Thanks to all of you who have been reading and engaging in the hobby. My goal with this blog has always been to help my fellow modelers gain skill and confidence to stretch their modeling boundaries into kitbashing and historical research.
Statistics of the Last Year (2025-2026)
This year the NOM blog has passed 300 modeling and research articles on this site.
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| July 2025-2026 Viewing Stats. |
The Stats seem a bit skewed with 25k views in one day and other spikes of 10k views per day.
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| Last 10 year viewing Stats, seems to be a 'hockey-stick' graph, suggesting outside influence in the last year. |
From what I can tell, the AI web-crawling bots have completely ruined these stat-graphs usefulness. There's no way that my blogs have been suddenly viewed 30+k times in one day.
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| 2025-2026 Blog Page views - Certainly not accounting the crawler views. |
Unfortunately, this list of article views is heavily skewed again by the AI-web crawlers looking at every page 2-4 times per day. All of these 'top pages' are from over a year ago, so they don't really show which articles have been the most popular from just the last year.
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| 2025-2026 Blog page views |
These are the most popular links pages over the last year.
Some of my Favorite Posts in 2025.
So as the statistic data is garbage now, I'll just fill out this post with some of my favorite and fun posts that I've dug into researching and modeling in 2025-2026.
Research Timelines for SP Diners and Lounges
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| SP 1937-1960 Diner Timeline, and Painting chart |
As we're seeing the Golden Gate Depot Harriman V2.0 project nearing reservation cut-off and now soon delivery, I wanted to do a deep dive on the research of visualizing exactly what the SP Diner fleet was made up of at various dates and what paint scheme the cars were in during those times as well. This was the perfect reason to create a timeline graphic with colors and notes mashed together into one place.
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| SP 1937-1960 Lounge & Cafe-Lounge (aka semi-food service) car Timeline, and Painting chart. |
Then I decided to be crazy enough to do the same graphical layout chart for the SP's Lounge cars and other food-service cars as well, mostly Cafe-Lounges, which changed back and forth to Diners, along with the
Daylight and other Premier Train Tavern cars.
Kitbashing SP Food Service Cars
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| Current food-service kitbashing projects: Cafe-Lounge SP 10913, Diner T&NO 931, & SP 10014. |
These timelines led me to revisit several of my Diner and Cafe-Lounge kitbashes, which I still am working on... but it has been nice to dust off these 10-15 year old projects again, and breath a bit of effort on them, seeing that the new GGD cars won't be replacing these kitbashes anytime soon. When I feel like doing more Archer Rivet Decals, the SP 10014 will need basically all the rivets replaced and T&NO 931 and SP 10913 will have the windows adjusted to replicate the enlarged style the cars received in 1937's rebuilds.
Santa Fe's Grand Canyon?
My father's first brass engine purchases back in the early 1980s was a PFM 3751-class (semi) 'modernized' model. I can't do the 3751 herself, as she was shopped a second time by my modeling era, receiving the single larger sand dome.
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| ATSF 3753 leads No.23 North, the Grand Canyon, to Richmond, California while the UP 6-6-4 sleeper 'American Scene' brings up the markers on a UP passenger train on the joint track west of the depot at Barstow. |
I'm planning to finish it as Santa Fe 3753, which kept the two-sand dome arrangement into my modeling era and should work nicely as the road engine on the Grand Canyon's northern section to Richmond, at least the Barstow to Bakersfield section. The Santa Fe's smaller engines worked in the Valley, mostly 1300-class Pacifics and 3700-class Mountains.
Sidetracked with Santa Fe "Shadowline" Cars
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| Santa Fe Diner 1458, and 6-6-4s 'Surprise Valley' in Shadowline and Two-Tone Gray 'Chama Valley.' |
So while the photo above is not the normal operating consist order, the
Grand Canyon will be a striking consist with the mix of heavyweight, lightweight, fluted, and shadowlined HW and smooth-sided LW cars, with HW chair cars, LW chair cars, HW headend cars, an RPO-Baggage, Diner, Sleepers, etc.
This last year I've mostly switched back to passenger car modeling, along with a shift to some Santa Fe
Grand Canyon consist cars.
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| Santa Fe's 1458 HW Diner kitbash. |
This is a rather involved kitbash of a Rivarossi HW Diner, the body work is fairly straight forward, but the underframe and the roof modifications are fairly involved, and still needs work.
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| Santa Fe 1524, a Snack Lounge-Dormitory. |
Similar work is being done on a Walthers 3060-class Chair Car by converting it to Snack-Lounge-Dorm configuration of the 1520-series cars, every couple cars were different conversions. I'm still researching what the interior arrangement of this car will look like, but the changes to the windows and underframe modifications are mostly done. The last major work is moving the roof A/C hatch to the middle of the car and blank over the inner one near the car end.
I may look into a proper full-lounge car, but the
Grand Canyon, No.23 North, consist usually just needed the diner westward, and then the
California Limited, No.4 North, would take the diner back to Barstow. So for my modeling, the diner and snack-lounge can vary as ridership and scheduling needs the extra food and lounge space. Given the prototype photo of the 1458 that I worked from was in San Diego in 1948, the diner I believe was coupled to a car that looks very much like one of the 1524/1525 type snack cars. So I believe it's reasonable to be modeling both cars and running them together.
Minor Obsession with Pullman 6-6-4 LW Sleepers
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| My growing flock of SP, Santa Fe, & MoPac 6-6-4s make quite the rainbow of colors now. |
I'm not exactly sure why, but I believe most of my Lightweight Pullman sleepers are now actually 6-6-4s. As I'm digging more into various consists, it seems that I've either picked up several more in 2026 to work on or have picked up long term projects to finish.
From the Shadow...lines
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| Santa Fe's 'Surprise Valley', which was among the last 6-6-4s to loose shadowlining. |
One of the Santa Fe's 26 'Valley'-series cars, which was assigned to the
Grand Canyon (North) to Richmond California. This car is one that a friend and I have talked about modeling for 15-20 years together, but his starting point 6-6-4 is too new with the removed skirts, and I was recently able to find another undecorated Walthers car to start with.
The Santa Fe's Idea of Two-Tone Gray with Silver
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| Santa Fe's 'Chama Valley' after it was painted into Santa Fe's Two-Tone Gray scheme and deskirted. |
This is Walther's "earlier version" 6-6-4, which is still unfortunately rather later 1953+ era, with the deskirted body. If it still had skirts, I could use it back into the 1950-era as the Santa Fe's 6-6-4s came out of the 1947 Shadowline scheme.
Don't Forget the MoPac!
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| Modeling MoPac's "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4, heavily customized Walthers model. |
My Santa Fe
Grand Canyon journey has spilled over into modeling the MoPac now too... I've planned to model this car for 15-20 years now... but just never got started on it until now. The
Grand Canyon from 1947-1954 used a MoPac car on the Richmond-New Orleans route every 3rd or 4th day, with Santa Fe cars the other days to balance route miles.
As of July 4, I just need to wrap up the car with a clear-coat and then reinstall windows, window shades, etc.
1947-1953 Golden State Red & Silver-scheme |
| SP 'Golden Plain', one of the 1947 Golden State painted cars. |
The striking red and silver
Golden State scheme 6-6-4 has been a check-box project for me for over 20 years. So this will be a fun car to finish up soon. As of July 4, I just need to wrap up the car with a clear-coat and then reinstall windows, window shades, etc.
Projects for the 10th Year
I'm starting to look into several projects for the next year or so.
Passenger Consist Modeling
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SP 4230, No.60 at Newhall, 4-29-51 - Brian Black Collection - used with permission.
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I've been modeling cars for various cars from the West Coast (Nos.59/60) for over 20 years now. Now I'm aiming for some fine tuning of those cars and polishing off the last few cars that have been 'too scary' to attempt to model or kitbash.
More West Coast Modeling
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| A sneak-peek at a mock-up of the rear end of the West Coast. SP 10913 Cafe-Lounge, SP 9162 (standing in for SP 9200) and SP 'Golden Plain' 6-6-4s. |
A number of years ago, I already have done several articles on modeling the
Owl (No.57/58), but nothing on the other night passenger train of the San Joaquin Valley yet. I've been doing more modeling on making a more accurate
West Coast, Nos.59/60. This should allow me to make a couple posts on the
West Coast's
consist and some of the signature aspects of the consist which makes the 1950-1953 Sacramento-LA
West Coast consist.
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| The West Coast Consist as of Nov 4, 1951, which is in the mid-early era that I'm modeling. |
So with some more aggressive kitbashing, I'm looking to make my cars more accurate for specific eras of the train. Likewise, I'll be finishing up the
Owl that I started posting about 10 years ago.
SP 9200, ex-CoSF 10-5 Sleeper
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| The SP 9200/9201 were regulars on the CoSF, and then in late 1950 they were assigned to the West Coast. |
One of these more complicated kitbashes is this 10-5 for the
West Coast. The car had 1941
City of San Francisco 8th Trainset detailing including unique skirting, trim molding above and below the windows, roof conduit, etc.
More Grand Canyon Modeling
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| Santa Fe's Grand Canyon (23 North) as of Feb 1949. |
I'm enjoying getting a brain cramp sorting through the Santa Fe consists for their passenger trains between Barstow and Oakland (Richmond).
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| Building the redesigned Owenyo with the new 46" radius wye. |
I've not done much on the Jawbone over the last year... since I was redesigning the scaling and proportions of the trackwork at Owenyo. I'm hoping to restart on this soon, but I've also moved all my
Jawbone Branch blog posts over to it's own blog to keep it separate from my general modeling which is here on the NightOwlModeler blog.
Jawbone Steam Engines - Setup & DCC
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| My planned mainstays of the Jawbone's steam engine fleet: SP 3237, 3266, & 3203. |
As I get into working on the Jawbone Branch again, I'll need to get several steam engines working to start running operations on the line. So this will mean at least a couple articles on DCCing HO brass and setting up the engines with proper mechanicals, weighting, lighting, etc.
While I have plenty of interesting freight car models to get into building, I'm not sure I'll have time to start building them in the next year. It's more important to build the layout than increase the pool of freight cars to run on it.
New Model Releases & Reviews
It seems I've been doing a number of reviews of SP models that are coming out. Several of them we've been waiting for a couple years. So I look forward to their arrivals, hopefully this year.
Rapido's C-40-3 Arriving Soon?
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| SP 1115 in WWII SP as-delivered scheme, pre-production model at BAPM 2026 meet. |
Sometime later this year (hopefully) the new Rapido SP C-40-3 should be arriving for service on the Jawbone Branch. So I'm hoping soon this new caboose will be ready to show off on my Jawbone Branch while I get the new track work in and functioning.
Golden Gate Depot Harriman Cars. Month or less away?
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| Golden Gate Depot's 75-CS Lounge tooling check from Feb 2026, |
I checked in with 3rd & Townsend Models a couple weeks back to see if there was any chance that the new cars would be arriving before the BAPM RPM meet in Oakland on June 27th. I was told they'd be at least a couple weeks after that. So I'm hoping that very soon after I post this Yearly Blog Review that they will show up and I'll do a series of articles on them. I'm looking at doing both an 'out-of-box' review and also some articles on kitbashing or adding details to customize the models for the cars I want to model and air conditioning the 72-C-1 for use on my
Owl and
West Coast consists.
In Closing
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| What's the next year going to hold? |
I think that wraps up this blog focused post for this year. There's still a number of fun and interesting projects that I have in the works to post blogs about, so keep an eye here as I post new articles.
Related Articles:
- 2025
I missed a couple years here posting the July 4, reviews of the blog...
Six Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2022
Five Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2021
Four Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2020
Three Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) -2019
Two Years of Blogging - Reflections - 2018
A Year of Modeling in Review - 2017
First Steps - A new modeling blog posting - 2016
