The Model Railroad Magic Website is all about fun!!!
More precisely, its all about how to build fun into YOUR model railroad, just like you would build trackwork, scenery or anything else. Working model railroad magic IS a lot of fun! And that brings us to the first (and perhaps most important) of The Seven Unbearable Truths of Model Railroading, which clearly states:

"Model railroading is either fun on purpose, or it can only happen by accident!"

Why would anyone knowingly leave something so important to chance? When you know the tricks and their secrets, and with a little practice, the fun of making magic is always an option. Whether or not they realize it, all model railroaders are magicians! Magic is the theatrical art of illusion. When we build a railroad model, we are creating an illusion for the audience (ourselves and other visitors). With the tricks you will learn here you can have fun working magic anytime you wish! Everything about this site is designed to teach you "how to" do just that.

From here you can depart to anywhere in the Incredible Dizzying Heights mountain range. All of the secrets are hidden there, deep in the mountains somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. Your ticket for the I.D.H. is free. To help guide you on your excursion you may want to take a look at the sitemap, or read the introduction "What is Magic!?!", or if you are hopelessly curious you can read About This Site. However, below you will find descriptions of all of the "destinations" to which you might wish to travel. Where ever you go, you can flag stop the Whitby Loco, and it will always take you home (just click on the loco icon to get back here to the station). The elves have taken the liberty of packing your bags for you, so... "All Aboard"!

DEPARTURES:

There are magical destinations all along the IDH right-o-way...

Imagination Springs - a place of model railroad magic, by design

The Yerz Ore Mine - a place to find magic nuggets

Sneaky Peaks - a place of visual illusion

The Tracks Dept. - a place of aural illusion

Secret Hollow - a "completely different" construction & scenery approach

The Whitby Locomotive Works - a look "inside" The Whitby Loco

The Pot Belly Stove - a place for "hot air"

The General Store - a place to load "up" magical provisions

The Old Link n' Pin - railroady places & other smokey links

 

 

ARRIVALS: (station announcements)

• Site renovation! Over the next few months we will be rebuilding the magic site... substantially. We will keep most of the fun stuff (like free sound: ), but we will be incorporating the terrific artwork of Daniel Sawatzky throughout the site. We are lucky to have his wonderful contributions (and friendship!), and we think you will see it the same way. Some of the pages will be changing locations. If you have bookmarks or links to specific pages within the site, you should likely check them from time to time, just to be sure they are still there! The rebuild should be a vast improvement, so when you start to see the graphics changing, it might be time to go exploring the IDH mountain range again: ).

• Wow! Some VERY exciting things are happening 'behind the scenes'. Our little scale sound business has taken off in ways that are better than we had ever dreamed! We have stumbled into railroadies clients that have one of the most amazing layouts ever, The Grand Funk Lines! This layout defies description, but we try to describe it anyway, at the Pot Belly Stove. And we are involved with a small theme park project that is so much fun, it dragged us out of 'theme park moth balls'... Giggle Ridge! These two links will give you a sneak peak. We have been so busy with these projects that we have not been able keep up with the site much. But we will, we're so proud of our associations with these two projects, that we just have to brag a bit here. We'll be posting information on these two projects at the pot bellied stove, but for now, please know that we are neglecting the site for very good reasons.

• Scale Magic CD Soundtracks! 'Sound for the layout' This is a time that Christie and I have dreamed about (and worked toward) for a very long time, we are finally able to offer you ready-to-run scale sound... if you've ever dreamed of your railroad sounding real, you should probably take a look at Scale Magic Sound.

• "Two point five (2.5) million hits! Who would have thought it in the beginning? Just a few short years ago, we were delighted if we were visited by 'someone' every day, but now our gag counter is starting to come true! We started this site to evangelize scale sound and special FX, and bless your hearts, you're getting it! As of this writing our server statistics report 2,468,096 total accesses! Thank you everybody!"

• "Thank you ALL for the visits, e-mail, and kind words... it is always great to hear from you... now GO HAVE SOME FUN!!!"

Toy Trunk Railroad by Erik Sansom

We are honored & tickled to be recipients of the coveted TrainNet Web Gem Award!