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Retired military, ship model buff, former train nut.

"The Fog Horn" aka "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms"

The author Ray Bradbury wrote a short story, The Fog Horn, in 1951 about a sea creature that visited a light house once a year on the same night. First appearing in the Saturday Evening Post the story centered around a beast that appeared [...]

The Matador, America's First Cruise Missile

The Martin Matador was a post war design influenced by the German V-1 missile. First tested in 1949, the Matador was the first U.S. operational surface to surface cruise missile, over 1200 units were built between 1952 and 1962. Powered by [...]

The ZELL

The Zell (zero length launcher) system was a product of Cold War planning. Faced with the possibility of an all out strike by Warsaw pact nations destroying aircraft runways, a ZELL bomber would be launched as a nuclear equipped aircraft. [...]

Texaco Tug "George Beckford."

These small tugboats were built in 1942 for the Army Transportation Corps and were utilized on rivers and harbors to move cargo barges. In the post WWII years these tugboats were sold as surplus and a number of oil companies purchased them [...]

Air Station Barbers Point and it's "HERCULES," the C-130J.

The US Coast Guard acquired it's first C-130 in 1959 and still maintains a fleet of 28 aircraft today. These multi engine aircraft are flown out of Clearwater Florida, Kodiak Alaska and Barber's Point Hawaii, utilized as long range patrol [...]

Back It up Mack, Atomic Annie's In Town

Considered obsolete as a strategic weapon during it's time in the Army's inventory, the "Atomic Cannon" was impressive in size and a cause for concern by it's enemies. Able to hurl an atomic shell some ten miles, the guns were a [...]

Down At The Station, Early In The Morning....

What would prompt a person to build a model of his home town railway station? Perhaps the nostalgia of train trips to Boston to attend a Red Sox base ball game as a child. Or maybe reliving the days when a lot of folk took a train rather [...]

USS Andrew Jackson, SSBN-619

Model building should be fun, and putting this kit together was exactly that, FUN! This 19" model is a repop of the old 1:200 Renwal kit from the early 1960's offered by Revell in 2004. I had built the Renwal kit and the smaller 1:250 [...]

U.S.Coast Guard HU-16E 1963

Well today is the US Coast Guard's 225th birthday, so I had to post something the "wing maggots" (we-who-did-not-fly's endearing term for our CG aviator brothers) would recognize. It's the last of my Monogram 1:72 scale HU-16's [...]

Dozer in Decline-An Experiment in Weathering

I scratch built this crawler tractor a few years ago for display on my outdoor train layout. For some reason I wasn't pleased with it's "look" and it sat on a shelf with all my jars of nails and screws. As time went on the model [...]