastime and an outlet for creativity, and just enjoying the sound of miniature wheels rolling past down the mainline.