News

We have five paintings by noted Seattle area artist J. Craig Thorpe now in the store. Subjects are: W-1 5018 West picking up orders at Scenic Y-1 5011 West with 1947 Empire Builder at Gaynor F-3 350C West with 1955 Empire Builder on Stone Arch bridge R-2 2049, W-1 5018, and F-3 352-C at Skykomish GP-9 724 East at Sheep Creek, Montana   Each image is a high quality giclee print on 11x14 paper, with unprinted margin of .75 inch to fit a standard 11x14 inch frame, without matte. They will also fit a standard 12x16 inch frame with a...

Grain, predominately wheat, was the traffic that paid the Great Northern's bills, and that grain was loaded into box cars at country elevators. Finally, after about a year's development work, and a series of photos taken by Darin Nelson, we have an accurate model of the 20,000 bushel elevator built in 1913 at Touhey WA. Elevators of this basic design existed at virtually every Manitoba and Great Northern station in Minnesota west of Willmar at St. Cloud, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana east of the Rocky Mountains, and eastern Washington. If you model the Great Northern in any of these...

These cars by InterMountain fill a hole in our offerings and your roster! The prototype cars were bought by GN to haul commercial coal from Superior WI to destinations well into Montana. The coal from Superior was 'Pittsburg seam' coal used for both domestic heating and industrial purposes.  While the Superior coal dock is too large for most of us to model, consignee facilities are not. We offer the Andrew Kolb coal shed from Melrose MN and the Lunde Coal Elevator from Langdon ND, both of which were designed to receive coal from box cars, but later would have received...

John Langlot's new book Rocky's Rail is now in the store. The authors have discontinued their direct sales effort and made us an attractive offer. As a result, we are able to sell this great book in the store at a reduced price! John describes both jobs and operations of the GN between Troy, Montana, and Keremeos, British Columbia in the 1960's, the first decade of his career. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to work for the Great Northern, BN, and BNSF as a brakeman, this is the book for you!

Grain doors were used for decades when loading box cars with grain. They went across the side doors to enable loading, to minimize leakage past the bottom of the doors, and to enable doors to be opened at destination. Active country elevators always had a few stacks of grain doors on hand, so if you model one or more country elevators you need a few stacks of grain doors. Go to the item and its associated description for more details about grain doors and how to use them.