About the MFR


The Metaline Falls Railroad (MFR) is a proto-freelanced model railroad based on the Pend Oreille Valley Railroad located in northern Idaho and north eastern Washington State. For the very latest on the layout, please visit my YouTube channel and follow along with my Instagram account and Facebook Group.

Monday, August 27, 2018

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Welp, my old house is finally on the market and I can take a moment or two to relax and collect myself before I roll up my sleeves and get to work prepping my new layout room. It's taken longer than anticipated to get to this point, but I'm glad I am here now!

I haven't done much model railroad-related in the last few months unfortunately, but I did purchase a couple of box cars. Now, I've told myself for some time that I have more than enough freight cars for my railroad but, as many of you probably know by now freight cars are like skittles; One or five of fifty five is just never enough.

The first car I purchased was an Exactrail Trinity 6275 Boxcar. I actually owned one of these already and I absolutely loved it. I wanted another for years, but Exactrail had sold out of stock completely and second hand models were going for ungodly amounts of money on eBay.  I held off buying one for many years hoping that Exactrail would re-release the car and Thankfully they did!  I snatched one up as quickly as possible (which was a good idea because they sold out again in an insanely short amount of time) and now it sits on display next to my original car. Both are waiting patiently for me to get around to weathering them.

The second freight car I purchased was a Pend Oreille Valley (POVA) Boxcar. I was turned on to this car by a fellow Pend Oreille Valley modeler who reached out to me one day to say "Hi!"  He lives in the area and has a wealth of knowledge on the railroad as well as a large library of old pictures and maps of the region. (I'll be sharing some of that in future posts).  I'm very thankful and lucky to have met him as I can now count the number of modelers I've found besides myself that are modeling the POVA area on exactly one finger!

The freight car was advertised on Ebay as "New in Box" and in classic Ebay fashion, It arrived as anything but.  The axels were broken off, handrails were busted, coupler boxes were missing, etc. I am glad to have it as part of my collection, but it will need quite a bit of work to get it back in shape.



Both of these freight cars are special to me though as both of them are cars I never expected I'd one day acquire.  It just goes to show that good things come to those who wait!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

You Might Be A Model Railroader If...

You might be a model railroader if you walk around your yard collecting leaves from last fall in a garbage bag... and then you store that garbage bag in your basement.



Monday, May 14, 2018

Movie Mondays #6



The Grimes Line by James McNab was one of the most beautiful representations of modern model railroading and a huge inspiration for me as I work to design my new layout.. Sadly, The Grimes Line is now gone, but the videos live on!

Monday, April 30, 2018

A guest at an Ops Session

About a month ago I was invited to join an operating session at a home in my new hometown.  I was excited to have an opportunity to operate on another Modeler's layout as most of my experience seeing other Modelers works in-person has been through small, modular displays at various train shows.

The layout was a fantastic point-to-point style double-deck layout that focused on mainline running and featured a large steel mill.  This steel mill would be my station for the evening.


The job itself was described to me as "easy" and indeed, it was very straight forward. Using my choice of two small switchers, I pulled ignot cars, slag cars, coil and coal cars from spots and placed them at their required locations.  I set out cars for pickup and replaced them with fresh cars from staging.  Over the course of a few hours I actually got to try my hand at a wide variety of operational techniques that were new to me and I only screwed up a few times! (despite having to navigate no less than TWO double-slip switches.)

By the end of the evening I had learned a lot.  I'm very thankful for the opportunity to run on someone else's railroad and it has given me a lot to consider as my designs for the MFR 2.0 continue to evolve.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Railbanking or Abandonment?

Much of my inspiration comes from the Kettle Falls International Railway and in 2010 the KFR. (just to the west of the imaginary MFR) experienced a bit of an upset as a large portion of it's line connecting Kettle Falls to Canada was declared for sale or abandonment. Discussion immediately begain around turning the line into an international bike trail, but many wanted to invoke "Railbanking" to preserve the line for future use.

It appears the line has been preserved and is still in use thankfully, but this moment of uncertainty reflects the type of railroading I'm looking to recreate on the MFR. Check out these articles for more info:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/oct/14/railways-could-become-international-bike-trail/
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,2380005