O GaugeWatch.com

OK, we all have dreams of turning our love of railroading into a way of making a living.  If you love railroading and have dreamed about owning a restaurant here’s the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.  The Big Moose Station restaurant, a renovated rail station located on the highest point of the Adirondack Scenic Railroad, is for sale for $389,000.  Click here for more details.

The Amtrak store at store.amtrak.com is having a 25% off sale on all in-stock merchandise.  The sale runs through May 31.

I came across a post on the O Gauge Railroad forum that referenced a pair of pre civil war locomotives that rest on the ocean floor a few miles east of Asbury Park, NJ in about 90 feet of water.  I decided to investigate further and found a great post on www.njscuba.net loaded with information about the locomotives including a short video of a dive on the locomotives.  The two sit upright very close together on the ocean floor with no sign of a ship wreck anywhere in the area.  It is thought that the locomotives were cargo on the ship Arundo (click the link to see a picture of the Arundo with 2 locomotives on board) that was sunk by German U boat U-136 on 4/28/42.   The locomotives were the subject of an episode of Deep Sea Detectives on the History Channel back in February. 

The New Jersey Museum of Transportation, Inc received conditional custody of the locomotives in 2004 with the hope of raising funds to raise them both.  The locomotives are thought to be similar to the Pioneer, built by the Union Works in South Boston, MA in 1851.

If your a rail fan I highly recommend that you add railpictures.net to your favorites list.  The site hosts pictures taken by rail photographers from around the world and has a "photo of the week" that is always fantastic.  I just discoverd the site recently and enjoy browsing it regularly. 

The latest email newsletter from Trains Magazine has an advertisement for a "Train Lovers Dream House".  The 6,669 square foot home, which has a 1:1 scale caboose integrated into the architecture, is for sale for $1.475 million and is located in Durham, North Carolina.  Here are some pictures of the caboose:

You can find at more information about the house at www.atrainhouse.com.

Passenger train or freight train radio chatter included as part of Lionel’s Railsounds and MTH’s Protosounds adds a lot to the modern day O Gauge experience.  Found a link to a web site on the OGR "Real Trains" forum that enables you to listen to real railroad radio transmissions.  I’ve listened to the NS (Norfolk Southern) Harrisburg Line, Harrisburg, PA link and it has a lot of chatter plus transmissions from automated "defect detectors". 

Visit www.railroadradio.net